Structural Modeling in Revit (Marcello's Framing Principles)

[Music] hello hello hello welcome everyone welcome to episode 61 of bim after dark live thank you guys for joining me my name is jeff also known as the revit kid this is a weekly live stream where we talk about revit bim and all kinds of adjacent software and technology thank you again for tuning in live if you're looking at the replay thanks for joining the replay make sure you subscribe to the channel here on youtube hit the notification bell so you know when we go live again trying to keep it consistent this go around so it's thursday nights at 9 00 pm eastern time so again thanks for joining us all across the world today we're actually going to talk about an interesting topic we're going to talk about structural modeling in revit those of you who follow me for the many years know that i am an architect so my content usually tends to veer towards the architecture side of things i recognize that and i like to bring on folks who maybe use other flavors of revit and other flavors of the ac industry so i've got a great guest marcelo and i'm sure you guys remember him from previous episodes but he's going to show some of his top top we that's a ten ish but we could go five ten doesn't matter it's gonna be awesome stuff i'm sure um as far as structural modeling and revit are concerned so uh before we jump into that of course uh we do need to mention let me roll down our music here we do need to mention our our title sponsor i i introduced this sponsor last week and i'm super excited to continue telling you about this company and so i'm going to roll the clip real quick [Music] all right so polycam polycam is our new title sponsor if you guys aren't familiar with polycam i'm extremely excited to tell you about polycam and apparently you're getting echo i apologize guys but extremely excited to uh tell you about polycam it is an iphone and ipad app and it actually uses lidar to do quick scans and you saw from the quick video i showed there you can bring those scans into revit there's different ways to bring it in so feel free to check them out they've got different forms formats of exporting it's really awesome i've been using it for over a year and i'm super excited for them to partner with us so thank you polycam if you're interested head on over to polycam.bimafterdark.com or hit the uh qr code uh here on the screen on your device and download it for free um the only thing you pay for in a premium subscription is different export options so thank you polycam for sponsoring the show and i'm super excited to tell you guys about it i've got more videos coming up and i'm also going to be doing some work with them to help show you guys how to use polycam but it's a really awesome tool basically iphone to bim i mean it's really awesome so okay looks like scoured uh the sound is good for you so it might have been a personal problem welcome to all the live guys uh the live streamers and chatters here um i want to remind everyone that this is live and i will be checking out the chat and as marcelo and i are going through our content um you know we are going to be keeping an eye on the chat if you have questions do not hesitate to ask so without further ado um you've waited long enough uh marcelo and so i'm going to bring you in marcelo scambiliary welcome to the show again you are here jeff how are you doing live and people can hear and see you okay can you hear me and see me okay i can hear and see you okay i think it was a little out at first i turned it down so sorry anyone who might have blown out that wasn't your fault that was my fault marcel okay no problem welcome again to the show man thanks for coming on hey thanks for having me i really appreciate it anytime you can invite me on and i can talk about structure yeah yeah i don't i don't honestly get to talk about this particular topic very often yeah well and and i'm excited to have you on you know trying to think of of who who i would want to talk about structural and then you know your your name always comes up when people think about elephants and dynamo and grasshopper and all these crazy and you know star wars things and rabbit but i think a lot of people forget that you are a structural engineer and so on a day day by day basis you may not be modeling a elephant in revit although i don't know maybe you do do it every day i don't know quite often so so maybe for folks who haven't seen and and i will post links to all of your previous episodes uh marcelo has come on numerous times you were actually the you and paul aubin um were the first official guests of this show which at the time wasn't a show it was more of just a happy hour um during the first like week or two of of of covet 19 quarantine that ended up turning into a weekly show that turned into what you see today so i don't think it was called episode one but it was actually episode one and so so uh you were on that show you came on to talk about grasshopper uh oh no was it um yeah it was grasshopper and then you also came on to talk about your book so there's a lot of great great content and so i'll link to all those but maybe for those of people who don't know who you are and especially when it comes to your uh expertise and structure maybe give them a quick bio on yourself oh sure doesn't have to be super formal you know just a quick bio sure uh yeah hello yeah thanks for having me back um like jeff said my name is marcelo i am a licensed structural engineer in the state of california uh i started working in the industry uh 23 years ago starting december would be 23 years ago uh and i worked for a firm called john a martin and associates we're a structural firm in los angeles so we do a lot of large structure so that's kind of a tiny portion of what i do for the industry a big part of what i do too is i try to find new software find new tag for aec and try to push it to its limits and and basically tell the industry so we can just make it a better place my current title is director of advanced technology so i deal with a lot of just kind of forward thinking uh what new tools are out there how we can we implement them uh as well so um and recently i i wrote a book and it is out uh it is the it's the uh dynamo and grasshopper for revit cheat sheet reference manual so uh jeff you can leave a link there if anyone wants to check it out awesome definitely will definitely will and we did have an entire episode uh where we sort of walked through some examples and talked about the manual so i'll also link to that if anyone's super interested awesome awesome book cool layout and i've got it actually back there on that shelf right there so i don't think they can see the shelf right now but it's it's back there on the shelf so uh awesome great so thanks thanks again for joining um i appreciate it i'm just gonna check i got a little bit of video lag uh from you i'm just wanna make sure it's not on my end it might be but uh you have a way of checking those things out sort of no that's all good but i need to go full screen okay awesome uh so today we are gonna be talking about uh structural and revit and so um as far as before we actually talk into some live demo and and and and and move into that piece of the show i did want to sort of um you know dig into the the your experience and your history as far as as far as the structural modeling is concerned i'm curious as well to sort