Solid Mesh Topography with Boolean Operations

[arek_keshishian]

There are many cases where we need the topo mesh to finally be completely solid and still give us plan-area calculation values, this would be a general solve to most topography problems we're having. We could add and subtract volumes from one another and create tunnels, sub-terrain volumes, easier and more realistic sidewalks and roads, rocky mountainous areas that have more than one point in a specific X-Y coordinate with a different Z value, create caves and more. Specially with the help of Dynamo, the possibilities would be endless and achieve high-end industry professionalism.

[FreakinWeird]

Hello dear Autodesk,
I have suggestion for the new featere to implement in revit 2017 please!!! I had struggled a lot with cutting a horizontal hole in topography, and it's been impossible to succed. Building pad cuts topography from its very beginning all the way up to infinity no matter if I don't want that. Also shaft openings when hit floors cut it completely. If u can fix that easy issue would be really nice. The problem is when I want to make a tunnel in groundl or underground garage so I want that soil layer above the top of the underground floor. Thx in advance !!!

[andydandy]

True. Currently there is no good way of building a topo that covers a subterranean structure (e.g. a tunnel). Underground structures are not an uncommon architectural design case. One possible way to implement this would be to give building pads an (optional) upper limit.

[evertz]

Why can't I place an excavation on the topographic. In result I want to get such views like in the attachment.

[m.steffannoe]

Don't forget fill

[YarUnderoaker]

Nice sketches 

[arek_keshishian]

lol as long as it gets the idea across... 

[Anonymous]

If you have been working with the Toposurface tools you might have experienced that is tricky to manipulate the topo, because you only have the option to manipulate the elevation of placed points. If you want to make a hole in the toposurface you can use the Building Pad for straight cuts level based. But if you want to make a cut with a sloped wall you will have to use the Site Designer tools. 

But how easy would it be if you could create a family/mass/in-place mass in which you can model a volume, place this on/in the toposurface and cut it out using the cut tools. If we are creating volume for the toposurface we might as well create the possibility to join volume to the toposurface.

I am curious whether you like to have this kind of tooling as well in order to manipulate the toposurface on an intuitive way.

With kind regards,

Kelly Pelzer

[arek_keshishian]

Parallel concept with more votes. please vote.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/solid-mesh-topography-with-boolean-operations/idi-p/67037...

[Anonymous]

Hi Arek,

Thanks for the heads up, i voted for your idea as well.

With kind regards,

Kelly Pelzer

[Anonymous]

It would be very helpful if you could set a default thickness to your topographies, similar to a floor thickness.  When doing site studies or adding area roads to a project, I will usually use the "Split Surface" tool to add streets into an already modeled topography.  When offsetting the newly split road topo to adjust for the curb height, you are left with an empty space where the curb would be.  Being able to add a set a default topo thickness of would fill the gap.

When creating floor, you can add as many sub-element points as needed and adjust the height of those points to mimic topo lines while maintaining your floor thickness at each point, so hopefully the process would be very similar.

[harlan_brumm]

Thanks for your submission and votes on this idea!  We are evaluating where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision. 

The Factory

[boccisalvini]

please vote! it's important!

[Anonymous]

At moment is not possible to draw an underground building like parking, i asked to Autodesk Support too. The only solution is to insert a pad and another topography over it, but is so difficulty to manage, especially in the views where I need to use a massive masking with hatch.

It would be very useful to use Booleans on the topography.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. We need a more general solution for dealing with topo surfaces. We should be able to represent tunnels for example.

-t

[Anonymous]

Pad and topography is not the only solution...

Another option is to use a roof as your topography which in turn can be used to cap off your underground structure.  It also cuts better in sections. 

[Anonymous]

The thing is that these are all hacks. Using roof for topos goes against
the principles of BIM. How is that going to schedule? You’ll end up with
extra roofs.

I’m not suggesting that Revit must become a fully blown civil engineering
design app but we should be able to have much better control over the topo
surface object. The tools and techniques for manipulating triangle geometry
are well understood, it’s not a problem. The problem as always is making
the change to a well established system without disrupting the whole
system. It’s difficult. But I have faith in the dev team.

-t
--
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Tomek Piatek
about.me/tomek_piatek
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[Anonymous]

@Anonymous

How does it go against BIM?  Doesn't matter what is used to create an object as long as the information is there.  You can assign materials to a roof the same way you can with topography.  

Principles of BIM?? Do you think Revit is BIM??  Revit is just a tool in the BIM process.  Just like Autocad, Civil3D, ArchiCAD, Bentley, Catia, etc are tools as well.

Keeping familes and methods by what they are....door for a door or a wall for a wall or roof for a roof, just shows that you can't think OOTB.

It's not a hack...it's using the software to do more than it was originally intended.  ArchiCAD was doing stuff like that way before Revit came along as well.  You must hate Dynamo too...which is a way to hack the API to get "information" from where the software can't.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous

In an another project i had already used a roof like a topography, but the site was simply and I didn't had constraints from Municipal Administration.

In some cases I need to respect constraints and the topography above must be replaced as original state.

With roof family how do you simulate a complex topography? (see image attached)

You are right, often i use another objects and information in order to archieve results, but in topography cases i think that Autodesk should gives users more tools for editing the terrain, like booleans.

Autodesk tried to do it with Site Designer, but it is not well developed, after some edits the topography starts to have irreparably damages (and you can't create underground object).

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous

Well, Site Designer was terrible to begin with, and it wasn't from "Autodesk"...it was an add-in developed by someone else that Autodesk bought and made it free to subscription users. 

And I have nothing against the topo tool though...I've done some pretty awesome site plans utilizing the topo, it's just a matter of not trying to use just one.  I've had some sites where I used 20 different topo objects as it was a large and lots of grade changes and daylight basements for buildings.  It's just that my sections looked terrible as topography isn't that great when cut and I had to use fill patterns to make by sections pop.

But yeah, you can do something like you are showing in your pic with a roof....  the roof works the same way as the topo, add points at the heights you need them to be.

[joslindave]

I agree, we need better topo tools - site designer really is just a band aid, and while better than nothing, is still very cumbersome to use: a nice band aid, but a band aid nonetheless.

The ability for a topo to be represented by a solid (preferably not a mesh only, but something more nurb-like), while retaining the surface workability would be ideal. And host-able, as in, more things being able to be hosted to it. The railings in 2018 is a step in the right direction.