Creating Demolition Views for Existing Building: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating Demolition Views for Existing Building: Setting Up Phase Filters and View Settings.

Creating demolition views for a building project often involves the careful duplication and renaming of existing views. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to effectively set up demolition views in the project model, highlighting key points to consider in the process.

Key Insights

  • The process of setting up demolition views often starts with duplicating the existing views in the project model. The views are then renamed to indicate their purpose in the project, for example, changing 'E' to 'D' to represent demolition views.
  • There is no specific 'demo' phase in the process of creating demolition views. The demo operation takes place within the 'new construction' phase, hence the need to select a phase and a phase filter that will best work for the view.
  • To ensure accuracy, it is essential to double-check the phase filters and settings of the duplicated views. These settings help to override the existing views and show the design elements to remain and those to be demolished.

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Now that we've got everything modeled for the existing building, our next step is to get our project set up to create demolition views. First thing we want to do here is duplicate some views to create the ones that we want to show. I'm going to start with the existing level one, and we're going to duplicate it, and just use the duplicate tool because we don't have any dimensions or anything that we want to retain.

Just like before, we're going to use the rename option, and I'm going to change that E to a D. And we're going to tackle our view settings together after we get this one going. So I'm going to rename it again, we'll make that a D, and take off all the extra stuff here.

We've got our demo views, we've got our existing views, and then we've got these views here, which represent our levels that we don't really want to change. So once we get to the point where we're going to create our new views, we'll do the same thing again and create those. Now, like we discussed before, when we look at phases again from the manage tab, you can see that we've got existing and new.

There is no demo phase. Demo is an operation that takes place within new construction, so we don't want to ever create one of those. It'll just create a lot of problems for us that we don't want to end up dealing with.

When we look at demo views, we want to look at a phase and a phase filter that are going to work for that view. So in this case, phase is going to be new construction. And when we think about what we want to see in a demo view, we want to see the existing to remain stuff and the existing to be demolished.

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If I were to go back into phases and look at the phase filter options, you can see we have a few to choose from, but really only one of them is going to work for us. If we look at the option number five here, previous plus demo, it's not going to show any of the new construction stuff, which is good because we're not trying to highlight that here. It's going to override the existing to look a certain way, and it's going to override the demolished stuff to look a certain way.

But when you look at this, it's the only one in here that's going to show us the existing to remain and the existing to be demolished stuff. And those graphics are controlled by the settings within this tab here. So you can see demolished is going to override to be a dashed line and a dashed heavy line, whereas existing is going to override to be a light gray solid and a thicker light gray solid line.

So I'm going to use that setting of new construction, previous plus demo on both of those views we just created, and then we're going to do the same thing with the roof plan because we're going to need a roof view as well. So I can take this one just because it makes it easier for less typing, no other particular reason other than that. But we can duplicate it and rename it, and then we'll change the phase filter to match what we want it to be.

So by renaming it to demo roof, we now have all three of our plans and we just have to set the phase filters. So new construction, previous plus demo. And it's never a bad idea to just double check this to make sure you've got them all set correctly because it'll just save you a step when we go to the point where we're putting these on sheets.

So I'm going to save, and in the next video we're going to start looking at how we could demolish the items we no longer need for the project.

photo of Michael Wilson

Michael Wilson

Revit Instructor

Bachelor of Architecture, Registered Architect

Mike is recognized by Autodesk as one of North America’s leading Revit Certified Instructors. He has significant experience integrating Revit, 3ds Max, and Rhino and uses Revit Architecture on medium and large-scale bio and nano-tech projects. Mike has been an integral member of the VDCI team for over 15 years, offering his hard-charging, “get it done right” approach and close attention to detail. In his spare time, Mike enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife, children, and dog.

  • Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI GOLD – 1 of 20 Awarded Globally)
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