Complex Structure - Intertwined Beams

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm having a hard time with beam column connections. The structure is an elliptical, complex structure and axis are not on a rectangular grid.

Normally when some part of a sticks out of a column, I was cutting that part with opening/by face command. But in such a case, three beams are meeting above a column and they became discontinuous. As far as I've heard, selecting "cast in-place concrete" makes it hard for shaping/cutting the ends of the beam but I couldn't see the difference when I select wood as the material.

Can you help me with this situation? The first pic from above is what I am trying to do, second and third are my situation right now...

[A_MAQ]

did you use opening by face for this situation and it did not work ?

[Anonymous]

Yeah I used it, still discontinuous. When I change the material to "Other", all my problems are gone though.

I wonder if it has some negative impact that I cannot foresee right now.. I make this model just to do a quantity takeoff quickly.

[Anonymous]

Guys I'm still having the same problem. Thank you for the video but cutting the beams creates problems when I'm doing a quantity takeoff. And my aim is to model and do a quantity takeoff at the end.

Also in your example, the column goes up to the ceiling but the top part should be switched to a beam instead. That was also causing many problems. So I used disallow join command, modelling lines and trim command to fit beams as proper as possible and in order to do so, I followed an assumption: the beam which collides better with a column owns the intersection part of the column and other beams are connected to that beam.

But another problem arises; probably due to disallow join command, when I use paint on the beams, intersection also gets painted...

I really need help with this.. Weeks have passed and I draw the same project over and over (nearly 15 times now)

[ToanDN]

Share that part of the model with the beams and column.  It works fine here.

[Karol_Piroska]

this is an old issue discussed here few times. For whatever reason beams with "concrete" behavior will have this end conditions (it would be great if someone from autodesk could actually clarify what is the reason behind) . If you change the family (not material) to precast concrete it will work.

[Anonymous]

@Karol_Piroska we finally solved it! Instead of placing the beams and then using "align" command, I placed the beams and then used "justification points" command. First it gives a warning message and then I click unjoin beams, and then I join them again. Voila.

@ToanDN thank you for the help. 

Now I struggle at something else. I try to cover all the visible surfaces with plaster and make a quantity or material takeoff. I used Roombook extention but I have two problems:

1. I cannot show the plaster layer on the model.

2. When I do the calculation and take an export to Excel;

• It is cool that it takes beams' bottom surfaces and shows it in ceiling calculation sheet
• It is not cool that it doesn't show beams' lateral surfaces in wall calculation sheet (or anywhere else)
• It is not cool that it calculates the column area that intersects with beams.

I couldn't find a nice, explanatory video on youtube. I am guessing Roombook extention is better than Material Takeoff, dunno the difference and cannot find a solution to my problem. Can you help me with that?

[revit1980]

Dear Mr shub

Could you share with us your solved Beam rvt file?

Regards