of get it get an understanding um so obviously as i mentioned you know you've you've um you know you've done a lot of wild things pushing revit to the nth degree um and i'm curious on the structural side of things um you know how often are you are you doing you know projects that maybe are also pushing the structural side of of how you use revit constantly that's one of my that's one of my uh charges or many hats i wear so that's when i'm usually pulled into a production is when the job is is overly complicated that either needs a lot of new technology or or is just so complex the geometry needs a lot of special attention so examples like uh the the lax uh terminal expansion at large swooping oh yeah grove's uh two 250 square foot brady brady yeah i work with the architect of frank geary gary partners uh uh we recently just finished his residence in playa del rey we also uh well quite a while ago i did the walton z concert hall as well and then let's see more free form recently um yeah just things like that uh but not only is it the forms but it's also kind of the way you attack the problem and and i look at modeling structure in revit a lot differently and very unconventionally than than uh than all than a lot of structure modelers uh do so you know maybe maybe we can do some live demos of some things that i've done just to kind of get uh anyone who wants to model structure looking at it just a little bit differently yeah for sure for sure and that's that i think that's a great way to move so before we jump into that i am going to uh we are going to take a quick quick content break and anyone who's followed the show knows that there's a new segment uh sponsored by enscape and uh that is called the big bad bim tip of the week so we do want to jump into that real quick and this segment feels if you're not familiar with it again brought to you by enscape so thank you enscape for sponsoring this segment but this segment is essentially tips from you the viewers and uh so if you have your favorite revit tip uh shoot it out shoot me an email let me know and if i choose your tip to show here live in the show i'm gonna send you a nice free t-shirt and so uh so that's what we'll do today this tip is a pretty neat one it's a simple one but it's one of those ones that i think is extremely valuable to lots of folks and i'm sorry marcelo you can't actually see my uh my screen but i think you can imagine while i'm doing this this tip is actually from a viewer named paul paul i'm sorry i forgot where you're from um but uh if you see this i'm sure you'll recognize it and you can shoot me an email and uh and tell me that you saw my tip so this tip is actually i kind of added a little bit to it and so paul's tip had to do with the options bar and so you know my tip on top of that tip is for those of you not familiar with the options bar to to get familiar with it and realize it's there and so what is the options bar so i'm in a model right now this is actually a structural model believe it or not and um and if i go to do something like a move a copy an array anything um so i'm going to do mm on my keyboard for a mirror you'll notice the the options bar which is the nice green or gray depending on what you're doing bar in between your your um your ribbon and your view and there's usually stuff that you can do on there and so notice it says copy right and so my first tip is really just to pay attention to that bar realize it exists and realize the power that it has but the tip from paul is actually if you are doing something like a mirror if you press control on your keyboard and you hold it it'll actually uncheck or check the copy um which is pretty cool um so that's for for for mirror but if you go to actually copy an object or move an object you have a couple options you have constrain disjoin and multiple and so if i hold ctrl and let go of it you'll notice it's actually flipping between disjoin and constrain but if i press shift it's actually unchecking or checking constrain so pretty cool tip so two tips in there i guess the first tip is the first tip is pay attention and get to know the options bar i think that that is um that is going to be big for everyone i'm sorry i just lost your face marcelo i apologize let me uh okay i'm still here i know you're still here but i lost you let me uh oh there's zoom silly all right uh so everyone probably just saw like uh the cheek of my son on my desktop background so uh the tip there is is pay attention to that options bar there's a lot of great things on it in first and foremost and then using control and shift while you're in the in the middle of an action you'll see is a quick way to uncheck and check things and and so i use it all the time it's super powerful especially like when you're mirroring copying but paul thank you for the tip awesome tip i hope i hope it helps some of you guys out there and again thank you for enscape for sponsoring that tip all right pretty cool i know you didn't see it marcelo but i i know you probably imagined what i was doing right i used my imagination awesome awesome it looks like a couple folks didn't know that tip which is fantastic so always great um uh some acad said is that called the contextual menu maybe um i will tell you and anyone who's followed my content knows that i am not a stickler for for the exact terms on things but i think it's called the options bar i don't know context menu options bar i showed you what it was it was the thing in the middle maybe it's both i don't know though is it what do you call that marcel the bar in the middle you call options or contextual yeah options bar yeah options bar okay awesome all right so uh so yeah and i want to remind everyone again if you're here live tonight um right now um feel free to ask questions and chat uh in the chat and i will keep an eye on it as we're going through our conversation and and budding where it makes sense uh during marcel's uh live demo so all of that being said welcome back marcelo yeah uh no one can see your screen yet but but um but marcelo's doing some cool things on his screen um so i don't know marcel we're uh we were kind of talking about how um you know how how where you want to go yeah where you want to go how the crazy stuff that you do that's would be considered maybe non-structural how that relates to what maybe you would do structural um and and i'm curious to see how you how you're you're mine i mean one of the things and i'll give you credit to this that i've always loved about um learning from you at conferences and whatnot is you always have a different way of looking at things in approaching a problem um and so i'm curious to what you just said before um some of the ways that you may think differently than your typical structural modeling you know engineer uh in revit and approach a problem structurally because i'm sure it's going to be fascinating maybe we'll start there let's start there let's talk about you know how does marcelo approach a structural problem what kind of i can see you've got some demo stuff and so maybe we'll jump into that if if you're ready for that yeah i i am um sure you want to i guess uh share my screen yeah yeah okay yep we all see you and the screen now okay awesome uh okay so um that's a good question what i've learned when i've taught a lot of classes on modeling in revit is that you're not just limited to the tools in front of you so uh if you were needing