Before we start modeling your own house in Revit, we need to learn the basics. Follow the tutorial and create the house. You will be turning this in for a grade. Open Revit. At this screen you will press the New option under Projects.

Select OK – make sure your options are set the same as below.

This is the Revit Interface.

We will create an interface sheet, like we did for AutoCAD at a later time. The plan we will be drawing for this tutorial is on the class website. Reference it please! We will be starting with the exterior walls. Before we start drawing, save this project as LastName_Lake Cabin. Make sure that it is a project file and that you save it to your flashdrive. SAVE OFTEN!

Click on the Wall button under the Architecture tab. Notice that your Ribbon, Options Bar, and Properties have changed to show options related to drawing walls.

Modify the Ribbon and Options Bar to the following: A. Change Element Type (Type Selector): Click the down arrow and select Generic – 12” B. Height: Change the height from 20’ – 0” to 9’ – 0” C. Location Line: Set this to Finish Face: Exterior

You are now ready to draw the exterior walls in the Level 1 view.

In the drawing window, click in the upper left corner. Make sure to draw within the four elevation marks. Start moving the mouse to the right. Click when the wall is 48” – 0” long and horizontal.

For the second wall, start moving your mouse down (or South) until the dashed line and tooltip appear (indicating a vertical line); type 26 and press Enter. Once the wall is drawn a temporary dimension of 25’-6” will appear as it is to the wall centerline. Typing the length allows you to accurately input a length without having to spend a lot of time setting the mouse in just the right position. You can still adjust the dimension after the wall is drawn.

Draw the other two exterior walls. Interior Walls: The same tool is used to draw both interior and exterior walls. Select the Wall tool and modify the Ribbon, Options Bar, and Properties to the following: A. Type Selector: Click the down-arrow and select Generic – 5” B. Location Line: Set this to Wall Centerline

Drawing a wall between bedrooms: Snap (you will see a triangle symbol appear before clicking) to the midpoint of the east wall. Do not click the second point yet. While moving the mouse to the West (left) and snapped to the horizontal plane, type 20 2 ½. (Type the length as shown, you don’t need a dash, the foot, or the inch symbol as they are assumed here. You do need two spaces – after the feet and before the fraction)

Draw the vertical wall to close off the bedrooms. Revit allows you to do this with one wall segment by selecting your points in a particular way. See picture below. Press ESC twice to unselect the new wall (first ESC) and then cancel the wall command (second ESC).

Draw the two interior walls for the bathroom to complete the interior walls; dimensions are to center of walls. Save your project!!

Doors: We will now add doors to your cabin floor plan. Click the Doors button under the Architecture tab on the Ribbon. Notice that the Ribbon, Options Bar, and Properties Palette has changed to show options related to doors. The Type Selector indicates the door style, width, and height. Clicking it lists all doors loaded into the current project. The default template project that you started from has several sizes for a single flush door. Notice that there are two standard heights in the list. The 80” doors are the standard residential height and the 84” doors are the standard commercial door height. Change the Type Selector to 36”x80”. Move your cursor over a wall and position the door as shown in the picture below. Notice that the swing of the door changes depending on what side of the wall your cursor is favoring. Click to place the door and Revit will automatically trim the wall. While the door is still selected, click on the change swing (control arrows) symbol to make the door swing against the wall.

Revit allows you to continue inserting doors until you select a different tool from the Ribbon or press ESC. Insert the doors into the bedrooms as shown on the floor plan. The exact position is not important for this exercise. All doors from this point on will be 30”x80”. Windows: We will now add windows to your cabin. Click Window under the Architecture tab. Again notice that the Ribbon, Options Bar, and Properties Palatte have changed to show options related to windows. (notice a pattern here?) The Type Selector indicates the window style, width, and height. Clicking the Type Selector lists all the windows loaded in the current project. Change the Type Selector to 36”x72”. Move your cursor over a wall and place two windows as shown below. Notice as you move your cursor near a wall, that the position of the window changes depending on what side of the wall your cursor is favoring.

