Learn how to expertly place beam systems and floor slabs in your architectural projects using Revit Structure. This detailed guide provides instructions on how to set parameters for beam types, maximize spacing, and manually tag beams for easy identification.
Key Insights
- The article gives a step-by-step guide on placing beam systems in Revit Structure, with specific instructions on how to set parameters for beam types, such as 18 by 35s, and maximize spacing up to 8 feet.
- It details the process of manually tagging beams since the system doesn't automatically provide the desired parameters. This involves turning off the leader and placing the tags, which is made easier by the pre-set parameters of the beams.
- Additionally, the article demonstrates how to place a floor slab, highlighting the importance of picking the correct lines, ensuring the deck spans in the correct direction, and adjusting the elevation of the beams to the proper level.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Hello and welcome back to Revit Structure. Let's get started. Now that we've established our perimeter areas for our beam systems, let's start placing them.
Let's zoom in. Let's go to Structure. Let's go to Beam System.
Let's pick it. And you see it gives us parameters here that we want to work with. The first thing we want to do is pick our beam type, which will be 18 × 35s.
And the next thing we have is maximum spacing at 8 feet on center. Well, we have 21.5 feet from grid to grid. We want to place three equal spaces between that distance.
We go to maximum spacing at 8 feet, and then we come to our system area, touch our vertical beam, and you notice that we're getting three equal spaces as our beams are set automatically. We want this set so that the system automatically sets up our beam lines, so we don't have to go in and measure them. We know that they are equally set because the parameters have already been pre-designed to do so.
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There you go. You notice the blue dashed line. That's designating the area that we're working in at that moment.
We've finished placing our beam system. Now, you've noticed that there are no tags on any of these beams. This we will have to do manually because we do not want a dimension-type line in there.
Let's pick Tag, turn off the leader, and start placing our tags. This is one thing that we will have to do manually because the system does not give us the right parameter that we want to use. It goes quickly because the machine or the program is giving us the information that we need because we've preset the parameters of our beams.
Let's zoom out. Escape out of that. And there you have it.
You've set your beam systems for your project. Now, let's finish this floor by placing our floor slab. The first thing we want to do is, again, go to Structure.
Floor. Okay, and we do have a 5.5-inch depth on this parameter that we're looking at: 2.5-inch lightweight concrete on a 3-inch steel deck or metal deck.
That is exactly what we want to use. So let's zoom in. Okay, you can see we have our architectural profile in here.
But the lines are too thick and we can't exactly see which line we want to pick to place our slab on. So let's hit TL, which is Thin Lines. Now, as you see, the Architect has given us a structure of 5/8-inch GWB, 3.5-inch steel stud, and 2 inches of finish.
Well, we want our slab line or floor line at this interior line because the Architect wants the steel studs to go past our floor and attach to it. So let's go to Pick Line. Okay, and you see when we hover over the 3.5-inch studs, it gives us the insertion point that the Architect has given us.
Well, we want this line. So let's Tab. Tab.
And pick that interior line between the 5/8-inch GWB and the 3.5-inch steel studs. Tab. What we want to do is hover over the element that we want to choose.
Again, hover over it. Pick it. Okay, and you see we've picked the line we don't need.
So let's just delete it and continue on. Again, go to Structure. Since we're already in the command, we don't have to re-choose it, so let's just go to Pick Line again.
Zoom in. Again, we've picked the extraneous line. Let's get rid of it.
Let's finish up. Okay, we've picked all of our exterior lines. So let's clean it up.
Okay, if we zoom in here, we notice we have three lines. This is denoting our span direction, or which way the deck will span in the strong direction. We want this to span the short direction, which it does, so that's correct.
And if we didn't have it spanning the proper direction, we could go to this place, pick Span Direction, choose a different direction, pick it, and it would give us a span in the other direction. But since we don't want that, let's go back and pick our original. Here, we'll go to Finish Edit Mode, pick it, and there we have our slab.
Let's cut a section. Actually, let's cut a section through our opening to see how this works. Okay.
Again, let's give ourselves some detail here and here. Okay, we notice that our span is in the proper direction. And here is our shaft.
Now you notice in this detail that our beams are not at the proper elevation. Let's go back to our plan. Okay, so what we want to do is right-click on the blue line, select all instances in the entire project, and check our elevation here.
What we want to do is place that at minus 5.5 inches below the finished floor. And when we selected our blue dashed lines and selected all instances, it picked all of the boxes in the entire project. We did it once and we were done.
Escape out of that. Let's check again our detail. And there you have it.
Our beams are now at the proper elevation. Zoom back out of that. Zoom here.
Let's get rid of this detail. Hit OK. And that's it for this video.
We'll see you in the next one.