Topography: Changing the Section Cut Material

A common question for those new to Revit is “how do I change the way that the ground is shown beneath my toposurface?”

Modifying (what Revit terms’) the Section Cut Material is very easy- it’s just a case of knowing where to find the setting in the first place!

Let’s demonstrate the topic through example:

First of all I’ll create a very basic toposurface. I’ll just use 4 points and keep them all at an Elevation of 0.

If we look at this surface in a 3D View, we see it like so…..

Obviously this isn’t very realistic, as the surface is shown as an infinitely thin plane. In reality, there would be material below the surface- normally earth (if you’re lucky!)

If we create a Section View through the surface, Revit will make the ground condition appear more realistic by showing a Cut Material below the toposurface….

Drawing a section line through the surface….

….results in a view like so:-

So as you can see, we have some earth shown below the cut surface plane. But the real focus of this article is to explain how to modify this representation.

Well the first thing to clarify is that this is a standard Revit Material. And as such, you have access to any material that is currently defined in the Materials Library. You can also of course, create your own custom material (including colour, cut pattern, AccuRender texture, etc)

So where exactly do we access the setting for this Section Cut Material? The answer lies in Site Settings, found under the Settings pull down menu.

Selecting Site Settings brings up a control panel as shown below….

Halfway down the control panel, you will see an area called Section Graphics. The button on the right hand side is labelled Section Cut Material. Hitting the Selector button (the little square box with the three dots) takes you directly to Revit’s standard Material Library / Editor.

You will see that “Site-Earth” is highlighted as the current material. If you’d prefer a black, solid base to you topographical section, just select Solid Fill from the Cut Pattern selector.

After confirming this with Apply / OK, your section through the toposurface should look like this….

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Rooms: Use of the Room Separation tool

In this Tutorial we will use the Room Separation tool to sub-divide a Room into two separate areas. You may want to read this quick overview of the Room Separation tool before continuing with this tutorial.

As with all our tutorials at Revit Zone, we’re going to start with a blank Project File and build up our simple example from scratch.

First of all we are going to create our simple room. In order to do this we will draw 4 walls- their type and exact dimensions are not critical.

We could not get more basic than that if we tried! But that’s OK, we are just trying to look at the concept of Room Separation, not win an architectural award! Now you may think we now have a room (albeit a very simple one!), but we have not told Revit that this is a Room. To do so, we switch to the Room and Area Design Bar….

And use the Room function to define a Room within the four walls we have drawn. So first of all we select Room….

And click within our four walls to add a “Room”…

Now let’s say that this room is a classroom. And in the classroom we wish to define one third of the floor area as a “Wet Area”. Now we could just use model / drafting lines to draw a line to represent the change of floor finish. BUT: Let’s also say that we want to define it as a “Room” so that it appears in a Room Schedule- thus allowing us to ascertain it’s area.

First of all we select the Room Separation function….

And now all we need to do is draw the separation!

Now what we have actually done at this point is reduce the area of the single Room that we previously defined. The Room is bounded by a wall on three sides and the Room Separation line on the fourth.

NOTICE that our previously-defined Room has not been split into two each side of the Separation line. It has just been constrained in size. What we now need to do is to use the Room function to add a second Room to the right hand side of the Separation line.

Like most other Revit elements, Room Separation lines have Phase attributes. This is useful when you wish to add / remove room sub-divisions at various phases of a project. That concludes this short tutorial on the use of the Room Separation function.

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Rooms: The "Room Bounding" parameter

The ability to dictate whether Revit Wall elements form the boundary of a (Revit) Room is a useful and powerful feature.

Take this simple plan for example…..

If I choose “Room” (from the “Room and Area” Design Bar) and hover the left hand space, I see the extents of the Room that Revit is about to create…..

In order for Revit to actually determine the boundary of the Room, it looks at the “Room Bounding” parameter for each individual wall element. If the parameter is True (ie set for Room Bounding), that specific section of wall forms part of the room perimeter. If the parameter is set to False (ie NOT to be Room Bounding), Revit ignores that specific section of wall for the purposes of defining the Room boundary.

So let’s go ahead and turn off Room Bounding for the section of wall in the middle of the plan. First of all I select the wall……

then I select it’s Element Properties (using the icon on the left hand side of the Options Bar). And here is the Element Properties for this section of wall….

Towards the bottom of the panel you will see the “Room Bounding” instance parameter. It is set to True (ie checked) by default. Let’s go ahead and uncheck it….

Now when we try to place a Room in the same position as before….

you will not be surprised to see that Revit is ignoring this wall as it tries to determine the boundary for the Room.

So why wouldn’t you want Revit to use a wall to bound a Room? Well, take a public toilet facility / Rest Room. If you create the individual cubicles from Revit Walls, you (probably!) will not want Revit to treat each cubicle as a separate Room. In this case you would turn off “Room Bounding” for all cubicle walls. This would then force Revit to treat the whole room (in which the cubicles are located) as one Room.

