massing for autodesk® revit® mep 2012aucache.autodesk.com/au2011/sessions/3701/class... · has...

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Massing for Autodesk® Revit® MEP 2012 Simon Whitbread / KarelCAD

MP3701 You want MEP building analysis, but there is no architectural model. Are you kidding? MEP building analysis is easy when you use the massing tools in Revit MEP 2012—a largely underused tool for the MEP designer. In this class you will discover how to build an analysis model using linked 2D data as a wire frame model. From this we will construct a mass model, add external walls and windows, and populate the interior with walls rooms and spaces. The process continues through to creating a space schedule for checking and naming purposes, exporting to gbxml.

Learning Objectives At the end of this class, you will be able to:

• Create a wire-frame model using 2D data

• Add massing objects to create a building mass for initial analysis

• Speed up the process of analysis by predefining spaces and manipulating space schedules

• Manage the design process and describe when to start coordination

About the Speaker Originally from London, Simon and his family relocated to New Zealand in 2002. Simon has over 30years’ experience in Building Services and Architectural industries. Since the move, he has lead the implementation of Revit Architecture at JASMAX, one of New Zealand's leading architectural practices and Revit MEP with Beca, one of the largest employee-owned engineering consultancy services companies in the Asia-Pacific. Using Revit since r5.1, he is now a Revit Specialist, providing implementation, training and support services for KarelCAD, Australasia’s largest Autodesk reseller. Simon has also co-authored “Mastering Autodesk Revit MEP 2012”, by Wiley and recently completed “Learning Revit MEP 2012” a Tutorial Video DVD, by infiniteskills.

You can yell at him here: [email protected]

Massing for Autodesk® Revit® MEP 2012

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Have I got your attention?

Good! I’m not an Architect (did no one tell you?) All I wanted point out was that we can create building mass models, and analyse, and even render them quickly and efficiently in Revit MEP. The point of this is that even if the Architect is creating a geometrically complex building, it can be reproduced with relative ease. This particular model is extremely basic, took 30minutes to construct, render took just as long (But I was doing other things at the time. I didn’t use cloud services – should have tried harder!). Computer used was an HP Elitebook 8540w, Intel i7 Q740 @1.73GHz. 16GB RAM. Windows 7 64Bit. NVIDIA NVS 5100M 1GB Graphics


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Create a wire-frame model using 2D data

Using 2D in Revit

You have taught your staff Revit MEP and want them to keep their skills intact, even though you have other projects in your office where the architect is using tried and trusted drafting methods, should you:

a) Carry on as normal? or b) Leverage as much of the investment you made and do the project in Revit MEP?

Once you have been using Revit for a while, using anything else feels like it takes far too long and there’s all that checking! The following workflow is tried and rigorously tested. It means that your staff can retain their knowledge, and the project design is still coordinated, (admittedly only with the other services, not the architecture). The architect provides you with plans, elevations and sections in the usual way; all you need to do is link those files into your very own wireframe “Architectural Revit Model”. The Architect requires .dwg format? Fine! Export your Revit plans to AutoCAD – simple!

File Clean-up

Before you import anything into Revit, consider spending a while ‘cleaning’ the data. This could be running an AutoLISP routine in AutoCAD and purging unwanted objects such as layers or blocks (named and unnamed). Change colours to bylayer and delete anything that isn’t necessary for your project, like all those objects just outside the viewport that someone was ‘saving for a rainy day’, or on the non-printing, frozen layer ”Keep this I want it for option 42b” An alternative to this, if you do not have access to AutoCAD, is to start a new Revit project file and import each drawing and fully explode it. Fully exploding gets rid of any block information, you can then export that view to back to AutoCAD, importing it into your Revit Project. This is a bit circuitous, but it’s a great way to clean a drawing. The following is an exercise that will take you through linking plans and elevations into a new project file, creating levels and default views that any of the project engineers can then use to obtain the prints required for mark-up. This exercise does take you through some of the more basic Revit commands, but is designed to show a best practice workflow, especially when linking this file into your services project files.


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The ‘Wire Frame’ Model

1. Open the existing file: “ Massing for Revit MEP.rvt”

2. Open the Level 1 floor plan and from the Insert tab, select

Link CAD.

3. Browse to your dwg files and select “FloorPlan-Level1.dwg”. Before linking the drawing, ensure that the settings for importing are as follows… Current view only set to OFF I want this as a flattened 3D plan Colours: Black and White This is MY preference, it just looks better Layers: All If you knew which layers you didn’t want, this is

a great place to customise what you see Import Units: Auto-detect If you know what they are, or think there may

be an issue (certainly with some older drawings especially from ADT

Positioning: Auto-Origin to Origin ASSUMING, you know where this is! Place at: Level 1.


