Topography and Tunnels

[strasj]

I have been using Revit for about a year now, at work and at school, and itseems to be a fair consensous that dealing with topography seems to be one of the worst experiences there is. So of course my school project has been a focus on it. I am making a tunnel system, however as we all know, this becomes problematic with Revit. I have used building pads and filled regions so that the sections make sense and mask the earth that is filling my tunnel. However now I beginning to look at the project through perspectives, I cannot simply hide the topography because I need to be able to see it outside at the entrances. I had the inclination of using a sub region of the topography that I could turn off through a filter, however I am already using a subregion to show the asphalt on the siteplan, and of course, a subregion cannot intersect another. So I am at an impass and have found nothing on this unique problem. Any ideas?

[constantin.stroescu]

I had some cases from this type and I realized that for me, when I need tunnels and horizontall or sloped perforation into the terrain ,the best is to make , not Toposurface but Massing in Site  > In Place Mass, at least for not too big surfaces .

At the begining this method seems to be a little too time consuming, but at last it allows perforations and all kind of cuts,  that Toposurface does not know how to do...

You have to judge what is more important the terrain or the underground works...Maybe a combination of Toposurface ( for an overall terrain presenation) and an In Place Mass( for a more focused on the ground works) ..

see the description of this method at :

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Revit-Architecture/driveways-amp-retaining-walls-on-a-steep-s...

driveways & retaining walls on a steep slope at post no 2 ( cosstroe)-04.02.2013

Let us hope that ,in time, Autodesk will improve the Toposurface function to work like a massing in edit mode....

[strasj]

Awesome thanks for advice, I have a cad file of the topography, so it would be really convenient to make a mass from that the way i did the topography then cut voids and use a filter for one or the other, but that isnt possible. So it seems I will have to make a series of small masses around where I am using perspectives and control the visibilities to make the masses show for the perspectives instead. Definietly going to tack on a couple of hours to do it, but it seems the only work-around, the link to the other topic where it is described making a series of splines sounds like the best way. I will let you know how it works out.

THANKS for the idea

[marcellojs]

as an alternative to massing (since they do not show materials in section consistently) you could build the topography out of floor elements or roof elements via sub element modification. Use a roof or floor element above your tunnel and topography on the sides then change the floor material to earth just like topography. 

here is a class to get you started if you still need help

http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/class-catalog/2013/revit-for-architects/ab3340