Creating a Flitch beam Family

[onayohob23]

Hello

I'm new to revit so learning as I go, excuse me if this is very basic.

I want to create a flitch beam (thin steel plate of a specifiable thickness ranging between 8-15mm) wedged between two timber joists with dimensions which are specifiable.

I would like to model these such that they can be analysed accurately in Robot if need be.

I've tried to do this by going to New-> Revit Family. Created 3 rectangular blocks side-by-side, dimensioned them and tried to assign a parameter to the dimensions with no luck (now stuck!).

Could somebody please provide a step-by-step on how I would go about create this?

[jay_colcombe]

The first bit of advice i would give about creating such a beam is that you should use an existing beam as a start point and resave this as it will have most of the layout and parameter elements you need and there are lots of videos on how to create a beam and it will apply to both the timber and steel components.

This is a good example

How to Create a Unique Beam Family in Revit – 8020 BIM

As regards the flitch beam itself;

This is not really possible in Revit directly and requires manual input of the Structural Properties of the element and cannot be applied automatically.

In Revit the beam is still geometry with an assigned material and analytical line (when added in newer versions of Revit).

Therefore you would need to Create and Model the beam with all the components and then ensure all the correct section and material properties based on the build up of all the elements (Timber & Steel)

Even after setting this up in Revit you will need to ensure in Robot that the information from Revit has been read and interpreted correctly and will act as expected.

I know in Robot you can create multiple Material Sections as members for analysis, therefore I recommend you have a quick search for Robot and other Analytical Packages which can analyse and design Flitch Beams as part of an overall composite beam build up and see what guidance is given and adopt it into your approach when using linked models such as Revit.

I would suggest in most instances the guidance would be a case of creating a Generic Beam of the same dimensions/shape of the Flitch Beam and ensuring all the Section and Material Properties are input as a single overall instance (combining all the martials/strengths/properties/etc.) as this is how many single element calculation packages will treat beams made up of multiple different elements.  You may even be able to find software which can give such output for Flitch beams to enter into Revit/Robot.

[onayohob23]

Thanks for your response. The video in the link you provided was exactly the one I used to try to create a flitch beam but wasn't able to assign parameters like he did in the video by clicking on the dimension.

[jay_colcombe]

There are lots more video tutorials out there but you can add Parameter's from the Label dimension Panel Above

or even right Click on the Dimension > Label

 they are then accessible in 

You can even create them here and then add them to the Dimension