Guru-G

One of the shortcomings of Revit is that unlike AutoCAD you can't save multiple UCS to rotate the snap grid based on the orientation of the building. But we can make use of the grid from the workplane to align/snap the elements in whichever angle you want. To see and manipulate the grid in any of the plan views, Go to the plan view. Click on "Show"  button in the "Workplane" toolbar of "Architecture" tab in the ribbon. The grid by default will show up aligned to the screen orientation. You can select the grid and click on rotate to rotate the grid to your desired orientation. Snap Grid

In one of my previous posts, I have explained the  difference between Project North & True North  and how we can use them in any project. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to Set/Change the Orientation of Project North. Unlike True North, rotating a project north is a little different. You can only rotate in 90°/180° or use an existing element to orient. Following are the steps to rotate the Project North. Go to any Plan view.  Go to Manage tab in the ribbon and click on "Position" drop-down in the "Project Location" toolbar. Then choose "Rotate Project North" from the drop-down list. Rotate Project North This will pop up a window that gives you various options for rotating the project north 90° clockwise 90° counterclockwise 180° Align selected line or plane

In any Revit project, the orientation of the North is always set to the top of the screen. But this might not be the case with all the projects. All the projects are not oriented parallel to the North direction, and we might want to orient the project to the true north direction. In one of my previous posts, I have explained the difference between Project North & True North and how we can use them in any project. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to Set/Change the Orientation of True North. Go to any Plan view.  Go to Manage tab in the ribbon and click on "Position" drop-down in the "Project Location" toolbar. Then choose "Rotate True North" from the drop-down list. Rotate True North This will show you 3 different ways to change the orientation of the True North. They are 1. Manual Rotation Upon clicking the "Rotate Ture North", Revit will automatically prompt you for manual rotation of the orientation. You can use...

In the very first post of my Revit-Coordinate System series, I've explained the difference between the Project Basepoint and Survey base point, and in the third post , I've explained how to manipulate/change the values of the Revit Coordinate system. This tutorial shows you how to set the real world elevation values to be reflected in the Levels of a project. Open the project where you want to change the settings and go to an elevation view. Select a level. (Check my following post if you can't see any levels in the view) Click on edit type in the properties window. In the Windows that pops up, look for the option called "Elevation Base" and choose either "Project Base Point" or "Survey Point" Edit Properties Window

If you're using the default templates provided by Autodesk, then in any plan view after  unhiding the SBP & PBP , you can observe that both PBP & SBP are at the same location and overlapping each other. If you select either of the base points, you can see the information of the Point and also a Gizmo that allows us to move the selected base point in the 2D plane. But the orientation of the Gizmo for both the points might be different depending on the Orientation of Project North and True  North . Before moving either of the points, notice a clip shaped icon when you select either of the points. This icon denotes the clipped/unclipped state of the respective point, which says how moving the point would affect the entire project. Clip/Unclip the Base Points If you move the points using the Gizmo, you'll notice that moving the Project Base Point moves the whole project i.e., all the elements modeled, while moving the Survey Base Point doesn't do anything. B...

In the first post(01 of 07) of the Revit-Coordinate System Series, I've explained what are the different coordinate systems(ProjectBase Point and Survey Base Point) in Revit and how all the elements in Revit take a relative reference to Project Base Point(PBP) and Survey Base Point(SBP). This tutorial explains how to properly manipulate/move those points Follow the following steps to properly Change/Manipulate these points: Go to a plan view where you feel comfortable with the orientation of the project. You'll need these points to be visible in the plan view to make any changes to them. You can either use the Reveal Hidden Elements button or Change the Visibility Graphics settings . To unhide Project base point & Survey base point, press "VV" to open Visibility/Graphics Override window. Look for "Site" and expand it to find "Project Base Point" & "Survey Point" Visibility/Graphics Override Select the point that yo...

With the default setting of Revit, you always model the elements parallel to the screen orientation. But have you ever wondered why is the orientation like that or what is the actual orientation for the project and how to reflect it in the model? Well, the simple answer is, the default plan orientation is set parallel to the screen for the user's convenience. So, how to set and display the actual orientation of the site? To do that we need to understand the 2 different Orientation in Revit, Project North & True North. These two orientations of the project are associated with the 2 different coordinate systems in Revit, Project Base Point & Survey Base Point (respectively) which I've explained in detail in my other post. By default, all the plan views(except site plan) are set to orient to Project North. You can change the settings in the Properties tab(shortcut - CTRL+1) > Graphics > Orientation. Site Plan vs Level 1 So the basic difference between T...

In any project, one of the most important information is the base elevation. For any typical project, we usually use "0.00" as the Base level/Level 1. But there might be a time when you might need to find the actual elevation of an element or you might want to reflect the actual elevation values that you got from your site survey. So to accomplish that, you need to understand 2 hidden elements and their properties in Revit - Project Base Point and Survey Base Point . Survey Base Point vs Project Base Point Project Base Point A Project Base Point can be considered as the origin point(0,0,0) of your project. All the elements that you model take the project base point as the origin and get their coordinates.  But it is not necessary that the value of the Project Base Point is (0,0,0). In large-scale projects where multiple RVT project files are linked using  Shared coordinates , each of the linked files has their own projects base point whose locations are in ...