to model roof framing uh roof structural framing uh structural walls things like that you don't just have to contain yourself to the structure tab and the tools that are here like beams walls columns floors i've learned that that revit is an extremely complex robust program that has lots of modeling tools and so if you limit yourself to the structure tab then um you're really not you're letting the um you're letting some of the best things in life pass you by for for for your uh you know if you're a structural modeler well you know uh jeff even if you're not a structural modeler i would argue if you're an architecture or even an mep you need to be very seriously uh ingrained in in understanding the structure uh within your other model because if you're an mep you're going to need to know how to move around and if you're an architect you definitely need to know what's going on with it uh and so i think structure uh really needs to touch every um every designer's lives and then you could have the same argument on the struct on the construction side so this is very important so so so i think what tends to happen is you hear well we're going to talk about structure and then some people tune out well no actually you should be paying more attention because uh even if you never modeled structure in a revit model ever you need to have some knowledge so that you could be double checking your structural engineers and your structural subconsultants uh and the work they're doing yeah it's in point maybe we should just move ahead to uh to a common misconception which is a lot of times when you see structural framing yeah um a lot of time when you see structural framing like this you would see like this this is just like a simple structured roof i actually made this up but just to drive the point home i was trying to figure out what kind of building that was i don't know i'm trying to figure out the space underneath it [Laughter] you made it up yeah i did i did i made it up just some just some framing uh slope framing okay uh you may look at this and say it looks good uh what tends to happen is you tend to see uh now that and it's been a while since we all been one box where revit structure mep architecture are all one now uh you sometimes tend to see this left on which is the analytical model yeah so you you see here you see the analytical can you see it it's kind of thin maybe i go i can see it there it is there it is yeah and what the first thing that's very typical jeff to back me up on this is you're like nah i gotta turn off the analytical does anyone do that oh yeah oh yeah but you're asking to start oh sorry yeah the video the video might be asking you to start again just click start do i say start yeah yeah sorry about that that's your your webcam i was trying to there we go can you still see me and yeah it's perfect yeah it was perfect it actually killed the lag i was i was i was still getting the video lag so i think i think we're good now okay you're nice okay any of the listeners chiming in on this does anyone do this like take the analytical and turn it off immediately with it it's common right oh yeah i do it i do it every time okay actually my comment is that's the last thing you should do and the reason that's the last thing you should do you say well why i'm not going to be i'm not going to deal with structural analysis and structural analysis model in another side well okay yeah fine maybe you never will but there's a lot of hidden gems in the analytical model particularly around quality control and a quick look so if we look at this framing right revit tends to actually drop the beams back of supporting beams back from the supporting beam so these are the girders these are supporting beams they tend to kick back so you can't really see work lines if you turn on the analytical lights it actually gives you a good telltale sign of the actual work points of these beams now and so you may look at this and say okay it actually looks pretty good now if you were to take one more step and turn off the physical model then all of a sudden more things jump out at you like i can look at this with my eye and all of a sudden bang right there i can see there's already an issue now it's only because i'm using the analytical line because i can see the center point center lines and work lines and then i can turn the the physical model back on and then all of a sudden i'm looking like okay you know what there there's actually a problem but when i look at it like this with it up i don't have a problem right so the first thing is okay you might think well what's the big issue this is only so far apart but actually did the structural engineer really intend for these to be offset like that i mean okay maybe maybe but probably not so even as an mep or architect if you see something like this you need to bring it up like hey listen saw some of these issues you know maybe even show them how to turn on the analytical and take a look at it yeah right so it's a good tail total quick sign so that i will tell you that about five people said that they do it always they turn the analytical off there's probably about it's probably about a nine second delay between what they're seeing what we're saying but uh there was about five or six people that said yes we turn off the analytics i can tell you and i'm one of those that's probably what i do first too especially if i'm if i'm just using the model it's like oh i'm cheering my way you mean you mean they turn it off okay yes turn it off i'm sorry turn it off turn it off let's think about turning it on and using it as a quick quality control just really quick whether whether you modeled it yourself whether you're in a structure office someone modeled it you want to look at it whether you're an architect like mep contractor you can turn it on take a look awesome tips outside now there's actually a lot more you can do with the analytical model and people don't know this let's have let's not have a conversation about structural analysis nothing to do with structure analysis right we can look at this again and you can say okay actually you know what i want to actually move this beam from here to there right so this there's a few tools you actually have in the analytical space that a lot of people don't realize so if you were to actually click on the analytical line you have the ability to do an analytical adjust now the analytical let's call it the world works a lot like the smart points in adaptive components so you can actually take this end point and say you know what you're not supposed to be there you're actually supposed to be here okay now structural engineers may have a problem with you adjusting their analytical model okay well then let them do it or show them how to do it or they may just say i don't care i'm not using it for analysis you go ahead and move the structural analysis line if you don't have at it okay so you can do that and then um and then you can say you can click finish my finish button is on the other screen i don't know why and then and then you can do that but then see this beam is still not lined up right okay so right now if you wanted to do a 3d align with this analytical line and this beam you actually don't have the ability to do that so if i take this and click here there's nowhere to click on this beam other than like the hard edges so when this when i first thought of this problem i thought