Structural Roof Revisions in Revit: How to Align Beams and Columns for Architectural Clear Story Integration

Hello, and welcome to Revit Structure. Let's get started. Now that we've finished the revisions at the stairs and at the floor levels, let's move on to the roof.

Let's go to our Project Browser > Structural Plans. Let's go to our Roof plan. Double-click it.

Now that we're at the roof, we can see the revisions that the Architect has made. Let's take a look. Zoom in, and here we can see the outline of the Architect's new clerestory.

Let's create a section to see exactly how this is going to come together. Go up to the Quick Access Toolbar. Select Section and draw a section horizontally across the page.

Zoom out a little bit and adjust it downward. Okay, now that we have that, double-click the section bubble to show our live section. Compress it a little and expand it so we can see our new roof line—and there it is.

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Let's give it a scale that we can work with now. 1/4 inch is good. Okay.

What we want to do is bring in the architectural background. So press VV to open the Visibility/Graphics dialog. Go to the Revit Links tab.

You can see the visibility is on. Let's halftone it. Go to Display Settings and set it to Linked by View.

We see that we're linked to the East Elevation. That will work for us. Click out of the dialog.

Click Apply. Click OK. Click Apply and OK again.

Now, what we see here is the roof line of the architectural background. We're going to tab to select it, copy it, and paste it into our model in the same place. Okay, we get a dialog box.

It tells us we have a different level type, which is okay. Click OK. Now let's turn off our architectural background.

1. Go to Revit Links and turn off its visibility.

Click OK. And now we have the architectural roof line. What we want to do is change it to a material that we can use in our structure.

So let's select it. Let's go over here to our Properties. Use the drop-down here and we see we have a 1/2-inch steel deck.

This is what we want to use structurally for our new roof. So let's select it, and it automatically updates. We notice that the bottom elevation of the roofline hasn't changed, and that's exactly where we want it.

Okay, let's move on. Zoom out. Close this view window.

Let's go back to our plan. Okay, what we see here is the outline of the new clerestory over the structural model. What we want to do now is clean out these bays to provide an open area for the Architect to extend the clerestory down to the lower level.

So what we want to do is tab to select the beam system and delete it. We want to do that for this beam system, this one, this one, this one, and generally the entire area.

So go ahead, tab to select it, select it, and delete it. Continue on and finish out the rest of these six bays. Okay, now that we've cleared this area, we want to bring in support beams for new columns to support the clerestory and the roof above.

But first, we need to adjust our View Range so that we can see the outline of the new roof. Select View Range, click Edit, and change the Top elevation to 12 feet.

Click Apply. We still don’t see the roofline, so let’s also change the Cut Plane to 12 feet. Click Apply—and now we see our new roof.

As you can see, there's a small cutoff portion, so we aren't quite high enough. Let’s take it up to 14 feet and see how the roof lays out. Click Apply—and there you have it, the full plane of the new roofline.

Click Apply, OK, and let's move on. Okay, now that we have our roof in, let's temporarily hide it so we can see the outline of the architectural model below. Select it, and click the glasses icon at the bottom of the screen to apply a temporary hide.

Select Hide Element—and there we have it. Now the next step is to bring beams into this location along the clerestory so we can support our columns and brace the beams. Okay, let's get started.

The first thing we want to do is check what size beam we’re using, which is a 5 1/8 × 16 1/2-inch Glulam. So let’s go find the same type. Go to the Structure tab > Structure panel. Select the Beam tool.

Select it. Okay, go to the drop-down in the Properties box and find our 5 1/8 × 16 1/2-inch Glulam. Select it, and we want to use 3D Snapping because the elements we have are sloped.

We want the slope of the new beams to match. Okay, zoom in a little bit. Select from here to here, at the end of that beam to this girder.

Very good. Let’s do the same on the other side. Select from here to here, at the end of that beam, zoom in, and drag it to the new beam.

