AUGIWorld Magazine - March/April 2008 - (Page 22) The nostrum that architects don’t need to worry about what holds their buildings up because the engineer will fix it has never really been true. Figure 1: A coarse detail plan gives you five ways to display the same member based on structural usage. You can slope beams while placing them or afterwards. A 3D snap option lets you place beams in a plan view according to the relative heights of the walls or beams that they snap to. As with structural columns, you can place beams on grids collectively rather than one at a time. Revit Architecture does not create curved beams as standard components; Revit Structure does. You can readily make an in-place beam family to fit a curve, using standard beam profiles or your own custom sketches. Besides designating horizontal beams as braces, you can place vertically oriented braces using the Brace tool on the Structural tab. You have to designate a work plane when working in a section or elevation view unless you attach the view to a grid line, making it a framing elevation. Beam systems are arrays of beams within a border. The systems have layout rules, so you can arrange beams within them by count or spacing, you can justify the pattern (beginning, end, center), and you can change the beam direction. Beam systems can populate framing plans very quickly You can use walls or existing beams as the border edges for beam systems, or sketch lines—sketching lets you set beam arrays at angles to grids, walls, or the main beams. You can use 3D snap when placing beams systems, as with beams. If you pick the top of a slanted wall and a slanted beam as edges of a beam system, you can create an array of beams with no two beams parallel to each other or the ground, yet with complete control of the beam location! Beam systems can be used equally well for creating roof rafters or concrete slab stiffeners. For roof applications, create a work plane at the underside of the roof, and the rafters will follow the pitch and location of the roof. For slab stiffeners, place the beams just below the surface of the slab and they will show as hidden if you apply a structural framing view template. To carry this one step further, you can place beam systems running both ways under a slab and Figure 4: Wall foundations snap to walls—one click can place many segments. Isolated foundations will follow they will meet correctly for a paracolumns up and down. metric “waffle” system. Isolated foundations are pads or piers. They snap to the base of structural columns, and will follow the column base up or down it the column is modified. Foundation slabs are a system family separate from floor slabs, allowing them to be scheduled separately. They are placed using the same methods as floor slabs. In conclusion, Revit Architecture’s Structural tab tools will not eliminate the need for consulting engineers. Making creative use of columns, foundations, beams, and beam systems can extend your ability to create a complete building model. Chris Fox is the Revit editor for AUGIWorld, and has written numerous articles on Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP. He has written Autodesk Official Training Courseware for Revit Architecture and Revit Structure and Introducing and Implementing Revit Architecture, published by Autodesk Press. Chris recently moved from the US to Australia, and is leading training classes in Revit through corporate, university and technical school contacts there. You can reach him at lcfox@archimagecad.com. w w w. A U G I . c o m Figure 3: Crossed beam systems under a floor, shown from below and above. Lay down a good foundation Figure 2: Beam system with edges sloped in opposite directions. The Structural tab holds a placement tool for another type of component not found anywhere else in Revit Architecture—the foundation, with three options: wall, isolated, and slab. Make note: a wall foundation is a different object from a foundation wall, and it schedules as a foundation, not as a wall. Wall foundations snap to the base of walls; placing them is very quick. 22 http://www.augi.com
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