you know what why isn't there a center line on a beam family and i was like you know there really should be and then it hit me i'm like why are you complaining marcelo why don't you just make one so if you actually take your structural analysis your structural beams right and then if you just go to a plan view and then you take a model line right and you can make it you can make it you can put a toggle on it to turn visibility on and off right and then if you align it now with the center like that you can snap it and then here we're snapping and then we're here snapping right and then i go back to the 3d view do you see there's actually a line right now i could probably put in a visibility parameter turn on and off whatever okay i'm going to load this right back in to where i was which i think would be there and then now look i have actually a center line that i can see right there and guess what when i align it now i have a center line boom i can align to so i just aligned that beam using the analytical adjust world as well as putting in my own beam and then you can unload them or turn them off with visibility whatever but you can leave them on too if you want to the center lines so when you turn off the analytical you can actually have a bit more freedom here so you can see now beams will actually have center lines on them you know so you can use that as your quality control if you want to as well okay so that's just kind of another way of looking at structural beams now if you if you're an architect and you get a structural model and the architect says don't touch my structural beams okay fine you know maybe you can show them how to do it right right so so i'm curious though because i've again i usually turn them off i don't mess with the analytical beams or the analytical lines pretty much at all um so when you're removing that and because that analytical element was being built when you put the beams in right that's correct that was created but when you moved it it was disassociating itself from the beam it's not disassociating itself from the beam it just that's the nature of the image okay that's the that's the nature of an analytical model is that if you build a physical model the analytical line is always built with it however in the analytical adjust world you have the ability to shift and move it around relative to the beam they are quote-unquote through the api still associated but you you have the ability to do that now why do you do that because sometimes in structural analysis world you need things to be idealized and lined up and continuous when in fact maybe a beam is slightly down two or three inches but for an analytical for for the math and being things consistent and you're finding element that's what i'm using you need the notes to kind of line up so so you so they're not disassociated quote-unquote they're just not physically matching the exact location of the beat which which from a structural engineering standpoint is perfectly is perfectly okay i'm gonna cancel that step steph asked a good question i think that's right along the lines of this uh so she's an architect and um okay when she's linking in the structural models you know what options are there for using this this you know the visibility and is there a way to turn on the analytical and you know qaq seeing this the same process through a link instead of being in the structural model good question good question okay the good question okay uh what i just showed you with quote unquote moving the analytical line and and physically moving the beam would not be possible in a link but you would be able to see the analytical model through the link you just would have to turn it in through your visual visibility graphics within the link and then they would show up so if you wanted to make an adjustment i suppose you can copy and paste the beam out or call up the structural engineer and tell them how much you were admiring their model and just happened to notice a tiny discrepancy after you yeah after you've you've taken screenshots and pinned it up onto your home office mm-hmm right right yes you got to be gentle sometimes when you when you mention things and yeah it might not and you see things like that little discrepancies you know sometimes it's better to get those handled uh where you don't email the uh you know the the person who modeled it their boss the principal you know and everyone else like that sometimes it's good just to handle those things kind of yeah kind of locally there tends to be better results for sure okay yeah yeah that was a great question steph and so i think the her her question was definitely more long lines of visibility and so you would handle analytical elements the same as you would uh anything through a link i believe right it would be visibility graphics so check check that out and i think she also was asking about the model lines in the families so that would depend on who how they built the family you know what marcelo was saying um you know if i just thought that was through a link for example um and you didn't turn off that visibility i guess now now you're you know how could how could someone turn it off i guess well you wouldn't be able to you wouldn't be able to um this was this was if the beam is natively in your file if it's through a link file well you can't edit a linked file anyway you can only look don't touch on a linked file so just have all those you would just have all those limitations i think at this point what you would do if you have a hard rule about not modifying structure that's a linked model then at that point you could turn on analytical see there's an issue then talk with the structural engineer or the author of that 3d structural model and show them how to make the adjustment like i just showed you with the analytical just putting in the beam and you know they may they may they may appreciate that anthony had a good question um is that he said is that different from structural framing location line sub category so maybe he's talking about the center line that you're talking about or the model line you drew um it is it is technically different uh there is a there is a center line subcategory but it's not always visible and so when i built the line i just had the ability to control the visibility like at the project level easy peasy so it was a lot easier to work with there are other ways to do what i just did with the with the align but i found that to be to be the best way yeah and it also depends like in 3d too you won't the the subcategory i don't think you can like you were trying to use in a line in 3d right and so even if it had the subcategory even if it was like a reference plane i just don't think you'd be able to select it and that was your point if you're trying to use in a line in 3d i don't think you can even see it right it depends i i've never have but i definitely i haven't really vetted that out entirely so awesome i mean this works for me and it's it's right there so another thing i do is i model my structure my roof framing that happens to be sloped not my flat horizontal framing that's what i tend to model it all in 3d just because i can really keep control of it and so yeah so if i can take this just to the next level which is which is what we did what we did there is we just realized that there is a very powerful um thing going on and this is what this is the revelation the big aha