Creating Wall Openings in Revit Structure: A Step-by-Step Guide

Aligning and Creating Wall Openings in Revit Structure: Ensuring Precision and Integration into Architectural Models.

Explore the step-by-step process of creating a perfectly aligned opening in a wall using Revit Structure. Learn how to utilize the structure tab, modify panel, opening panel, and alignment command to achieve a well-positioned opening aligned with the curtain wall.

Key Insights

  • The article guides the user through the process of creating an opening in a wall using Revit Structure, starting with accessing the structure tab and selecting the wall opening from the opening panel.
  • The Modify Panel and Alignment Command are crucial in aligning the opening with existing architectural elements, such as a curtain wall, ensuring the opening aligns perfectly with the grid line and the jam of the new room.
  • The article also highlights the importance of adjusting parameters like base level and top offset to ensure the opening aligns vertically with internal elements such as the finished floor of the basement and the top of the wall.

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Hello and welcome to Revit Structure. Let's get started. In a previous video we had placed the walls and the footings for the equipment room.

Now let's take another look at our relinked architectural model in our model. You see we have openings for access into the equipment room and the Architect has provided a curtain wall which we need to provide an opening for a pass into the new room he's provided us in his model. Let's get started.

First thing we want to do is we want to go to the Structure tab, the Opening panel and select Wall. This is going to be our wall opening. Okay, as this command works we have to pick the wall first and give it a general line.

Let's pick here and we'll pick here close to the jambs of the new opening. Okay, what we want to do is we want to align our new opening here with this jamb which fortunately is coincident with our grid line. So let's get out of the command.

Let's go to the Modify tab. Pick it. Let's go to the Modify panel and the Align command.

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Let's pick that. First thing we want to do is we want to pick the line that we want to align our opening to. So let's pick that and then we'll pick our opening line here.

There we have an alignment of our wall opening to our opening. Let's go down to the other side. Here you see we want to align it with this wall and here's our opening end.

So let's pick the edge of the wall first. Now let's pick our wall opening. Now you can see we have a perfectly aligned opening.

Okay, let's get out of that command. What we want to do is we want to look at this opening from the interior so we can see if our jambs line up on the interior in the vertical position. So let's cut a section.

This will be a live section so we can actually work in it. Okay, let's pick it. Let's scale it up.

I like a quarter inch. It works well. And let's make the refinement of it to fine.

Okay, let's make it a workable space. So let's drag it down and zoom on. ZA.

And here we have our space that we want to work in. Okay, we see we have our opening here and let's exaggerate and stretch it up a bit. Okay, so we see now that we have it down at the top of our footings which we don't want it there.

We want it at our finished floor. So since we have it picked we can look at the parameters of it. And here we have the top offset at 1'—3" above our first level which we will fix that in a moment.

But our base level we have at negative one foot below Level 0. We want it at Level 0 because that's our finished floor of our basement. Okay, so let's change our base offset to zero.

Let's click in the window and we see that it's moved up to the finished floor line. Let's pick outside of here. Now we see we have a header here for our wall and the top of the opening.

Okay, so let's align it to that. Again, in the Modify tab, Modify panel, let's pick Align. Let's pick this line.

Let's go up and find our opening here. Let's pick that and it's now aligned. We have a perfectly aligned opening to the curtain wall.

Very good. Let's get out of this and let's put an opening here at the equipment room. Let's grab our section and take it over so we can observe what we're doing here.

Again, let's zoom in. Let's go to our Structure tab, Opening panel, and Wall Opening tool. Let's pick that.

Let's pick our wall again first. Let's pick here. Let's drag it down to here.

And there we have an opening in our wall. Let's go back to the elevation, but first let's get out of it. Let's go to Modify, escape out of it, and let's pick our elevation.

Okay, here we have our opening in our wall panel. We can see that it doesn't quite agree with what the Architect has set out, so let's get it there. Okay, again, let's check the parameters of our opening.

Again, we are one foot below according to our parameters below our finished floor. Let's reset that to zero. Okay.

Okay, as you can see now we are equal to our floor line. Okay, what we want to do is we want to align our edges of our opening to the door jambs. So again, let's go to the Modify panel here.

Let's go to our Align command again. Let's pick it. Again, pick first the line that we want to align to, and the line now that we want to have it join.

Let's pick it. Now that that's aligned, let's go to the next one. Let's pick the top jamb.

Zoom in a little bit. There you go. Our first line.

Our second line. Okay, now that that's aligned, let's go to our last line. Let's pick it.

Let's pick our opening. And there you have it. Perfectly aligned opening in our wall.

Let's escape out of this command. Let's get out of our section view. Let's take a look at our plan.

There you have it. We have our opening at our door jamb, and we now have our new opening at our curtain wall. Okay, let's zoom out.

Let's get rid of our section. Hit okay. Let's save our plans and our model.

And that's it for this video. We'll see you in the next one.

Andy Cos-Y-Leon

Revit Structure Instructor

More articles by Andy Cos-Y-Leon

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