Graphic Design Courses
Once the walls have been created in your Revit model the next step is to add doors and windows. In this blog post we’ll look at how to add Families for various building components like doors, windows, furniture and lighting. In our Revit training courses we customize each class but here’s a brief description of the process.
First of all note that we’re just working on the ground floor at present. Other levels will be added later on, since they are often duplicates of, or at least similar to, the ground floor.
REVIT FAMILIES:
Before we can place doors and windows into our model we need to add Revit Families for those objects. A Family is a set of custom components (like doors, windows, beams, furniture, lighting, etc) which you can use in multiple projects. There are families for just about anything you can think of. Often third party organizations will create and provide their own families for you to include in your project.
These come in both Metric and Imperial sizes and often comply with Building Standards. Usually different sizes of each unit are loaded. In addition a System family is like an AutoCAD group whereas a Hosted family is more like an AutoCAD block or a SketchUp Component.
ADDING DOORS:
Now return to your Level 1 floor-plan by clicking on it on the floor-plans list in the left-hand side Project Browser – this will open Level 1 in a new tab. (Providing the project didn’t open at Level 1 initially.) Next go to the Architecture tab on the top Ribbon, and select Door. Various options will open to the right – click Load Family. Note that it can take a few seconds for the family to load into your project, so be patient!
Browse to the Australia folder and open the sub-folder Doors – here we see a list of various common Australian doors sizes. Choose Single-Flush.rfa. Then click the down arrow and select the door size 864 x 2032mm. Bring your cursor over to your floor plan and hover over the bottom right South-East wall (see figure right). Pressing Spacebar on your keyboard at this point will flip the orientation of the door. Also notice that Revit tries to equal the wall distance on either side of the door – click to place Door 1. Note that Revit adds a tag automatically.
Repeat for Door 2 but this time place the door with a 100mm return from the wall. Click on the 3D View icon at the top of your screen to see the model in a perspective view. Note that placing the doors has automatically cut out the cavity on the walls, unlike SketchUp or AutoCAD (for example) where you have to manually cut an opening in the wall. If you decide to flip the door’s orientation just select it and hit the Spacebar on your keyboard, or click the tiny arrow beside the door. You can also move the door to adjust its position – the walls will automatically update (again, unlike SketchUp or AutoCAD).
Even though Revit has an Auto-Save function it’s a good idea, every so often, to go to the File menu and Save (or hit CTRL+S). In our next blog post we will follow a similar process when adding windows to our Revit model, so stay tuned!
The AutoDesk knowledge network website is a great resource for Revit tips and techniques – in this instance they have several pages on creating and modifying internal and external walls. In our Revit training courses we take time to teach a wide range of common techniques, relevant to industry practice. You can see many examples of our class work on our Facebook page.
