Section Boxes in perspective views

One can turn on a 3D Section Box in perspective views. It's in the View's Properties.

A trick is then to use the View Cube to get an overall view, manipulate the Section Box's extents, 

then use the Navigation Wheel's Rewind to get back to the original camera position.

Also, the solids' cut material when in Course Detail Level is controlled by a special Material called "Poche".

Some Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 Tutorial Videos

Autodesk have published many tutorial videos at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AutodeskEd#p/c/B3DC6A8DE288C013

Look for the ones with titles like Step00/14-Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011-English Tutorial1/3

Data sets may be found at http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=revit2011_english

For Monday, March 21, 2011 - Refining the model and shadow animations

Let's take last week model and keep working on it.

To make the brise de soleil do more, we can add some glazing behind it. This can be accomplished by embedding a curtainwall. The horizontal elements don't have to be rectangular and can be shaped by a profile. Walls and roofs can be made more specific.

We can find the True North using a map service like Google Maps. Simply take a screenshot and put it on the site plan to know how much to rotate True North to approximately where it should be.

Next, we'll set the project's actual location in the world: 

This will be enough information to start creating some (presumably accurate) solar shading animations. 

This video was made using two Revit animations and some video editing software:

If time allows, we can do some detailing using Material Tags:

For the starting model, please download this file http://www.truevis.com/Files/2011-3-28.ZIP , it has last week's RVT that I made, a mullion profile RFA, and some useful images.

Sun settings for tonight's project (March 21, 2011)

Even though I could have used location, date, and time to place the sun, I used azimuth and altitude relative to view just to get it similar to the photo. 

If you ever want to use actual sun settings, remember to also set True North of the project for shadows to be correct.

For Monday, March 21, 2011 - Kinds of Walls

The inspiration is this photo of the Ingleside Branch Library in San Francisco, California:

Modeling some of it will require modifying and placing walls, wall openings, curtain walls, mullions, curtain panels, materials, profile, fascia, roofs, soffits, floors. We'll look at how to get the shadows where we want them.

 

We can use some images of plans and sections for tracing. Please download this file http://www.truevis.com/Files/2011-3-21.ZIP , which has some helpful images and a curtain panel family.

A great freeware utility - Clipboard Help+Spell

It's very useful when using Revit. Changing case, and holding a list of clips are the features I use the most. Revit's spell checker is limited, so if you need to spellcheck the names of views or such, this utility can help. From its website:

Clipboard Help+Spell is a text-based clipboard utility with the following features:

• Database stores history of all past text clipboard entries for easy viewing, modification, and search
• Use it for keeping hierarchical notes - search, sort, filter by text, modification date, last view date
• Super easy and super fast search function - or use complex filters if you need them - you'll never have a problem finding a note again!
• Organize your notes and clips any way you want - show them all or view by group or category; view your clips any way you like
• High-quality spellcheck - underlined mistakes; learning spellchecker
• Configurable hotkeys for common functions
• Powerful text formatting options - make your own presets for common functions
• Simple functions for copying and pasting into and out of other applications 

 Download v1.45.02

For Monday, March 14, 2011 - Construction Documents

Take last week's model and make a CD set from it. Some of the things planned to be covered are: Scope boxes. crop regions, structural tags, structural elevations, putting views on sheets, hiding elements (EH) and categories (VH),  notes, title blocks, select all (SA), reset reference planes to 3D extents, view scales, view templates, dimensions, changing dimensions' rounding, save rendering to project and put on sheet, renaming views (F2), leaders (free end vs attached end), structural schedules, showing hidden lines, view list schedule, text, sheet sets, print to DWF or PDF, 2D vs 3D on datum elements, etc.

Please download http://www.truevis.com/Files/2011-3-14.ZIP which has the starting RVT and some other files, or you can work on your own project from last week.

I recommend installing CutePDF Writer from http://www.cutepdf.com/download/CuteWriter.exe -- it's a free PDF printer driver.

Revit Learning Club to Continue Again

Seems there is enough commitment to keep going for another eight weeks from March 14, 2011. Thanks to everyone for keeping this group happening. I hope we continue to find it a valuable thing to do.

Change of venue for tonight -- we will meet at BSA

KI is unavailable for tonight (3/7/2011) so we will meet at the Boston Society of Architects building, 5th floor, 52 Broad Street, Boston, MA. We will meet at the usual time, 6:15pm. 

The theme remains exposed structure.

For Monday, March 7, 2011 - Exposed Structure

The inspiration is this entranceway:

 

To model it we will need to use Truss, Beam, Column (architectural and structural), Brace, Group, Roof, In-Place Family, Fascia, Profiles, Grid, Ref. Plane, Materials, Array, etc.

  

Making a standing seam roof look good is a challenge and we will look at some methods to get that done.