In this video I'm going to be showing
you how to take an image file, load it into Revit and then turn it into an actual
Revit 3D model. Now when you go online you can find thousands of these floor plan
images and I think it's a good exercise to try to model some of these inside of
Revit or perhaps you want to use one as a starting point and then start modifying
it from there to create your own designs. Let's go! Just quickly before we jump into Revit
I would just like to ask you to check out my website balkanarchitect.com I'm going to link it
up in the cards above and then also down in the description of this video. If you're serious about
learning Revit that's definitely the best place to be with over 140 hours of content dedicated to all
of the interesting and complex topics in Revit. Also there you can find some of our customized
ready to go Revit templates, some really high quality Revit families and plug-ins. Now without
any further ado, let's jump straight into Revit. And here we are in Revit and let's first
bring in the image, that's the whole point of this video. So what I'll do is I'm just going
to go here to the insert tab and then let's go to the Import panel and here we have the Import
image option so I'm just going to click on that and then I'm going to pick out the image that I
want to use it's this floor plan a and then I'm just going to hit Open and place that image. Now at
this point we really don't know the size of this image and if everything looks correct. So what I would
like to do is I like to take an element inside of this image of which I know the dimensions of, and
then use that as reference. Now in this case it's really difficult to judge like is this of king
size, California king size bed which is 240 or is it the regular king size, which is 2 m or is it
it Queen size, whatever bed it is so it's difficult with beds, it's difficult with doors, however in
this case we have this kitchen counter and usually this is the same no matter where you are, so this
should work. So what I'll do now is I'm just going to zoom in on this, then I'm going to go here to
annotate and pick out a detail line tool. DL is the shortcut I'm just going to click here in one
edge, extend this and then let's make this 60 cm and then hit enter, hit the escape key a couple of times.
So here we have the 60 cm long line. Now what I can do is I can just scale the image. So you want to
select the image then go to modify and find the scale tool. RE is the shortcut. You want to do
this as a graphical scale. You want to click on the beginning of this line, then go where the
kitchen counter ends, click there and then you just bring that in to the end of this line which
we already know is at 60. So just like that, now we know that this has been dimensioned correctly.
Just going to hit the Escape key a couple of times select and delete this line. Just to make sure I
like to use the measure between two references tool and then I can measure this bathroom door
for example, yeah it's about 70 sounds about right then if I can measure this bad, so it's about
28 cm which is about right. Hit the Escape key a couple of times. So now we know that the scale is
correct. One more really important thing is I like to select this image and I like to make sure that
they don't accidentally scale it or move it. You can easily move it or scale it accidentally so I'm
just going to go back a couple of steps where we were originally select that image and then go here
to modify and click on pin. PN is the shortcut. It's going to bring this little pin here and now we
know that this image is staying in place. I can try to move it just doesn't happen. So this is really
important. Now in some cases if you're lucky you're going to find these floor plan images that have an
actual graphical scale. This is perfect so here we see a floor plan and then we have this graphical
scale that goes up to 6 m, so this is in meters. And this is perfect you just want to go from the
beginning to the end of the entire scale when scaling because it's going to give you the most
precise result. So in this case I would select an image, then go here to scale. RE is the shortcut. I
would click here once, go all the way to the other side and then I would type in 600 cm, hit enter and
now everything has been scaled correctly, and now if I check for example for the length of this bed,
yeah it's about 2 m which is exactly correct. Okay so now it's it's time to actually start tracing
over this image and well building our building. So this is actually going to be quite easy so
let's go here to architecture this is the fun part. Let's go to wall and then to pick out a wall.
