Sidewalk/Garden Paths in Revit Arch

[freelancette]

I just did a competition that required a garden.  Lacking time to fully research Revit options, I ended up creating a topo and cutting paths into it by using building pads for the paths, requiring a lot of tinkering with the topo elevations.  This was far from ideal because I wanted to alter things later, but it was just too labor intensive to do that and I ran out of time.

Does anyone know of a (cheap!) program that would work well for this?  Something that could export a file that could be linked into Revit?

It would be very nice if a version of "building pad" could be created by Autodesk that would work as a sidewalk/path and that could also have a slope.

Another problem with this was that I had to position all the topo points along the path wall borders at a low elevation because the topo "bled" into the walls as it sloped up from them.  Another great thing would be if Revit sidewalk pads could have borders that also "cut" topo.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

[Anonymous]

A better way would be to use Subregions and apply a different Material to them for walks and paths.

They will conform to the toposurface, and I believe you can even schedule their areas using a Material Takeoff schedule.

That said, the Revit Site Tools are pretty lousy, and have been neglected for many years.

Good luck!

cheers

[Alfredo_Medina]

Revit's site tools are somewhat limited, but if you were doing something quick, you could have indicated the path with a simple subregion. There are some add-ins for topography already in the market. This one is Siteworks, which sales for almost 2k: http://www.eaglepoint.com/products/siteworksforrevit/index.html#.Tx7hjEca-RU

[freelancette]

Thanks to you both for the suggestions.  I just tried the sub-region technique.  I think it would have worked with some modifications.  What I had was a highly landscaped urban plot.  What I could/should have done was to create an almost flat topo with the sub-regions for paths.  And then on TOP of that, I could have created separate topos for the areas that slope up 3' or so, holding trees and plants, of which there were quite a few.  This was a path at about 0 elevation with the bulk of the topo at 1'-3' elevation.  I think that probably would have worked better, although I wasn't envisioning it that way at the time.  (It's more of a CAD way of looking at things than Revit, actually.)

When I just tried to apply the sub-regions to the topo I have, the path looked like an accordian going up and down.  I had been using sub-regions to subtract areas, but wasn't thinking in the direction of a composite surface as described above.

Also, the Siteworks software looks fabulous, but is too expensive for me.  Hopefully, I will have better luck next time. 

Thanks again!

[Diegas]

Alfredo, reading this post in 2016, couldn't have access to the Siteworks extension website.

But I learned in this forum that nowadays there is this Site Designer FREE extension for Revit made by AutoDesk:

https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/pt/Detail/Index?id=7736908368798857578&appLang=en&os=Win64

I couldn't get a hold at it from my limited internet conection on the office, but will check it out.

Have you guys tested it? Does it solve these kind of question (as the inicial post one)?

(By the way, inafortunate name for the app, looks like webDesigner stuff, hehehe

Cheers