new user having a nightmare with Architecture

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

very new to Revit but hopefully I'll learn fast.

I'm looking to make 3D models of generally in-situ concrete frames for a sub contractor. The drawings are given to me pretty much in any shape and form the client decides to hand the project over in. 10% DWG auto cad, 70% PDF and %20 hard copies drawings. from these drawings I will be making a modle of the work and weekly/monthly progress over view possibly using navisworks but lets not run before I can walk.

I'm going to focus purely on imported PDF's in revit for my 3 questions but i just thought I'd add in the above in case you want to add a suggestion.

I have read a few forums saying the best thing for me to do is 

A) start by building the walls.(i.e. tracing the outline of an imported PDF in revit).

B) the idea is to put the walls 

in their approximate location and then place grid 
lines somewhere near those walls and then align 
and lock those grid lines to the walls- and then 
dimension those grid lines with the walls locked 
to those grids.. 

my question is part B i just can't do, i have the wall structure made but i can't align my entire frame to a vertical angle (0 degrees), also i can't seem to scale my building, so for example one of my walls is 32961mm i want it to be 16000mm and when I scale I want the whole frame to scale accordingly. As the above says I need to lock the walls together but I can’t seem to do this either.

So to summarize:

1)     how do I lock a walls together

2)     how do I scale my newly locked frame to any horizontal size I want

3)     how do I think rotate or align my newly scaled frame to a vertical grid or any line for that matter

I have attached two pictures, one showing my pdf plus traced walls, the second showing purely the trace and a grid line I would like to aligned the frame to.

Thanks for any help

Shane

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

B) the idea is to put the walls 

in their approximate location and then place grid 
lines somewhere near those walls and then align 
and lock those grid lines to the walls- and then 
dimension those grid lines with the walls locked 
to those grids.. 

Those are the words I posted somewhere last year.

You can also put the walls in the approximate location

and then just dimension them. If there is a lot of wall

segments, then too many grid lines is clutter.

Forget about locking anything. That's just for, like later

if you move a wall you will want the roof and floor to 

follow.

Think of a hand drawn floor plan with hand written

dimensions. How are you going to place walls in a Revit

floor plan view so they have the same dimensions and

layout as the sketch?

If the sketch does have dimensions, then just pin that

sketch on the wall above your monitor and build it in

Revit. If it's a floor plan with no dimensions, then you

can scan it and bring it into Revit as a background

image and trace it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply

my problem with working completly from paper is there is too much room for error, like forgetting a pillar or something that hasn't been dimentioned. I do realise i could get those dimentions in other ways but the idea is to create a quick turn around. These models would be jobs at tender stage so the quicker the process the better, to give you an idea:

Currently we are taking these PDF's using software to convirt them to DWG files, opening them in Auto Cad, stripping the drawing down, tracing around the remaining drawing on a new layer in Autodesk. Importing that new polyline layer into Revit and then tracing it again! This was all becuase revit has now replaced our Solid Works stage so getting a new procdure in place is what we're trying to finalise.

Can I scale a JPEG as if it were a DWG in revit?

Is there someway of making the above procedure shorter without having to work completly from paper?

[Anonymous]

 sorry vector2 I missed the last part of your post,

if i scan it in or already have it in PDF once traced how to i then scale it, would i import lets say all 10 floors as jpegs, align the pictures first, trace all the floors and then scale the Revit model or scale the jpegs in the first place.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

 "how do I then scale it"

---

Something in the image you want to bring into Revit for tracing

will have a dimension. Usually there are some dimension on the

drawing. Otherwise if there is something like a door, you know 

that would be 6' 8" high.

Suppose this hand drawn, or CAD drawn, image of lines has a

wall that is 12' long. You draw two short detail lines in the Revit

plan view and make them 12' apart. Then you import the image

of the floor plan and grab the grips on the image and stretch it

so the 12' wall lines up with the two detail lines that are 12' apart.

See how simple that is?

[Anonymous]

lol, great!

tried it and works just as you said, thank you very much. Just one or two quick questions though,

so image one, lets say the basement has been imported and size, i've taken note of the size so i can batch convert all my pdfs to jpeg import them one by one into revit, put them on their own layer or floor plan with a structure like

floor 1

floor 1 jpeg

ground

ground jpeg

underground 

underground jpeg

etc etc. then paste in the scale but...

can I snap the images to import in exactly the same place, i was hoping if import the image after selecting the file and the mouse being outside the drawing window i could simply press enter as it is already dead centre or the centre of the image is 0.0 But it won't confirm the placement without a mouse click on the screen. If i could place each images centre snapped to 0.0 I would be laughing.