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4. Next, create building grids based on the Architectural floor plan. From the Architect tab,

select the Grid tool. Using the pick tool, start with Grid A and select each subsequent grid except for the intermediate grids. You can come back and do those after creating Grid J. Once the vertical grids are complete, do the horizontal ones. Starting at 1, you will rename this first numerical grid and then follow on with 2, 3, and so on. Once all the major grids are created, go back and create the intermediate ones. This workflow means you only have to rename a few grids rather than every single one.

5. With the Grids complete, open the North Elevation.

6. Import Elevation-NORTH.dwg.

For this import and the other Elevations, use the ‘Auto Center - Center’ option. Using the 3D grips, stretch the grids to a suitable height and then align the linked dwg grids to the ones created in this project file. Repeat for South, East and West (Note: you will only have to adjust grids in either East or West views as long as you have used the 3D option)


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7. Create new Levels for Level 2, 3 and Roof. The new levels may not come in with the

correct names, so you will need to edit them. When editing level names, Revit will prompt you with the message as shown:

Rename views

It is important to click on ‘Yes.’ - Why? When other people tell me this is an annoying feature? At this point, we are trying to create a set of default views that match the Architecture. Having a Building Level and a Floor Plan with matching names will save you and anyone else looking at the project file trying to figure out which is the correct floor plan to use.

8. As you create the levels, the corresponding views will have also been created. Open Level 2 from the Project Browser, and check the location of the imported Elevation drawing. It is possible that it does not lie on the correct plane. If this is the case, use the align tool to reposition the drawing to Grid J.


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9. Create floor plan views for Level 3 and the Roof. Repeat steps 3 to import the Floor

Plans FloorPlan-Level2.dwg, FloorPlan-Level3.dwg and FloorPlan-Roof.dwg and also the Elevations Elevation-SOUTH.dwg, Elevation-EAST.dwg, and Elevation-WEST.dwg. Once complete, open a 3D view, your model should look similar to the image below

Wireframe

10. In the Project Browser, select the newly-created plan views. This can be done by holding down the ‘Ctrl’ key. With these views selected, ‘right mouse click’ and apply the view the view template ‘Architectural Plan’

11. In each of the Plan and Elevation views, adjust the visibility graphics so that only the

relevant imported data is shown. Take the time to turn off layers inside the import so that you can control the visibility of levels and grids

Tidy Wireframe

12. Save the file.


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Notes


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Leaving it here

While this in no way replaces a linked Revit Architectural model, it does represent an efficient way to work with 2D data. There is now one place where Architectural information is updated, including the building Levels and Grids. As we created these as Revit objects, they can now be Copy/Monitored in subsequent Services files. Well we could, leave it here, that is. You could start your Revit MEP model and link only this wireframe model, and that may be perfectly adequate for your documentation process. There are reasons why you may want to approach your model this way.

One of those is this scenario where you only have 2D data, but really want to use the benefits of Revit MEP. Another is where you do have a 3D model to coordinate with, but the architect has specified that his 2D deliverables are his contractual documentation which may mean a difference between model and plan/section – Check this carefully on your next project!!

There is a term for this process: Lonely BIM: Coordinating YOUR part of the project, but not necessarily with others). We do, however, really want to leverage some of the additional benefits of Revit MEP.

• Spaces

• Analysis

• Scheduling etc. This is where in-place massing comes in. For architects, this is a natural design process, but their early concept model frequently isn’t always good enough to use as an HVAC analysis model. This is where we can create massing objects in order to start analysis.


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Creating massing objects for initial analysis

The tools used for this process are similar to those in the family editor, although changed slightly to deal with the building envelope. You can create ‘mass family objects’ in the same way as a regular family in the family editor, what we intend to do is to use the in-place tools to create a building form. Those who know me also know of my opinion of in-place families, but this is one of those rare places where rules can be relaxed… slightly!

1. Open the file 02 Architecture Wireframe.rvt and open the floor plan: Level 1.

2. From the Architect tab, select the In-place Mass tool. You may get the dialog box saying Revit has enabled the Show Mass mode. This is due to the fact that masses do not display naturally in Revit and the Mass category is turned off by default.

Massing – Show Mass Enabled

3. Give the Mass a suitable name, and from the draw panel select a suitable line tool and

trace over the building outline. At this point the tracing does not have to be 100% accurate, you can come back to this later to make it more suitable.


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4. When you have completed a closed path, open a 3D view and select the completed path.

Select path

5. From the ribbon, select the Create Form button, if the created form is too tall, use the

grips to stretch to the correct height

Stretch to required height

6. Click on the green Finish Mass check button.


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7. For clarity, the linked files can now be turned off in the 3D view. Select the Mass object

and from the modify tab, select the Mass Floors button. From the dialog, place a check mark in the floors you want to create a floor.

Mass Floors

8. Now create a Mass Floor Schedule.

Mass Floor schedule

At this point you have an accurate total for floor areas for the entire building, and as yet, no ‘building elements’ have been created.