moment that i had which was i spent a lot of time trying to move this beam and so now that i built this line in the analytical i now that i built this line which represents the center work line of the beam and i loaded in the family that's so like three minutes ago so what i realized when i was doing this was actually there's a bigger picture here so what i did actually was i was like i want to go through those four steps so i actually hid the beam like this and i get goosebumps every time i do this and i was like i already have the line where i want because they have the smart points then i just took another beam and i actually in 3d snap and i just snapped it down in that spot and then i was like whoa wait a minute what did i just do okay now i'm using an analytical line smart two-point line two points to place a beam okay but it still belongs to another beam okay then it hit me oh what if instead of doing that what if now i can lay out structural framing instead of with the analytical line although turn on the analytical line see if it's right but i thought you know what this really is if you look like at a two point smart and i was thinking let's just look at mass if you have a mass that just has two a line and two points at the end right these points are actually very smart so so if you actually were to do an in-place mass i'm not saying you have to right then you actually get the smartness of the point so instead of just snapping at the ends and the midpoint you can actually snap it somewhere kind of in between you know like if you wanted to you can actually control this and you could actually hit say when you look at this you could actually hit like the quarter point if you put in 0.25 because that's the actual relative length along this beam or you can turn it into an actual length uh this becomes even more important when like when when you do this but then it's like on something even more complicated like from here and then let's say you needed to go along the arc length say five feet across well then you can actually take that and then you can change this to a uh you know to a to a to a segment length uh i guess this is we go from the beginning to the end and then you can go over say five feet and it'll hit it right on and then you can take your structural beam that i did earlier you can finish that take your structural beam and then do a 3d snap on it and then pow it just drops it right in place so you now have brought that up now i've talked to people who have not done this method and they want to actually take a beam from say this center line to here and i've asked them what do you do and they say okay what i do is i actually go and plan and i cut a section and then i go look in the section and then i very gingerly carefully click on the edge as close as i can because i can't really snap to it right and then i do that and then when i do the next one i cut another section and another one told me actually what i do is i take this beam and i export it out to autocad i run an array reload it in and now i have the segments and then i snap i'm like wait why we don't just use something smart like like a mass and i was like wait why use a mass i was like let's take it one step further if we if we don't use a mass but we use something else right which is even smarter is if we use an adaptive component an adaptive component actually if we start a new family and then we go to um we go to uh generic model adaptive we can build a line with two points so also all we do i'll show you how to make one we just take a line with two points one two doesn't matter where you take the two endpoints and then you make them adaptive which means now point one will ask you where to host point two will ask you where to host okay i already have a pre-built one so i built that one in a few seconds but i have another three but one and then i thought okay if i actually make a two point adapter maybe of every beam size then i can just start laying out framing really fast now my little secret is this is how i lay out all my my roof framing is i don't bother with the structural tool i actually take adaptive components and lay them out so like i can go from here to there and there to there and of course they're all smart right i can even do beams that are in between if there's like an opening things like that and then when i'm all done laying it all out and i'm happy and i'm all happy with the center lines then i'll come in with my 3d stabbing and my beam tool and then i'll just go snap snap snap snap and then i'm done so that's how i usually model my structural framing now uh with the typical dad and it all start with that revelation when i was moving that analytical line i'm like oh we've got so many more tools in here that could really help us lay out the structural framing so so let's unpack that a little because that's pretty awesome um and it makes sense um when of course when you explain it it makes sense but uh so so i'm curious now so so we're using this um and i'll give folks time because i'm sure there's gonna be questions on this part but uh so the nice thing about this too is it's adaptive so if you were to change that that arced beam all those other beams would update right because they're they're they're hosted to the adaptive the adaptive would update not the arc so so my question was going to be do you leave that line in place or how what do you do now that you've created this this this structure that seems to be really simple to create but now the architect changed the roof because that's what we do and now you have to change your structure okay hopefully it's not after dd because it's pencils down right jeff okay let's first talk about that so first of all we realized that well this is how i model my frequency so if you want to consider something like this go for it if you're not a structural engineer maybe you should tell the structural engineers you know who are struggling with modeling framing that either on curves or slopes or whatever you may want to have that conversation with them first of all okay so in and of itself i feel this is really powerful this is how i do it now when i take it to the next level which meaning that if i anticipate changes like for example if this were to actually physically move okay the power is that if there were a change this could this line this line and all its associated adaptive components will quote-unquote move and modify so if for example i didn't want this at the quarter point but i wanted this at i mean well at the 15 point i guess but i wanted it actually at the core point right which that one i guess is close to boy jeff i almost hit that right i almost said it right on the money yeah um then then these do not update with it okay so that's just kind of the reality and the world we live in now i'm willing to accept that because quite honestly first of all let me tell you anything that i do that helps me i'm already appreciative right like i'm like thank you these are gifts i think quite honestly so so my com i complain only very little and very quietly but if you want to take it to the next level like jeff said and you say okay you know what if i do need to actually place and have that b move with the line then we gotta ask our friend and it starts with a d it's dynamo dynamo can help us track this being and follow the line so if you want to uh really quick i have i can i can um i can actually um um