Explore a step-by-step guide on how to create a void that will be our toe kick by drawing two reference planes, creating dimensions, and defining parameters. This walk-through provides insights into using shortcuts, manipulating dimensions, and ensuring the correct selection of planes for optimal model flexibility.
Key Insights
- The creation of a void begins with drawing two reference planes, a vertical and a horizontal one, without focusing on the dimensions initially. The use of the keyboard shortcut, RP, is recommended as it is a common tool.
- Adding dimensions that represent the toe kick height and depth is the next step. It is crucial to select the correct reference level plane and not the geometry for proper model flexibility. The dimensions can be adjusted later as required.
- Locking the dimension constraint allows for a consistent distance between the two planes, regardless of the front reference plane's location. Additionally, giving the toe kick height a parameter allows easy adjustments and ensures that everyone on the team understands the parameters being used.
For the next step, let's go ahead and jump back to that right elevation, and we're going to go ahead and create a void that will be our toe kick. And to do that, the first thing we want to do is draw two reference planes. So I'm going to draw a short vertical reference plane here and a short horizontal reference plane here.
And I'm not worried about what the dimensions are at this point in time. So I will go to my Create tab, and I'm going to find reference plane. My favorite way to do this is just use that keyboard shortcut, RP, because this is a pretty common tool.
If there was one you wanted to memorize, this would be a good one. So I'll draw that short vertical one here and see how I kind of went off of 90 a bit. If you're having a hard time keeping it vertical, just hold down your shift key and it'll stay at either the 90 or the 0° line, and you don't have to worry about it going off axis.
And then we'll do the same thing and create a horizontal one. So you can see here I've got these two reference planes. And what I'm going to do is because we're going to add a couple of dimensions in this area here, I'm going to go ahead and select this three-foot dimension, and I'm just going to move it out of the way.
Now what I want to do is I'm going to add two dimensions. I want to add one that's going to represent the toe kick height and one that's going to represent the toe kick depth. To do this, we can go to our Annotate tab and we're going to look for aligned dimension.
%20(1).png)
Learn Revit
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
And then the first one is going to be the vertical dimension. So I want to make sure that I grab this reference plane and not the geometry here. There's a big difference between the two.
One of them will actually work with flexing the model and the other one will not. If I were to go in and pick that reference plane, you can see the dashed line here is blue. Then I can grab the reference plane and I'll set it there like that.
Your dimension is probably going to be different and that's totally fine because we will be changing it here in a minute. Next, I'm going to go ahead and dimension from the front reference plane to the new one that we created here. And I'll just move that down into space.
And what we'll do is we'll immediately change this value. We don't want five and nine thirty seconds or whatever you ended up with. But we will want to change it to be three inches.
So I'm going to select this reference plane because that's the one we want to have move. And then I'll change this dimension value to three inches by typing 0' 3". Once I hit ENTER, you can see it moves the line to where we want it.
And then this dimension, I never want to change. So I'm going to select that dimension and I can lock that constraint. What I've done is no matter where this is located, the front reference plane, this will always be three inches away from it.
So I've locked that constraint to maintain a three inch difference between these two. Now for our toe kick height here, what I want to do is I'm actually going to give it a parameter so that we can go through that process together. Now, this is pretty straightforward, but it does involve a couple of steps.
If you do end up going through it and it's not working, then I encourage you to go through the video again and then try it again. And sometimes it just takes the repetition to understand the process. So the first thing we want to do is we'll select that dimension.
And you can see here in my modified dimensions contextual tab, it says label none. If I were to click on this dropdown, you can see all the parameters that already exist within the family are shown and toe kick height is not one of them. So to add a new parameter, I'm going to use this button here to create a parameter.
This dialog box will appear and we are going to add a family parameter. And just like everything else we've done in this class so far, the name really does matter. So I'll see people kind of just giving parameters names like this or, you know, something as generic as ABC.
And that doesn't help anybody because you want to be able to look at parameters, you know, like height or like we saw earlier, width, length, and depth. You want to make sure that it makes sense what those parameters are so that everybody's on the same page. Everybody knows exactly what you're talking about.
And they don't have to, you know, go on an archaeological excavation of a family to figure out how it works. We want to call it something that makes sense. So I'll call this one toe space height.
And then everybody that's familiar with this type of a family will know exactly what we're talking about. We'll leave this as a type parameter and we're going to go ahead and hit OK. You can see that now toe space height is part of our dimension.
And I can go in and I can change this to whatever I want it to be. If I wanted it to be four inches, I can change it to four inches. And now I have a little bit of space that I can work in.