The coordinate system in Revit is not as simple as it is Autocad, where there is just one Origin and all the elements are associated with that. In Revit, there are basically 2 Origin points that we can set the elements to take reference from - 1. Project Base Point(PBP) PBP can be considered as the Origin of the Revit Project. But it is not necessary that the value of the Project Base Point is (0,0,0). In large-scale projects where multiple RVT project files are linked using Shared coordinates , each of the linked files has their own projects base point whose locations are in reference to the PBP of the parent file which has all the linked files. 2. Survey Base Point(SBP) SBP is the real world location of the project that is usually calibrated on the site using survey tools. Unlike PBP, the Survey Base Point will be the same for the entire project and for all the individual linked Revit files in large-scale projects. To view the Project Base Point and Survey Base Poi...

Autodesk provides us with few sample files while we are installing the application. These sample files can be very useful for any beginner to understand the various concepts of any project like linked file, shares coordinates, Project Base Point & Survey Base Point. To see the different types of Sample files that are downloaded, you can click on  Revit(R)>Open>Sample Files . This provides you with a list of sample files each having their own significance. Chose the type of file you want to open depending on the feature that you want to learn. Revit - Sample Files 

In my previous post, I have explained how we can use the Visibility/Graphics Override window to customize the graphics and visibility settings of all the objects and categories. So using those methods we can change the colors, thickness, line types of grid lines(or any other) to our necessity. To change the color of the grid line, select one of the grid lines and click edit type in the properties window and change the " End Segment color ". This will change the colors of all the grid lines. To change the color of the Grid heads(bubbles), go to object styles from visibility graphics)shortcut VG) Visibility/Graphics window In the Object Styles window go to, annotation categories and find Grid head &change the line color Object Styles window This only changes the color of the lines, to change the color of the text, go to project browser > Families and find Grid Head - circle . (M is just a suffix for metric family).  Right-click and select edit ...

At times we might want to change the colors of various lines, categories with the model. The well known and easily foundable way for this is using the properties window. But, selecting each and every object and changing their properties can be ver tedious. So Autodesk has provided us with a  single window called " Visibility/Graphics Override " which can be found in View > Graphics > Visibility/Graphics or can simply be accessed using "VG or VV" shortcut key. This post focuses on model & annotation categories. Head to the following post to change the graphics of Object Styles . Visibility/Graphics Location Visibility/Graphics window Once you have made the necessary changes to the visibility/graphics of the view, you can save it as a view template, so that you can apply the same settings to multiple other views. The VG window can be used to change the visibility/graphics settings of any type of elements that exists in the Revit project. Y...

Autodesk has given us many new updates with the new Revit 2018 release. One of the very useful updates of such is the " Multi-storey " settings of the stairs. If you have used Revit (2015 and later) for a while, you must be familiar with the multi-storey option available to simply create a single stair(core) for all the floors. But it had an issue if the floors are of different heights. So the new 2018 update solves this issue and provides us the multi-storey stair for all the floors irrespective of the individual floor height . The best part of this is, it's parametric, i.e., you can change the parameters like height, width, landing length etc., and see all the stairs update along with it. The  information in the help website gives a detailed explanation of the update. The following video tutorial show how to use the feature.

Revit doesn't have a feature that allows us to edit the profile of a curved wall. so if we want to edit the profile of a curved wall, it's very difficult. There are few tricks that can help you with it like attaching the base of wall to a curved roof etc.., But if you ever want to intersect a curved wall with another curved wall, there is only one way possible i.e., creating a straight wall with minimum length beside the existing curved wall, so that it can be perceived as a curved wall. Then we can use the "Edit Profile" option on the straight wall. The following video (at the bottom of post) shows a technique to edit profile of a curved wall in a mass form. The exterior walls of the mass are created using "wall by face" tool. Mass form But the problem with this comes while working on the plan. As seen the curved opening is not straight. So the curved vertical walls in the building tend to project out into the opening. Intersection of cur...

If you've ever noticed the options under Massing & Site > Show mass , you might have wondered what the " Show Mass Surface Types & Show Mass Shades & Zones " option are for. Energy Analysis These are used when you are doing the energy analysis of the model. Those options are usually grayed out unless you use the " conceptual mass mode " which is available under Analyze > Energy Analysis > Use conceptual mass mode.  Energy Analysis The following video  from youtube explains how this is done. and this video what's the use of the surface type and zones in the energy model using Schedules & Quantities.

When you select any object in Revit, it displays temporary dimensions to adjust the distance of the object from its surrounding elements. But by default, the temporary dimensions snap to the centers of the elements But we might need the temporary dimensions to snap to the external faces of the surrounding elements. So to the change the default settings from centers of elements to face, Go to Manage>Additional Setting> Temporary dimensions Temporary Dimensions The following window pops-up where you can adjust the settings Temporary Dimension Properties

There are many softwares for free form modeling or conceptual modeling in architecture like Rhino 3D, Revit, 3ds Max etc..,. But one of the software that is not designed for architects, but can be used in architecture is Fusion-360 . Fusion 360 is mostly used in the field of mechanical & Product Design fields. The fluid modeling tools in Fusion 360 help in modeling cool forms for product designs like cars, furniture etc.., The most prominent feature of Fusion 360 is that it comes with T-Splines by default. For those who don't know T-splines, it is famously used as a plugin for Rhino 3d for converting polygon modeling forms to fluid forms. The Following series from Karam Baki shows how to use Revit, dynamo, Fusion to develop Fluid Forms The following  Playlist  from Omar Mohmoud shows us how to model "Heydar Aliyev Centre" using Fusion 360 & Revit. But the video is in  Arabic The following is a  video  showing the us...

In Revit massing environment, when the object you selected is not parallel to either of the axis, the gizmo handle will usually be parallel to the objects' local coordinates. So, if you want to toggle from local to world coordinates you just need to press spacebar . Massing- Local v/s World Coordinates The following video  from Lynda shows various ways to manipulate forms in massing environment.