yeah manage i can actually show you a script that won't build it from scratch but basically um with a few nodes okay you can actually take you can actually have dynamo say grab all those adaptive components place a beam on the adaptive component and constantly track it so if it moves then you move so so here we go so here we go no oh okay so open here it is uh okay so here's the here's the scripts i won't get too much into it but we basically pick all the adaptive components um we change them to curves or we extract the curves we then take structural framing uh of a type of a size that we want and then we basically can run the scripts right here pow and then it's going to actually place the beams on there at all times now i can change this to automatic let dynamo run in the background and now if i want to i can have a framing party so actually anytime i pop this adapted component down and then i escape it it's going to drop a beam on it so i can do that now and since it's constantly tracking it um if i were to take this and slide it then the beam will automatically update to it because dynamo is in the background working now do you have to have dynamo in there all the time no you can have it as like a player and then just run it anytime there's an update but dynamo can really help you in that regard yeah does that answer your question yeah no it does that was great and i think it was someone did have a question about can you align and lock the beams to those adaptive components i think that was where i pulled the question from okay so so the answer is no you really can't and it's because the the adapt the structural beam is not that smart at least when i tried it it's over 20 years old that technology the adaptive component is newer it's about 13 years old and dynamo is the newest right which is about six years old so so if you combine those three technologies together then you can accomplish i think what what jeff was asking there which is if there's a change can can you have it move so well that's so that's how i like that's my little secret for how i actually lay out structural frame all the time yeah so so in that case uh because i was curious uh you haven't used you haven't even used the word beam system yet and so that's why i was i was interested i have not used the word being system and you know what you you know what you you know what you can do um it's very good point is um is no and you know what i'm not gonna say don't use beam systems but for me my my modeling is very efficient so i don't use beam systems what i tend to do is i will actually i'm just going to do a little a little a little what not here so if i had these two lines you know however i model with adapters or whatever where are they here and here i'm gonna isolate here where are they here and here yeah and then i'm going to isolate so what i tend to do if i want to put in bean systems is i'll put them in a slightly different way i'll use a divided path and then through there i can control the fixed number and so on uh and then from that i can finish and then i can turn everything back on now when i go through my adaptive component let me see if i can find it then i gotta pick the lines oh my gosh they're in there they're in there they're there right okay so i'm actually looking for the divided path line i'm looking for the mass yeah there they are yeah see there they are right so uh what i would do is um is i would take the adaptive component and i would actually place it on there and then i would use a repeater under p and then it'll actually place the adaptive ones that way and then that's how i kind of mimic the um the the beam system and then you can i can parameterize the divided path and so on that's kind of the divided path method with a hybrid of dynamo did you see how even if i put the divided path in it's still made it's still amazing but you don't even need a divided path if you wanted to take a line extract the center line of this beam and this beam from dynamo and divide it that way and you could do that too so i tend not to use beam systems although i think they're really good for laying things out i'm not yeah that's why i was scared i was curious because like i mean for example i was just showing the you didn't see the sample yet but uh the sample i was doing during the during the tip of the week is uh it was called ford metal framing i was doing some work for somebody doing doing cold for metal framing and um and i i i was it's interesting because i was thinking about it as you were saying all this and what i end up doing is using a beam system for the initial layout and then there's this awesome button that says remove beam system and then they just become you know beams and then you can just do things with them and and the truth is that's kind of how it always ends up is you know a lot of times i don't end up leaving the beam system in place i end up blowing it up and just using it and it's kind of the easy way to lay things out quickly you know so i mean it makes sense because now you're giving yourself the flexibility that i created after exploding the beam system once it was made right yeah and you bring up a good point you know if you're more comfortable using a beam system than exploding it or if you're more comfortable using the dynamo hybrid or just dynamo you know it's all up to you i think it's just a lot of a lot of more yeah i think once you start going off plane right if not horizontal or vertical that's where this this is super helpful because with the beam system you've got to have something a work plane you got to create it you got to host to it and then you got it you know you got to go from there this is nice because you can break off plane you know like you're showing curves whatever it doesn't really matter yeah you bring up a good point you know i invite i invite a beam system on this bay and you know i'm interested to see what would happen you know so yeah yeah yeah um but you know yeah it's all it's all good okay so we talked about uh that we talked about okay so um so i think uh we're kind of talking about um how to model framing differently um now a question came in and i saw it which is can you make an adaptive as beam so you won't have to build the skeleton yes and that's a good segue to what i want to get into next which is a lot of times we have like uh barrel framed roofs and you need to actually um you need to actually take a structural beam and you need to uh you need to frame a beam to it and many of them but the problem is is that the beam needs to be perpendicular to the actual surface yeah and so what tends to happen is you take this and you go to your rotation cross section value and you're like okay it's 45. oh nope okay it's minus 45. oh yeah oh no no no it's uh it's minus 40. getting there getting there minus 35 minus 32 now you may get lucky minus 30 right but then you put in another one and you got to play the game oh yeah okay so what i do for this type of framing is i use the power of the um adaptive component and the repeater so if i have a surface like this then i can investigate it a little more i'll isolate and then i have the shadow on so it's giving me that little what knob or whatever okay so if you take this surface like this and you and you actually can divide a surface and now what some people don't realize is that the divided surface under surfer's representation actually has nodes at its intersections