Learn how to add intricate details to tile patterns using Revit. This article offers a step-by-step guide on how to create different bands of tile within a wall type and apply them to a specific project.
Key Insights
- Revit users can add more detail to tile patterns by creating different bands of tile within a wall type. These bands can represent various elements such as a cove base at the bottom or a different band at the top of the wall.
- Revit provides tools to edit wall type and structure, allowing users to split a plane into different regions for adding bands at specific points. However, users should avoid hitting the 'escape' button while working in this mode as it may lead to loss of data.
- These detailed tile patterns can be applied to any project. They can be tagged just like other materials and can be worked with in three dimensions. This method is most effective when all details within a project are well-defined.
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When we look at this, now let's say we wanted to add a little bit more detail to that tile pattern, but we didn't want to just use some of the other methods, which we'll get into in a later video. But in this case, like, let's say we wanted to build into the wall type a different band of tile at the top and then a different band of tile that would represent like a cove base at the bottom. And so what I can do here is I can go into edit type.
I just wanted to make sure I had that dimension because you'll see in a second here, but I'm going to select the wall and I'm going to go to edit type. I'm going to edit the structure and then we're going to take a look at this plane again, which is the same one we've got, but we're going to split it a few different ways. And so if I go in and I say, let's add a band at a certain point, I can go ahead and pick this split region.
And if you remember from the last video, I gave the warning, the one button you never want to press when you're working in here is escape because you will lose everything and you will have to do it again. So you want to hit split region here and then you're going to hover over the region. You can kind of see how it's trying to find a point to place it.
And this can be a little finicky, which is another one of those downsides to this method, but there are lots of benefits here. And so I'm going to go ahead and click a point and you can see it added a split face. And now this, I've already given the warning, but this is where a lot of people are just dialed into hitting escape to get out of this command here, because that's just how it works in all the other operations within this program.
But do not hit escape because again, it will knock you out of this dialogue. And so if you want to modify that dimension, you want to click modify, and then you can pick this line right here. And now you can see you've got a couple temporary dimensions that we can modify.
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Either one's going to work, but I'm going to set this to seven foot four. And that gives me the top of where my tile is. And then if I were to do it again, say split region and go down here, and you can see how it's kind of finicky, like I was saying, you want to make sure you get it just right.
And then I can modify again. And I can use the scroll to come over or I can pick that line. And I can set this to be two feet, let's say.
And so it'll hold the seven foot four. And then I'll move this down two feet. Or we can make it like one foot four since we're using an eight foot module or eight inch module.
But either way, it doesn't really matter. It's just an example here. And then we can do the same thing at the bottom where I can split region and then I can add like an eight inch base to this.
And now we've got three different regions. And one thing you want to notice here is see this has become variable, because this layer could potentially change based upon the three different regions that we have, but we won't be doing that here. If I wanted to have different materials on these three different regions here, what I have to do is I actually have to create those.
If I were to add a new layer, and again, I'll do the same thing. So I make it finish two and set it to five. Then I can give it the material.
And this time, I'll pick the slate blue. And we'll go with the model pattern of eight inch tile, just so we can see the difference here. Or actually, let's do the four inch tile so we can really see it.
And we'll hit OK. And so now I've got this material that needs to be applied somewhere. So I'm going to go up to the top where I created that one foot four band here.
And again, I'll just zoom in and you can kind of see I'm moving very methodically here. And that's really intentional because the last thing I want to do is go into autopilot and hit escape on accident. And so what we're doing here is I'm going to pick that layer six.
And then if you notice, we have this option here where it says assign layers. If I pick assign layers, what I can then do is with six selected, you can see as I hover over, it's going to allow me to assign this slate blue tile to one of the layers. And you can see as I click on it there, it assigns it.
And so I'm going to hit OK a few times to get out of this dialog box. And now you can see we've got our layer set up. And one of the things that changed here, which can be kind of difficult, is we lost our option for the top offset.
And that's because I made those changes to that wall. If I were to go edit type back into the structure here again. And if I click modify, you can see here when I click on this, it's locked again.
So I can unlock it. Same thing and hit OK. We get out and then we're back into the same position we were before.
I have no idea why it does that. It's just one of those things that you have to pay attention to as you're using this method. Again, this works really well because it's a three dimensional representation of your project and you're able to tag these materials just like you would any other material because they are actually part of the project.
OK, so now if we were to do the base, we can kind of do the same thing. If I go back in, edit type, click edit again, we've only got those two tile materials. If I were to insert one more and I had the top layer selected, so I had to do a little bit more work there.
But I'll go ahead and pick that same, same core roundery and priority and everything like that. And then I'll pick another tile material. This one, I'll just go ahead and duplicate it.
And this one's, I'll just say, call it tile base. And then I'll change this to eight inch tile. And hit OK.
And the same thing. We just zoom in here and I can pop in, I can say assign layers. And I can add it and hit OK.
And hit OK again. And so now you can see we've got, when we look at that elevation view, it's a little easier to see there. But we've got the three different materials.
So I can actually dimension to these, no problem. And those are the three different materials that we've applied to this wall. And this wall is now a wall type.
If I go into my floor plan and I'm going to change the scale to a little bit larger scale so we can kind of see what we're doing here. And then set the detail to medium. You can see we've got this wall as a type within the project that we've created.
And it's always going to draw those things to it. And so if I were to go into 3D, you can see we've now got the tile all set up and on each of the walls. And so this method, like I said, works really well if you've kind of got everything pretty well defined.
Or let's say you're doing a larger project and you know I'm going to have this base, that field tile, that accent tile. And then you can rock and roll. And even if you have a particular paint color that's going to be applied here as a membrane layer, you can totally do that.
And then you know, hey, this is restroom wall or locker room wall or whatever it may be. Everything's set up and ready to go. And then you don't have to worry about setting the tile pattern on each individual wall because that could really take some time to make sure you get it right.
The other thing that's really cool about this is if I were to go in and say drop a door in here. This door has got a masonry frame, so I'm going to turn that off. But you can see the door pops in no problem.
When I look in 3D, there's our door. And it doesn't matter. If I were to change this door to a different height, like go to 36 × 96, it still gets cut exactly the same way.
And the door is just completely part of the wall and cutting through the wall just like you'd expect it to. So it's not like we have to worry about where the tile is or anything like that. So you can see, works out pretty well with doors.
And even if, you know, we did like a water closet. Let's see if there's one in here. Yep, there is.
And so like if I had to add these things, this one's not hosted. But if we had one that was hosted, all the fixtures and everything still hooks up to the wall. And let's see if I pick one that's wall mounted.
You can see it doesn't matter. It still gets placed on the wall. When we look at it in our elevation view, it gets cut.
I'm not sure why that line's there, but it does get cut through the tile pattern. You can kind of see. Still cuts the pattern, but for some reason, not that line.
But it does give you that option to have it part of the wall and work well with especially a larger project where you're using the same tile pattern over and over again. OK, so what we're going to do in the next video is we're going to take a look at more of those modified wall section options, dealing with something that you spent a ton of time with in a previous lesson, doing it manually, but to where we could build it into a particular wall type. And that's going to be our sweeps for our base and for our crown moldings.