Roofs: Using the Roof Join / Unjoin Tool

In this short tutorial we will look at how the Join / Unjoin Roof tool is used to mitre one roof into another.

Let's take a simple T-shaped single storey building...

Now we add a pitched roof the main body of the building....

And now let's say we want a pitched roof over the T section of the plan and we want mitre the second roof into the first- a typical arrangement.

Well, first of all create a roof over the T section of the plan, do NOT try to make the roof join the other just yet. At this stage, your second roof should look like this....

Now all we have to do is select the Join / Unjoin Roof command- this is on a tool bar near the top of the screen....

After you have selected this tool, you then need to make two selections.

• The first is an egde of the roof that you wish to extend- so in our case this is the edge of the smaller roof, nearest to the big roof- just hover your cursor over the end of the roof- notice how the edges highlight- go ahead and click one.
• The you can make the second selection- this is to tell Revit which roof you wish to join on to. Go ahead and click anywhere on the large roof.

Revit will then join the first roof to the second, resulting in.....

Model Patterns: Aligning to Elements

Fill patterns in Revit come in two different types: Model and Drafting.

Fill patterns of the Model type are actually part of your overall 3D model and behave accordingly. For example, they view correctly in perspectives and can also be snapped to. Another fact about Model Fill Patterns is that they can be aligned to elements. That is, you are not stuck with the default placement of the Model Fill Pattern on the face of your object. Let’s take a look at this by example…. Take a section of wall with a door in it….

If we take a closer look at how the Brick Model Fill Pattern meets the door….

You can see that the lines that make up the Brick fill pattern have no relationship to the door opening. In reality, we would probably want the brickwork to “course in” with the door opening. Revit allows us to re-align the model fill pattern. To do this we select Align from the Tools drop-down menu…..

We now go ahead and select the item that we wish to Align TO. Ie the side of the door frame. In the image below you can just about see that the edge of the door frame has been highlighted as I hover the cursor over it….

Now go ahead and select the a reference line (on the fill pattern) that we want re-aligning to the previously selected element. So we can just go ahead and click on any vertical joint in the brickwork. As soon as we do this, the whole of the fill pattern is shifted over to the left to align with the side of the door frame.

We can do the same thing with the top of the door frame and the horizontal bed joints of the brickwork. Just remember to get the order in which you make your two selections correct. The item to be moved is always selected second. Here is the brickwork re-aligned both vertically and horizontally, to align with the door opening....

Notice how you are also given the option to lock the aligned pattern to the elements- you do this by clicking on the padlock icon.

Levels: Maintaining a set distance between Levels

This tutorial assumes you are comfortable with the use of Levels within Revit.

You may or may not be aware of Revit’s ability to use (user defined) dimensions to constrain (or maintain, depending on your terminology) the distance between two elements.

For example, take these two walls…

If we want to maintain the distance between them, first we dimension them…

And then just click the little padlock icon…

With this done, the distance (of 4045) between the two walls is maintained when we move either of the two elements. Well the same feature can be used to maintain a set distance between two Levels…

In the image above, I wish to maintain a set distance between the window head height and the wall plate height. Easy: I just dimension between the two Levels and then click the Padlock.

Although very simple, the technique described above is very useful in helping manage the key relationships between elements within your design.

Edit Cut Profile: Using the Edit Cut Profile tool (Part 4 of 4)

Now that we have discussed the concepts of Cut Profile boundaries, let’s get back to our model and make some changes!

Let’s make the top of the cut profile of our wall flat by sketching a line like so….

Click on Finish Sketch (on the Design Bar) to tell Revit to go ahead and modify the cut area according to our new Cut Profile….

Success! The top of the wall matches the new boundary that we sketched out.

Now we need to modify the Cut Profile boundary of the roof, so that it sits on top of the wall. Activate the Edit Cut Profile command again, this time selecting the Roof…

Again, while in Sketch Mode, use Lines to add a modifying boundary like so….

Now before you hit Finish Sketch, STOP! Take a close look at the left hand vertical line of the boundary you have just sketched. Do you see it has a small arrow pointing to the left?

If you zoom out twice, the arrow may be easier to see….

This arrow is very important. We use it to tell Revit which side of the new boundary is to be included in the new Cut Area. So at the moment it is pointing to the wrong side. Move you cursor over the arrow and click on it. The arrow will reverse and point to the inside of the bounded area. NOW go ahead and click Finish Sketch.

And there we have it! We have successfully modified the junction between our wall and roof, through the use of the Edit Cut Profile tool. Please note that this modification is totally view-dependent. If you were to go and create another section a little further along the wall, the junction between wall and roof would be unmodified (ie as originally shown).

That concludes this tutorial on the use of Revit's Edit Cut Profile tool.

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