I'm not really sure which wall would apply where. so I can hit the Escape key a couple of times, zoom
in here and then I can again use measure distances between two references, and then this is about 20
cm. If I measure this interior wall this is about 14 cm. Okay so I can just go here to wall pick
out a generic 200 mm wall and here it's really difficult to pinpoint where the center line of
this wall is, so instead of using the cental line I like to use the Finish face interior, just like
this, and then I would go simply from here and then start sketching out this wall. So I'm just simply
going to, let's see, yeah Sketch out this wall. I'm just going to uh speed up this process a
little bit I don't think it makes sense to show each individual click. However you can see we can
simply place these walls here and of course we're also going to cover the interior walls so we're
just going to switch to a smaller wall size The 14 cm one and then place those walls here
as well. Now once we have the walls in place, let's create a 3D view so we can just see what
we're doing and as you can see it looks nice, so now what I'll do is I'm just going to dock this 3D
view here off to the side, and let's also make it a little bit smaller, so we can just have kind of
here off in the background just a view of what we're doing. So now let's get back to our plan the
next step is going to be to place the floor. So for the floor let's go here to the floor, I'm going
to pick out the tile floor, because here we have tiles, and then what you want to do is you just
want to use pick lines and pick the exterior sides of these walls, so I'm just going to also
speed this up so we don't have to actually look at every each click. Now once we have the lines
placed we're just going to be using the trim and extend to corner tool to trim and fix this up. So
here we have just a few places where this needs to be fixed. I think that should be it. So now let's
hit finish and we have those tiles. Now we have an issue where we don't really see the image
anymore, just because it's below our floor. So what I can do is I can select the floor, right click,
and then override graphics and view by element, and then I can just make this transparent or actually
like to set it to 80, so I can still see the floor but you can also see the image below. Also I'm
going to select one of the walls, right right click and then override graphics and view by category,
and here for the wall category I'm going to make them, let's go with 60% transparent. Okay just like
this. So we can still see them but we can also see the openings because for the next step we
need to add the doors and windows and it makes sense to actually see those in the image itself.
So now let's zoom in here to this main entrance door, pick out doors and let's use yeah let's use
the large one for the entrance. Just like that, fits in perfectly. Then let's use the smaller ones
here for the rooms, yeah I think this will work. This room as well. So you just basically go all
the way around, so here I think we need an even smaller one for the bathroom. The bathroom door was
about 70, so let's place that door as well, place one here. So that that looks correct for these
doors. Then you might want to uh switch to some sliding doors for the terraces, so let's, yeah
let's see what we have, okay, so let's try this or actually let's do a double door, for the
balcony, so yeah I think this would be nice, so let's try a bit larger, yeah perfect just like that.
And then here we can go well maybe a large sliding door. Let's see what that looks like, yeah I
don't know, let's actually go with a regular one perhaps. No. That doesn't fit in here. So let's try
this one. Yeah okay this one is even adaptable, so we can use that one. Aand then of course
we want to place all of the windows, so let's go for Windows. Let's try this one, maybe it's
a bit too large, see, okay this one will work here and here, do we have that size anywhere
else, yeah perhaps here we need a bigger one yeah just like that. So basically as you can see
we're building this up by using all of these all of these families and this would be the
approach to use, and then we have the smaller ones for bathroom and then we should probably
have some medium ones for the for these rooms. Now let's go with this I think this would work.
Yeah, perfect. There we go. So now, as you can see here, even in 3D view we have all of the all of
the windows in place. And finally, let's add some interesting families, so what I'll do is I'm going
to go here to component, you can see I have added these really nice high quality families. These
are actually available on balkanarchitect.com. So I'm actually going to link these up in the cards
above so if you want to check out these Furniture families, please do. As I said they're
on the website. So let's add a bed here. So I think it would work just like this one bed here. So as
you can see these are kind of hyper realistic so let's add one there, perfect, and then let's
go with something like a sofa for the living room. Yeah I think this position
would work, and also let's add a couple of chairs, just to see what that would look like. Yeah spin it around, place it there, and
another chair here, just like that. Okay and there we go. So obviously you can continue working on
this adding more and more, but yeah this would be approach for using an image to create
a floor plan. So now if I just orbit around you can see these are those high quality families.
If I switch this to realistic you can see they look even better with all of the materials kind
properly mapped out both for the the beds and the sofas. So I hope you have enjoyed the video
and if you're interested in this Revit project file, this kind of outline, also the images
all of my Revit project files can be found on my patreon page, which I'm going to link up in the
cards above and then also down in the description of this video. Thank you for watching guys. Make
sure to check out my website balkanarchitect.com for more Revit courses. There I have over 120 hours of content
and I'm adding more each week. Make sure to subscribe for more videos and also I've added a
video over there that might interest you as well.
