using reveal for wall siding

[ChrisBriley]

Has anyone out there used a reveal (or sweep) for their wall siding?

I'm new to Revit, and so I'm tinkering with a model.  This house was going to have woven shingle corners.  Of course Revit can't really do that.  It appears that materials are prety much like wall paper so they look pertty fake up close.  NIce for sketchy stuff and "common" presentations.  3dsMax can punch up that wall paper but still in a close rendering or animation it's going to look pretty cheezy.  After exhausting all searches for a very real looking siding material or texture.  I came up with the clever idea of using a reveal to "press" a siding pattern into my outer finish layer.  (This would save me the laborious task of modeling the siding and remodeling it every time I need to move something.)  I checked the forums and internet and couldn't see that anyone has tried this (hard to believe)

It started to work and I got excited, I exlaimed, "good job autodesk! I can finally at long last, put 3 dimensional siding on a project!"  Then things got weird.  For some reason when it's applied to SOME walls it won't join with the adjacent wall, AND it unjoins my walls in plan.  

Has anyone run into this?  I can't imagine that I'm the first to try this.  I must be doing something wrong, or are my expectations are too high for $5000 software.?

Chris

[haydenwse]

You might try making the wall joins a "miter".  That way the exterior face will show all the way without wrapping the end.

[ChrisBriley]

very curious.  On every corner where there's a problem, I cannot select mitre. Does anyone have any advice for why these walls won't clean properly?

Also, I made a very simple "shed" just to test out the siding and have another issue over doors. The corners on the simple shed are fine but, the reveal won't fill in above the doors.

Has anyone done this before?  Is there anyone from autodesk who can answer this or shall I put this in the "Revit can't do this" catagory and move on?

[Lance.Coffey]

I am not clear how you are applying the reveals to the walls, but you can apply the reveal using the Reveal tool directly, or you can modify the structure of the wall so that the reveal(s) are part of the wall structure.

See the following help topics for more information on the Reveal options:

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/2012/Help/Revit_User's_Guide/0325-Build_th325/0327-Architec32...

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/2012/Help/Revit_User's_Guide/0325-Build_th325/0327-Architec32...

If neither Reveal option works, you might try one of the following alternate approaches:

1. Adapt a curtain wall to the appearance you want.
2. Create a wall with the appearance you want in the conceptual massing tool, and then load as an exterior wall family.
3. Model the wall as an in-place wall.

Regarding the issue you are seeing where the door is blocking the reveal, there is a wishlist item open with our Development group to allow inserts (such as doors) to partially cut Reveals (instead of cutting the entire reveal).

Note: Using Reveals in this way may not scale well for large or complex projects.