and you can turn those on now i have already pre-built a structural beam as an adaptive component so if i look at this beam it's just a simple two by four but it's basically an adaptive component with two points but instead of just a line it's a line and an actual solid extrusion to represent the dimensions of a two by four which is you know one and a half by yeah so on right and then so if you actually place that on to the smart points then it will know to orient its cells perpendicular to that surface and then what you can do is then activate your repeater and then it will place the beams at the orientation perpendicular flange tangent web perpendicular to that surface so you don't necessarily have to play the rotation game so this this is kind of the manual way of doing it uh in the book i actually show you the dynamo solution so you know either way it can it can kind of get you there so in that in that situation so so in if i'm using that now to create my my model which is then creating my documents are you um are you leaving that beam in place are you categorizing it as structural framing at a minimum just to make sure that that you know things are looking and acting the way you want in the documentation side as well as the sort of you know model use side of it i used to do that jeff which means that i would take this beam and i would then put it into a category that i was comfortable with i would edit it as well so it looked correct in my documentation um that was so 2018 what i do now is i have come up with a more elaborate um dynamo script that mimics the adaptive component behavior so so basically the way it works and it's uh it's not in the book i plan to do a volume two on it which is uh you basically when you place the structural beam then dynamo will analyze the surface got it and then it will then go in and modify the cross section rotation based on tangent vectors uh sorry normal vectors to to a plane tangent to where that flange is ideally supposed to be and then it will then rotate it into place so that's how i kind of do it now but uh but yeah and then it's placing so with that it's placed in the actual beam it's just doing the rotation part for you but it's using the same the same logic you're showing here correct so if if if someone's using the that adaptive component piece um how would they incorporate if they wanted the analytical model with it would it be using just lines would be placing beams and getting rid of them or if you're talking about analytical analytical is only ever exists with the revit structural beam family so you'd have to then draw over structural beings if you wanted the actual animal but if you wanted to you could get savvy and i've done this quite often is you can build the adaptive component family such it's smart enough to actually look like you want it to do in all your documentation you know for example the solid turns off it just center line turns on um you know you make sure that it it it dimensions correctly it's it's it's hiding when it needs to hide things like that so you do have the the freedom to do that adaptive component uh it's just a little more work so i found i did that for many years and then i finally said you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna make a dynamoscript that um could do that and actually on my blog site um there actually is reference to it can i go there really quick i forgot i actually posted uh so before we kind of close the evening out uh my blog site's called uh simplycomplex.org and if you head over to my blog site on simplycomplex.org i do actually talk about orienting structural framing perk to surface and i have the grasshopper solution i don't have the dynamo solution in here although i am working on an equivalent dynamo one i have the dynamo one but i i didn't expose it i plan to put it in the volume two of the book so it's basically the logic of of taking the the planes i talked about and reorienting it yeah some some more advanced surface analysis to kind of get you there awesome great yeah i'll i'll put any of the links you mentioned here so some simplycomplex.org how about one more before you close out can i show the couch of course of course we can show a cow it wouldn't be a marcello presentation without a cow or an ad or something you know a human head i don't know whatever okay so we got dang where are you there's the cow okay so so um the question is is how do we model structure that can follow uh some complex surfaces so i actually have the cow here so what i'm gonna do is this was actually built out of the massing environment a long time ago um so i'm gonna actually host a wall to this surface so i'm gonna go host and then so it's actually made up of of this one as well as it's one sweep from the back leg all the way to the nose and then i guess i'll take that one or this one i meant to grab this one i don't know why i couldn't do it earlier is it that one i think it's that one yep so i'm placing a wall by face so so first point is a wall by face can follow a very complex surface if you can follow a cow you can probably follow most surfaces as a as a wall by face they're actually very very powerful so i'm gonna then isolate this okay so here's the thing if i wanted to say i wanted to place a beam along this one right here uh i don't know if i have any elevations shown maybe not but if you if you ever look yeah if you ever look at the back end this is kind of cutting through a little bit of the cup if you wanted to actually place a beam that follows this and you activate your structural beam command um you would need to pick a plane for it to work on first of all and then from that point you would need to select this edge and you don't have the ability to actually select that edge just because it is not actually um it's not actually quote unquote a physical edge so what you need to do is you can just take matters into your own hands and make your own edge so for example if this is a grid there's no grid here if i wanted to do that then i come back to 3d right well it's not that 3d this 3d come on now where are you here then i can take a wall and i could just intersect it with the cow wall then i can j then i could join them so i can join this with this now the only thing is i'm trying to make an artificial edge at which to pick otherwise you'd be clicking all day in that section and you'd never get the edge right so that's this is what i kind of call the intersection method uh now if i hide this i'm not going to oh i am going to see it there it is see how i made that artificial edge right there on the join so then all i need to do is take my beam and my pick tool and the size of my beam and then now that i have a solid edge just power and then i can pick the edge and now i actually have a beam that's following that crazy surface and the trick is just to make your own edge that's all you need to do once you have an edge you can place a structural beam for it now of course you have a dynamo solution to do this as well where you extract out the surface do an intersection bring the curve in and then in place but this is kind of the non-dynamos solution so this is how i'll lay out structure a lot of times or actually i'll place a floor sometimes in here and have the floor follow those crazy edges you know like it doesn't have to be a cow right i mean if you're doing a building with some complicated facade uh exterior you've got