Dive into this comprehensive guide to using Revit Structure for building design. Learn how to place beam systems, construct floor systems, and modify properties to create the perfect structure.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step approach to placing beam systems in Revit Structure, including special areas such as blockout areas for stairs and elevators.
- It further explains how to create a floor joist system with plywood sheathing, illustrating the process of selecting the correct joist, positioning joists in proper locations, and attaching the sheathing.
- The author emphasizes the importance of adjusting beam properties and elevations to ensure the structural components align correctly, making modifications when necessary.
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Hello, welcome back to Revit Structure. Let's get started. Now that we've placed our regular beam system, let's look at a couple of special areas that we need to finish out.
Those will be the blockout areas for our stair and our elevator. Let's zoom in on our stair first. What we'll want to do is place a beam under this wall line, which will be a 5-1/8 × 16-1/2 inch glulam beam.
So again, let's go to our Structure panel, our Beam dropdown, and here we have our 5-1/8 × 16-1/2 inch glulam. So let's place it. Let's find the center of our wall line, pick here, pick here, and place it.
Now, what we want to do is put a header in this location. What we'll do is take our 5-1/8 × 16-1/2, place it here and here. Well, that seems kind of big, so we're going to modify it.
What we're going to do is make it a 3-1/8 × 12 inch glulam. We'll pick it, come to the dropdown and find our 3-1/8 × 12, pick it, and there you have it. It's changed automatically.
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Let's go down and finish out our elevator framing. The way we want to frame this is by moving this glulam to the centerline of this wall. So let's pick it and move it manually.
Now, what we'll want to do is frame this opening with a 5-1/8 × 16-1/2 glulam in this direction and a 3-1/8 glulam in the other direction. So let's again go to our Structure panel, Beam, and place the beam that we have called out. Center it in this wall.
Okay, what we want to do is come in here and place this beam. We'll escape out of this and change the properties of this beam. In our Properties box, pick the dropdown and change it to a 3-1/8 × 12, and there you have it. Let's zoom out.
Now we have our floor beam system in place. Now what we'll want to do is create our joist floor systems. So let's zoom in here and make sure we have the right joist for the job.
So again, we'll go to our Structure panel, and since Revit sees our joist system as beams, we'll go to Beam again, pick it, and there will be 2-by-12 floor joists at 16 inches on center. So let's do a dropdown in our Properties and we see we have a 2-by-10 dimension lumber. Well, what we're going to do is go back and load the 2-by-12.
So let's go to Edit Type, pick it, let's go to Load, and again we'll go to Structural Framing, Wood, and here we want Dimension Lumber. Let's pick it. We want to load a 2-by-12.
Pick it, hit OK, hit OK again. Now we'll come into our dropdown in the Properties, select our 2-by-12. Okay, now that we've made that selection, let's go back to our Structure tab.
And here we have Beam Systems. What this will do is create our floor joist system in an area automatically. So let's pick our Beam System.
Let's check our parameters now. We have a fixed distance of one foot four inches. Elevation is three-quarters of an inch below the floor.
2-by-12, center justification to each joist. Now here we find we have a dropdown of different parameters: Clear Spacing, Fixed Distance, Fixed Number, Maximum Spacing.
We want a Fixed Distance because we want to hold our joists at one foot four inches. Okay, so we want Automatic Beam System, Tag on Placement. So what we'll do is go into the bay.
We'll pick the beam in the direction that we want our joists to span. Pick it, and there you have it—2-by-12s at 16 inches on center. As you go through and pick each bay, you'll find it is populated by floor joists at the proper location.
This helps speed up the process because instead of drawing them one-by-one, we draw them en masse, and they're at the proper elevation and in the proper location. I'm going to finish out this bay. As you can see, what I'm doing is purely repetition.
You go ahead, let's zoom out, and finish out the rest of your model, and I will see you when we're done. Now that we've created our floor joist system, we can start placing our plywood sheathing and finish this floor out. First thing we want to do is zoom in, and again, as we did at the lower level, we want to thin these lines out with TL so we can see the perimeter that we want to attach to.
Again, it is the inside face of the 5/8-inch GWB because the Designer wants to attach the steel studs to that deck edge. Let's get started. What we want to do is go to our Structure tab in our Structure panel and go to Floor.
Here we find we've got the previous floor deck that we had at Level 2. Let's do the dropdown, and here we have our 3.25-inch plywood sheathing. We'll want to pick that. Now again, I like using Pick Lines.
You can use a method of your choice. I like to hover and again Tab, pick that line, pick that line, and go around the building placing our outline for our floor system—actually, our floor sheathing.
When we complete this, we will have a complete floor system with joist beams and sheathing, which will constitute our floor. Okay, that's done. Now let's clean it up because remember, we have to have a closed loop—no intersecting or overlapping lines.
Let's go to our Trim/Extend to Corner and connect all of our corners. Let's go to our Finish Edit Mode. This will take a minute, and there you have it.
You have a complete floor system. Let's cut a section and take a look at our deck edge. Let's go to our Quick Bar, cut the section.
Let's pick the section. Let's take a look. Okay, again, let's give it a level of detail where we can see it.
What we're going to do here is turn on our architectural plan—also our background—VV. Let's go to Revit Link, pick it. Visibility is on, one half-tone, to make it look like our background.
To come here, we want to go to Custom. Its detail level is already fine, but the discipline we want to set to Architectural because we want to show the architectural background. Hit Apply.
Okay, Apply. Okay, now let's zoom in. You can see our previous floor at the second level lines up with the back of the stud.
Now we'll come up to our plywood, take a look at it. You see that it lines up on the back side of our beam. Now you see this beam that we copied up is not at the right elevation.
What we want to do is go back to the plan. We'll select it. Let's Tab on it until we find it.
There it is. What we want to do is select all instances visible in view. So there should be four.
There are. Now we'll go to our Properties and reset this to minus three-quarters of an inch. Okay, and we'll do the same thing at our braced frame beams.
Do we have it? Our 21 × 55 is five and a half inches down. Let's bring that up to minus three-quarters of an inch. But first, let's make sure we have selected them all.
Let's see if we have selected four. Yes, we have. Okay, let's reset the elevation.
There you have it. They've been reset. Let's take a look at the section again.
This is set properly at Level 2. At Level 3, everything matches up. Very good.
Let's get out of the section. Let's delete it. Let's zoom back out.
Now we've completed our third-level floor system. That's it for this video. I'll see you in the next one.