Sloped Roof

A couple of weeks ago, there came a point when my senior design team decided that they no longer desired our school being a traditional box. They wanted sloped roofs, with windows beneath them for additional daylighting. This created a bit of reluctance on my part, as I knew that this would create yet another Revit struggle. However, I decided to seize the challenge as a learning opportunity in learning how to create irregular roof shapes. This became a challenge similar to topography, making the pieces fit the way you'd like them to is not an easy feat. Therefore, I decided to "cut holes" in my roof plan, and create a family which would serve as the sloped portion. I then created walls on either side that bridged the gap between the roof plan and the roof slope family. This process took a couple of hours, however it added immense aesthetic to the overall shape of the building.

Sloped Roofs

Legends

While putting together sheets for my project, I decided that black and white floor plans just weren't going to cut it. It was nearly impossible to differentiate between the different types of spaces within the building. After a bit of poking around, I discovered legends. This allowed me to create room "departments", which broke down into: circulation, classroom, community space, kitchen/dining, lavatory, lockers, miscellaneous, natatorium, and office. In my humble opinion, these floor plans are much more understandable and appealing.



First Floor Plan with Legend

 






Second Floor Plan with Legend









Third Floor Plan with Legend

 

Site Topography

Site topography is something that I was completely unfamiliar with previous to this project. I spent a great deal of time playing around with this to figure out if it was compatible with PDF or AutoCAD files. You can, in fact, import an AutoCAD drawing to your model and assign the points of topography to the AutoCAD points. I couldn't find an easy was to do this without pulling the whole site in one direction or another, so I settled for the areas of primary importance, using an AutoCAD file as a reference. This process took three hours to complete. As you can see, I've also added in the cross section of streets, as well as the parking lots and exterior paving.



Model with Site Topography



Green Roofs

Two of the four roofs are green roofs for this project. I did a great deal of research to figure out if Revit Architecture 2012 had any particular features that would help in implementing a green roof, however I didn't find any particularly helpful sources. I chose to use several different foliage families on the roofs to display the idea of there being a green roof. I also created paths and railings on the third floor green roof, as it is a full public access type. The second floor green roof does not have any public access, therefore it is more free standing. Between finding families to populate the green space on the roofs, creating the topography and the paving surfaces this process took about two hours.

Second Floor Green Roof Plan View

Second Floor Green Roof 3D View

Third Floor Green Roof Plan View

Third Floor Green Roof 3D View

Elevations

Elevations are automatically placed on a project when you begin to design it. You can also modify your elevations to suit the angles of your building, if they are not in the typical north, south, east, and west, conventions. As my project currently stands, the elevations are shaping up quite nicely. As you can see below.

North Elevation

South Elevation

East Elevation

West Elevation

Basic Plans Complete

At this stage in the project, I have developed the floors, the interior and exterior walls, the roofs, the windows, and the doors. In addition to this, I have developed spaces and space names for each of the 150 rooms in the building. All of these processes have taken me about 15 hours to complete. As most of them are cumbersome and require accuracy. You'll see below where my floor plans currently stand.

Now, there are several challenges that lie ahead in this project. For one thing, two of the four roofs will require that I create green roofs. I'll need to develop the topography for the site, which will also include the addition of parking spaces as well as outdoor walking spaces. I will need to create a lower level in the building. In addition to the fact that at least a few of the rooms throughout the building will be completely fit-out with mechanical, structural, and electrical components. I have much to look forward to, stay tuned!

First Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Third Floor Plan

Customized Window Family

Now this is where the project enters my favorite phase of design in Revit. Creating customized families in the project to suit your needs. The great thing about Revit families are that they can be as simple or complex as your heart desires. Considering that I'm working on this project with a team of individuals for senior design, I've received several requests for discipline specific families.
The first family that I embarked upon involved a rather complex window. This window contains a 1' operable section, a 3' viewing section, a 3' daylighting section, and a 2' light shelf below the daylighting window section. I started this family by using one of the families that Revit contained in its "Imperial Library" called "Instance Fixed". The term instance in Revit typically signals that a family won't be locked into its shape. In the case of this particular window, you can adjust the width right in your normal floor plan view of the project.

Window Family

Spaces & Room Names

Spaces are a vital tool in creating an accurate model that are sometimes overlooked. Spaces take note of the three dimensional volume of your room and can hold a variety of parameters such as space occupancy, room area, room height, etc. Each particular room needs to have a space volume, which is then followed by a space name. I didn't encounter any challenges in particular with this task, again it was just a very tedious process considering that there are 150 rooms in the building.

Levels, Floors, and Walls

The first steps in creating any model in Revit begin with setting up levels for your project. For this particular project, I began with my elevations per floor which were 368' for the first floor, 380' for the second floor, 392' for the third floor, and 404' for the roof elevation. This is a fairly painless process that should only take a few minutes.
The next step is a rather tedious one. It involves mapping out your walls and your floor line. Now, I had minimal experience with this in the past and considering that I was working with existing plans it was difficult. This particular building had quite a few different angles, which proved to be a challenge.
Next, I'll be creating spaces and room names.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog! This little corner of the internet will feature my journey in creating an elementary school through the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies.

To give you some background, I am a fifth year Architectural Engineering student at Drexel University and have worked as an intern in the Mechanical Engineering field for three years. Until this point, my BIM experience has been limited to Revit MEP, which I use on a daily basis. I am hoping that this project will give me insight on the wonders of Revit Architecture.

To begin this project, I started with basic plans for an elementary school. It will be three stories and have a total occupancy of around 900 people. 

First Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Third Floor Plan