Also finally, this idea might work for me on a 3d modelling scale but lets just say i wanted to use theses drawings onsite for whatever reason. Currently 0.0 would be the middle of a drawing not the end corner of a wall, could i do something fancy like more 0.0 once the model is complete...

[Anonymous]

lets say the basement has been imported and scaled to size*****

sorry missed the word scale, the sentence might make more sense now!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

i've taken note of the size so i can batch convert

etc etc. then paste in the scale but...

---

Whoa hold on there. lol

Take note of the size? Thanks for teaching me something that I didn't think

had any possibilities, and I still don't see any possiblities for noting the size

of an image, but I better keep that in mind because it sounds like something.

I suppose if every image you imported came in at the same right scale, then

you could just bring it in and set it to a size and not need to measure anything. 

But how could you depend on that and not measure each image to check?

Anyway, what else was you saying?

Let me look over your other concerns a little more. I like the way you are

serious about learning to start a Revit project from CAD sketches. (Or hand

sketches for that matter). A lot of firms are paying good money to people

who know how to do that.

Edited by
Discussion_Admin

[Anonymous]

Regarding image size, what i mean is a given project is normally printed to PDF in A1, A2, A3, A4 if all the floors are created in the same way as they usually are. As long as you have scaled one image, lets say an A2 drawing then using those scale dimensions in Revit you can paste those numbers into the following drawings. (see attached)

The reason for this is so you could have as many drawing as floors. Now one of the worrying factors to me seem to be 0.0 or the right term is point of origin, when you import an image the centre of that image sets it's self to the Revit point of origi, but you have to mouse click on the drawing area to confirm. It's the mouse movement that moves the centre of the image from the point of origin. If I could bypass this then every image would come in in the same place, copy and paste the scaling, double check with as you said a model line, sketch the model to maybe 90% accuracy???? and to increase you accuracy simply use the dimensions of the drawing to correct any mistakes.

I don’t think the accuracy will ever be perfect as lets say drawing a Revit wall from point of point of a drawing you zoom in for point A as you would in AutoCAD but there is nothing to lock to and eventually the jpeg pixelates. Hence the reason you would always have to double check.

Part of the reason some of the guys here prefer the Auto Cad way of working is you can convert a PDF into a DWG (which it was in the first place, but we can’t have these files, long story) scale the newly converted DWG in AutoCAD and then all polylines will lock in to that drawing. Great in theory but the polylines we draw are either in the fictional centre of a wall or we trace around the outer edge of lets say a 300mm thick wall, so you are instantly150mm out. Unless you can make Revit walls where the cross hair is selecting the outer edge of your Revit wall you have as much accuracy as i have importing a jpeg into Revit and using the above Revit scaling method.

The reason all of this is so important is my sub contracting firm could be building something like 4 blocks of 200 flats, if we have all the above information correct we could import the Revit drawing into Navisworks and tell our firm them how much concrete they would need at the pricing stage to build such a job and how long it would take to build, taking into account site location etc. Not only that, our project managers could have our 3D models as a cross-reference. So our method can be really valuable if we get it perfect  

[Anonymous]

lol nope my idea has no merit, as when the AutoCAD drawings are set to a print view they will always be justified manually. As I’ve seen in my current project. Oh well 😞

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

"Regarding image size"

 "so you could have as many drawings"

"0.0 or the right term is point of origin"

"every image would come in at the same place"

"to increase accuracy" 

 "as you would in AutoCAD

I never used AutoCAD, and I never rejected the common notion that

knowing AutoCAD makes it hard to learn Revit, but I don't totally believe

that either. I believe you can learn to drive a car just as well even if all you

ever knew how to do was drive a motorcycle.

The very first thing I would tell someone learning to drive a car as they

sat behind the steering wheel ready to go, would be to forget about the

motorcycle.

There is no need to bring in all these drawings to create elevations and

floorplans and sections, Revit creates all those automatically. You just

place the walls according to the footprint of the building as it is on some

line sketch and Revit creates everything else from there.

Maybe that is a little over-simplified, but start considering that that's how 

radically different Revit is from AutoCAD.

Start with an introduction to what Revit is.

I'm still with you though.