exterior model you're doing the core and shell and you need to have your slab edges match that that exterior facade you can use methods like this it doesn't have to be a beam it could be like a slab edge you know to do this little intersection method yeah that is that note and i think that the key takeaway there is is the edge part but but also at the same time it's interesting to me because you you mentioned before right beams are a 20 year old technology in revit but right i will say that they are extremely flexible when it comes to picking edges and it's surprising to me sometimes how crazy and wonky they will sweep without blowing up in general that's a good lesson too is is is you can pretty much pick any shaped edge and the beam will follow it i've found some pretty wild things with that which is which is pretty cool when you think about it because some of these things you might not be able to make with the sweep if you tried in place yeah you're right you're right it is it is i guess it's really rock solid when when it's grabbing onto an edge i found that to be the case yeah yeah good point very cool uh joe joe asked where can i learn how to make the cow um content out there you've showed it every once in a while here and there yeah if you dig deep enough you'll find it yeah i taught a class in 2013 2012 on how to it's called mo secrets models revealed something like that and i did show how to actually um how to actually model the cow uh that's at autodisk university you can see how to do that uh also my blog site goes over it um a little bit but uh it's really not um it's really not that complicated i mean it looks complicated but it's really not there's just there's just some things you need to be aware of because you're modeling using the masking environment in revit which can be a little touchy because it uses hermite spline formulations not not nerves the important part is that as you sweep through profiles you need to make sure they're continuous and smooth you can't have anything that's like really wonky so so my profiles for this cow from the back leg all the way to the nose would look like this if you see my cursor it'd be like radial lines from here to about here then they'd be parallel lines to here and then as i hit the neck they would be radial lines against here and that's how that profile would look so um if that gives you any guidance on on on being able to model something complex in that's that's kind of that's kind of the tipping trick there awesome man no this has been fantastic is is there anything else you wanted to say before there's any other any content that you didn't get to hit because we we can we can hit it if you want i mean i know i could go i can go all day i'm fantastic i think um you know that i think i if we're gonna focus on structure i think uh i think we we covered quite a bit i uh that's fantastic there's a whole nother part of structure that i have taught which has to do with with like game engine technology and visualization uh not just modeling and rabbit i think probably the biggest takeaway if you forget every all the picks and clicks i said today is if you're trying to model something in revit whether it's structure or not don't be limited to reference planes reference lines you can use anything you want in fact the only way the way we modeled this beam was we use the wall right why'd we use a wall because it was solid and it was easy to model and we were able to do an intersect so so that's that's why why not a reference plane because a reference plane would wouldn't work and we usually think of guide geometry as references but no guide geometry could be anything and uh and so so that's that's uh that's it if you want to know i actually have another little you know what i do i have another little secret so sometimes when i use this guide geometry i'm kind of turning things on and off and someone saw me do this one time which i didn't really think anything of but but they told me i'm absolutely insane which is if i hide at some of this stuff a lot of times i'll go to the hyde world and i'll model in the hide world so i'll model in reference lines reference planes beams columns and then they i'll in here i'll do my intersections because you have all of your commands still available you in the hyde universe you just they just don't show in the show universe so i'll model in the hyde universe which is actually a very stable place and then when i'm done i'll pull out and then i have done all my guide geometry and then you know i have kind of what i need so that's kind of a little secret and honestly jeff that's a tidbit that i'll give you for your show exclusive first time i've ever said that before i will admit it i model in the no-show world i'm a no-show world modeler the the pink must drive you a little nuts though i don't know that's a lot that's a lot of magenta happening there there's a lot of magenta but you know i've learned to be friendly with the magenta i'm sure i'm sure some uh some api aficionados out there including like john pearson and and uh and others could could tell us how to how to write scripts to change the color in the no-show world awesome so maybe that's the next class a no-show world model don't forget awesome well again marcel thanks a lot for doing this i appreciate it um folks so so i'll put all the links to all the information but i guess the best place to reach out to would be simplycomplex.org and on twitter uh at marcelo i'll i'll i'll link it there i'll link all the information there any final words before you go uh no just i think aec is an awesome place filled with intelligent smart individuals like all yourselves don't sell yourself shirts short keep doing awesome things and um make aec a better place like and keep up the good work oh and if you're wondering that's my lightsaber collection in the background oh you know what they can't they actually can't see it i don't think right now oh you trimmed it hold on hold on i'll pull it out right now just so everyone can see it let me i'll even hide my own face live we'll do making the sausage there it is there it is if if you're really interested in it everyone um we went to get that as a question i'm like why didn't that show up yeah i think you cropped it but no sorry sorry we went and we went pretty deep on that one of the episodes i'll find that video thank you marcelo again for joining us thank you guys for joining us live if you're joining on the replay thanks again remember to subscribe to the channel here on youtube so you get any any updates for the live content thank you enscape for sponsoring the tip of the week and polly cam for sponsoring this episode uh you guys are amazing have a great weekend and we'll talk to y'all soon thank you [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: TheRevitKid

Views: 13,865

Keywords: revit, revit design, architecture, autodesk revit, revit tutorial, revit tip, revit tutorials, revit architecture, BIM, building information modeling, structural modeling in revit, structural modeling in revit tutorial, revit structure, structural engineer, revit structure and dynamo, revit analytical beams, structural engineering, structural BIM, Structural Modeling in Revit (Marcello's Framing Principles), revit modeling structural framing, modeling structural framing in revit

Id: IpSOgLChtbE

Length: 60min 5sec (3605 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021