Control Arrows

With the window tool still active, change the Type Selector to 24”x72”. Place the other four windows in the living room area as shown in the floor plan. Again you do not need to worry about the exact placement of the windows. Change the Type Selector to 24”x48”. Place the remaining 5 windows, 2 in each bedroom and one in the bathroom, as shown in the floor plan. Roof: We will now add a roof to your cabin. Click the Roof button (arrow under the word roof) under the Architecture tab. A fly-out menu will appear. Choose the Roof by footprint option. When Revit detects an issue that might not be appropriate, a warning is displayed. In this case you see Roof is on the Lowest Level warning. Revit notices that you are on Level 1 and asks you if you want to move the roof to another level. In this case we want to move it to Level 2. Make sure Level 2 is selected and click yes. You are still on level 1, but Revit will move the roof to level 2 once you are finished drawing it. The entire model is grayed out at the moment because you are in “sketch mode”; when finished sketching, the roof and everything will return to normal. You will not see the roof as it is above the current view. Also notice the contextual tab Create Roof Footprint has temporarily been added to the Ribbon, which as design option related to the roof as with the Options Bar directly below the Ribbon. Pick each of the exterior walls to specify the roof footprint. Be sure to pick the exterior side of the wall. Click Finish Edit Mode via the green checkmark on the Ribbon.

You should be on Level 1. To check this, look at the project browser. Level 1 should be bold. To see the roof, click the Default 3D View icon.

The roof has no overhang and is hovering above the exterior walls about 1’. We will save these modifications for the next lesson. Click the X in the upper right corner of the drawing window to close the current view (3D). This will close the 3D view but not the project or the Level 1 view. Placing Text: Double check that you are still in Level 1 in your project browser. Select Text from the Annotate tab. Do not select Model Text from the Architecture Tab on the Ribbon.

Once again you will notice that the Ribbon has changed to display some text options. The Type Selector indicates the text size. From this Contextual Ribbon you can also place text with arrow lines, or leaders, and set the text alignment, left justified, centered, or right justified. We will not adjust the settings at this time. You will now place the words “Living Room”. Click within the living room area to place the text. Type Living Room, then click somewhere in the plan view to finish the text. You might notice that the text seems too large. The text height, in the Properties Palette, refers to the size of the text on a printed piece of paper. For example, if you print your plan you should be able to place a ruler on the text and measure ¼” in height when the text is set to ¼” in the Type Selector.

In other programs, this can be complicated. Revit makes it easy. All you need to do is change the View Scale for the Level 1 and Revit automatically adjusts the text and annotation to match that scale. Currently our View Scale is set to 1/8” = 1’-0”; we want the View Scale to be ¼” = 1’-0”. With the View Scale set to 1/8” = 1’-0” our text is twice as big as it should be. In the lower left corner of the drawing window, on the View Control Bar, click on the text of the listed scale (1/8” = 1’-0”). In the pop-up menu, which lists several standard scales, select ¼” = 1’-0”. You should now notice your text and even your door and window tags (if you have them) are half the size they used to be. You should understand that this scale adjustment only affected the current view (Level 1). If you switched to Level 2 you would notice it is still set to 1/8” = 1’-0”. This is nice because you may, on occasion, want one plan at a larger scale to show more detail. Finally using the text tool, place a room name label in each room as shown. Place Dimensions: To finish this project, you will place two overall dimensions. Select Aligned Dimension from the Annotate tab in the Ribbon. On the Options Bar, change the drop-down list that says Wall centerlines to Wall Faces. This option will allow you to dimension to the outside face of your building, as you would normally do when dimensioning the overall footprint of your building.

Place a dimension by selecting two walls and then clicking a third point to specify where the dimension line should be located relative to the walls. Place one more dimension indicating the depth of the building. See picture.

The dimension tool, as just used, places permanent dimensions; they can be deleted however. Revit also provides a tool to list a distance but not actually place a permanent dimension; this is called the measure tool. The measure tool is convenient when you simply want to know what a dimension is but do not need to document it for the drawings. Save your file and submit it on Edmodo.

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