Hello All! (my apologies for the length here, but I'm admitted desperate for some help for a seemingly uncommon set of problems) I've been a AutoCAD and Microstation user for over eight years, and I work with a firm that does structural engineering. Specifically we do a lot of parking deck work, and recently we're taken our first steps into Revit as many of our architectural partners and clients have already done so or are in the process of investigating it for themselves. Several of our staff have had the "Revit Essentials" course from an Autodesk trainer, and I've been experimenting with it myself for a few months whenever possible between other jobwork. I had discovered RevitCity as a great resource early on, and I am hoping to have an opportunity to learn a lot from all the experts here. I've always had a strong interest in 3D cadd work, and I'm excited that we're finally in an environment and time where it looks like I'll be getting to do it (whether my reluctant peers at my firm want to or not, ha-ha). But I was hoping to see if anyone here could provide some good suggestions of resources (online, books, etc.) for how other users have adapted Revit Structure for parking deck work. Specifically, I've been admittedly having a difficult time adapting Revit for parking deck design, and the resources and examples I've typically been able to find are examples of more conventional building designs. Many, or most, of our parking decks have "floors" where technically every surface is in reality a sloped concrete slab within a deck utilizing a single or double helix design. As a result, the typical floors we would normally represent in a purely 2-D set of plans created within AutoCAD - where the ramps and their associated support beams are depicted as if the entire level was flat for purposes of notation - are now consisting of their real-world equivalents where the vast majority of the entire level is actually consisting of one or more giant sloped concrete slabs with flat landings on the opposing ends. Since much of the workflow within Revit seems to be tied to your pre-defined floor elevations, it seems to get very tricky when your "floors" are essentially a series of sloped slabs with continuously changing elevations. Though I know how to create accurate representations of the sloped ramps themselves from level to level, I find myself at a loss for an efficient method to create and place the concrete beams beneath them. Since the upper surface of the slabs is sloped, if I attempt to place a concrete beam at the appropriate distances from my grid lines, you end up with one corner of said beams protruding through the upper surface of your ramps. (The only *visual* solution I've managed so far was to customize the beam depth to a distance shorter than its true design height and then use worklines to locate it vertically. But this of course is not correct in terms of quantities or the analytical model.) Placement of beams is also not terribly intuitive, since I can't simply place them (obviously) in a Plan View as the elevation is constantly changing. I don't know of another way so far other than to try to locate them from within an elevation view using workplanes. How would you best approach this task? Furthermore if I attempt to create a typical framing sheet, I'm struggling with properly displaying the beams underneath the ramps, since at a certain elevation they're going to disappear as they're not within the limits of that plan view's depth. I know you can modify this depth, but I've yet to find a good explanation of how this works and so far I'm just resorting to trial and error. On a related note I can't think of how to get rid of the line that Revit (understandably) draws in to represent the cross-section through my sloped ramps where the "depth" of the plan views is cuts through the relevant ramp slab. So far I've very excited with the possibilities of Revit, but I'm finding it a bit of a challenge to adapt it to the types of structures we almost exclusively do. (And I nearly had a heart-attack when someone asked me about possibly generating a double-threaded helical express ramp!) I'd be happy just to get my beams and column interactions correct for a plain old 6% or so sloped ramp, ha-ha. Thanks for putting up with this ridiculously long post and thanks for your time or suggestions. Regards, -Ardias
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45552_Revit_question_-_beams.pdf
