I have a colleague who has counciled me that sometimes it makes sense to create mass-elements for complicated gabled roof elements. Since I am pretty darn new to Revit, I am bringing in some old 2D dwg information (plans and elevations) and I'm trying to use this information to generate an in-place mass that is my roof. I'm essentially extruding gabled roof information from this geometry. So far so good. But when I try to rotate this information I find the program unwilling to do this. I have a suspicion this has something to do with the fact this in-place mass is either being hosted by the intitial horiontal working plane, or it is "pinned" to something I don't want it to be pinned to. Does anyone have any advice on how rotate in-place mass elements? You would really be helping me out.
Thank you.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by constantin.stroescu. Go to Solution.
try this:
Thank you so much for this description. Do you think this methodology is a good one for constructing complex roofs in revit. I found myself another method as well. I imported dwg elevation information into various elevation views to act as a guide in constructing in-place mass elements. This neatly avoided some of the rotation issues I asked you about earlier. I placed each dwg elevation into each corresponding view and constructed mass element extrusions from there. Once I joined, coped and cut the various masses I pulled roof elements from the various faces of the composite mass element. Is this another viable approach. I noticed the roof elements were always generated DOWN from the top face. Is this the only behaviour one should expect from this approach? Any further enlightenment is appreciated. This whole roof issues is clearly my biggest obstacle to executing complex wood frame buildings in Revit and I would love to have a reliable way to solve it.
Thanks again for all your help.
Mike
Please post some images of what you are trying to do. Maybe you don't need in-place elements, maybe you do. It's difficult to tell without seeing anything.
Thank you for your continued attention to this. Here's a working shot of what I'm trying to accomplish. It shows the basic roof geometry. The massing in the 3D view is slightly "inflated because I created an in-place mass that went to the extremities of the eaves. I did this so I could pull up my roof faces. The surprise there was that the roof faces went down instead of up. When I tried to move this, there was no helpful snapping. I'm sure I'm exhibiting an "old" mindset with all this. I'm use to working with Rhino and Vectorworks.
it could be done using Roof by Footprint using 3 roofs with Join Roof...
Cool! There is also a shed roof between the pair of gables that attaches to the major gable. I hadn't included that one yet. The low point of this shed element is actually the lowest spring point of all roofs. Would you do this the same way or would this be a small piece of in-place mass elementing? I'll send an image shortly.
Regards,
Mike
HI constantin.stroescu
So here are a couple images that comes close to showing the entire situation. Does this still look like the sort of thing you would do with a "creat roof from walls" operation. A complications that cropped up in the redesign process: The client wants a window in the location indicated in yellow in the third attached image. I tried generating the roof from walls previously and ran into some complications because of the need to segment the walls in the middle of this window. If you're able to speak to this too it would be great. Maybe generate the roof without the window and modify the walls later without modifying the pregenerated roof? Sounds tricky to revise later. I don't need to do this completely by the book. If you see a "workaround" that is not how you'd do it in every situation - but maybe just in this one - I'm all ears. Your input is greatly appreciated.
Mike
Yes Mike you are right, that's it...
Try first to use conventional methods, as you call them (Roof by Footprint and Roof by Extrusion).
For complicated forms (as for instance double curved surfaces) you can use Masses and Roof by Face.
Roof by Footprint and Roof by Extrusion can solve almost every average roof....so, why not using this method..
And be sure that, every time , will be not only one sollution. Try to choose the more handy one....
Constantin