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Defining Walls, windows, rooms, spaces

From this point forward, we are adding our own ‘architectural elements’ to the architecture file. Using the Architecture tab in Revit MEP 2012, we can quickly add face based walls, floors and roofs.

9. Using the Model by Face panel on the Architect’s tab, Create floors, roofs and external walls. For large window openings use the curtain wall tool in conjunction with the cut geometry tool.

Model by Face

This hosts the curtain wall within a host wall, effectively creating ‘windows’ without having to resort to window families which could take time and effort.

The more you populate this model, the more data can be derived from it. Starting from the In-place mass gives you the added benefit of having an ‘airtight’ model which is necessary in creating spaces that will work for all stages of your analysis, it is up to you how much detail you go into.


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Notes


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Populating the Architectural Model

For a little extra effort, there is so much more we can achieve from this “Architectural model”. In the next part of this exercise, we are going to create internal walls and room spaces – that’s all, no doors, furniture, or any other of the clutter that is really not necessary for a Revit MEP analysis model. From the Level one floor plan, select the wall tool from the Architect tab. On the options bar, make sure the height is the next level above.

Then trace off all the internal walls. Repeat for levels 2 and 3


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The next step is to create the rooms.

1. From the view menu, select Schedules > Schedules and quantities, and create a new Room Schedule. Although rooms have not yet been defined, we can quickly populate a room schedule with all the necessary rooms for the project.

Select the following fields for the schedule:

Level Number Name Area and Volume

2. In the Sorting / Grouping tab, apply the following sorting conditions:


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3. Finally from the Formatting tab, make sure that the field ‘Level’ is a Hidden field ( ) and that both Area and Volume calculate totals ( )

4. You now have a schedule that is completely blank

5. Create as many new rows in this schedule as is necessary to for the number of rooms in the project. You can see from the following image that the rooms show up as ‘not placed’ that is the next stage.

6. Open the file “05 Architecture Internal.rvt”, this has all the room name and numbers defined, all we need to do with this file is to place the rooms – simple, I hear you say, but not so fast…

7. Open the Level 1 floor plan and select the Room tool from the Architect tab


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8. With the command active, you need to pay close attention to the options bar, you will

need to select:

Upper Limit - For Level 1, this will be Level 2 Offset - Set this to Zero Room - Select each room that has been predefined

9. Populate all levels with the rooms. The following message is an indicator that there are two rooms trying to occupy the same space, this can be where the architect is defining different areas for differing work purposes.

Do not delete the room; use the ‘Room Separation Line’ tool. This allows you to have different areas / rooms without the need for actual walls.


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Notes


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Manage the design process

Finally, the Analysis Model

This is where we see all our hard work come together. If the ‘architectural’ model has been created the way we intended, we can link it into a new project file and use it for both analysis and documentation.

1. Open the file “07 Services Project - START.rvt” and double click on the Level 1 floor plan.

2. Link the Revit project file “06 Architecture Rooms.rvt” using the “Origin to Origin” option.

3. Open the North elevation and from the Collaborate tab, select the Copy/Monitor tool. Use the Select Link option and select levels 2, 3 and Roof. Also select Level 1, but only choose to monitor this level.

4. From the View Menu, create floor plans for Levels 2, 3 and Roof

5. Now that the floor plans are created, the serious work can start, from the Analyze tab, select the space tool.

6. Before selecting “Place Spaces Automatically” make sure the Upper Limit is set to Level 2 with an offset of zero. This will create 24 new spaces on level 1.

7. Repeat for Level 2 and Level 3.


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8. Now we can use the Space Naming utility. This tool is supplied free of charge to

subscription customers, and will update all Space names to match those of the corresponding room names in the Architectural model.

9. We are almost done! One of the final checks is to look at the Heating and Cooling loads dialog

Check whether there are any warning triangles associated with any of the spaces.


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10. We can also look further into the individual spaces using

the isolate tool, and look at the Analytical Surfaces. This is where the extra work we did earlier really pays off. Any windows created actually show up as openings in the analytical model.

11. So, this analytical model is perfect for exporting to gbxml and importing into analysis programs like E20. Things you should look out for in E20 – only a certain number of faces are supported for each space, and you will need to search for the specific wall construction (or the nearest one that suits your purpose).

12. This model is also perfect for standard documentation. In each plan view you can

override the view properties so only the 2D plan is shown from the architecture, while the Revit MEP model objects are also shown.

“The distance the shot-put goes depends upon the effort put into it!”


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A little bit of self promotion!

You can also enhance your knowledge by purchasing these great products online… Mastering Autodesk Revit MEP 2012 by Don Bokmiller, with Simon Whitbread and Joel Londenberg. Available from Wiley.com and Amazon.com in paper and electronic formats.

Learning Revit MEP 2012 Tutorial DVD - Video Training by Simon Whitbread and available from infiniteskills.com


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Notes


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Notes

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