It didn’t seem to attach, so let’s start here and work backwards to the other end. Okay, it says it may be slightly off, but we’re okay with that. Now that we have our beams in place, we can start placing our columns.

The column we want to use is a Tube Steel column. So let’s again go to the Structure tab > Structure panel > Column tool. Select it. We don’t want a Concrete column, so let’s see what options we have.

In the Properties box, use the drop-down. Here we have a Hollow Structural Section, which is 4 inches by 4 inches with 1/2-inch-thick walls. That’s the one we want, so let’s select it.

And we want to have Height enabled, so select Height, and we want it to extend to the High Roof. That’s correct. Okay, let’s begin placement.

We initially thought to place these atop the existing column—well, no, we don’t. Let’s go back. Let’s undo that.

What we want to do is place the columns at the intersections of our new beams and our existing girders. So let’s place one here. Let’s place one here. Let’s place one here.

Let’s do the same on the opposite side. Zoom in. Place one here.

Place one here, and place one here. Press Escape to exit. Go to Modify.

That cancels the command, and I noticed we had a small offset in our beam. What we can do is align this beam to the new beam. Go to the Modify tab > Modify panel. Select the Align tool.

Select the reference beam right here. Then select this one to align it. Now we have our beams in alignment.

Go to Modify and press Escape to exit the command and continue. Now that we have finished placing our columns, let’s move our section. Stretch it slightly.

Let’s move it so we can view the section through the columns and the new roof. Select it, and let’s look to see what we have. Let’s change our Appearance setting—set our Detail Level to Fine—and there we can see our new columns.

What we want to do is attach the Top and Base of the columns to existing members and to the new roof. So again, go to the Modify tab > Modify panel—or actually, let’s not. Let’s go back.

Select the column, and we can go to the Modify Column tab and attach the Top and Base. The first thing we want to do is attach the top to the roof. It will do this automatically, and it notifies us that it’s attached to a non-structural target because the roof was copied from the architectural plan and is still considered an architectural element in the model.

Okay, let’s continue. Zoom out. Select our column.

Select another column—you can do this for as many columns as needed. Attach the Top to the new roof. Again, we get the same message.

No problem. Now we want to attach the columns to a Base, which in this case are the Glulam beams. So again, select the column, and since they’re offset Glulams, we’ll need to handle them individually.

Select Attach, and in the Options Bar, select Base and then select the Glulam. There’s the attachment.

Select this Glulam—or actually, select this column. Attach. You’ll see the Base is now set.

Select the Glulam. The column is set. Let’s repeat one more time.

Attach Top, and we’re at the Base, so select the Glulam we want to attach it to. Very good. Let’s exit this view and move our section view to the opposite side to do the same thing there.

First, we’ll attach the columns to the roofline. Select the columns, hold CTRL, select the next one and the next, click Attach, and set the attachment to Top for the new roofline. There we have it, and again we get the same notification.

Not a problem. Now let’s return to attach the Bases. Select the column, click Attach.

Change this to Base. That one’s attached. If you see “Unjoin Elements, ” that’s okay.

Let’s place the last one. Select the column, click Attach.

Base is set. There we go. Now we notice that a Glulam is slightly off its mark.

Let’s fix that. Move it here and align it to that endpoint. There—it’s lined up properly, and so is the other end.

We’re good to go. Now, if you notice the beams are slightly low, we’ll want to check the elevation using the Offset value.

We see the geometric positioning—Start Extension and End Extension—are set to zero. Y Offset is zero, but Z Offset is 3/4 inch. We want that to be zero.

Select it. Set the Z Offset to zero. Very good.

Zoom out. Let’s close this view. Move the section to the other side and check those beams.

If they’re slightly off as well, select them and reset their Offset to zero.

Very good. Zoom out. ZA (Zoom All).

Let’s close this view. Zoom in on our area and confirm that we have our columns set, beams set, and roof set. That’s it for this video.

See you in the next one.