Learn how to create a grade beam for earthquake-resisting elements in your structural model using Revit. This comprehensive tutorial provides step-by-step instructions for placing foundations, defining dimensions, creating reference planes, and aligning components for a structurally sound design.
Key Insights
- This tutorial guides users through the process of creating a grade beam in Revit, starting from defining a new family, selecting a structural foundation Revit template, and eventually placing the foundation in the model.
- It further explains how to layout and dimension reference planes, an integral part of creating a grade beam. Detailed instructions include creating offset lines, defining the width and length of the grade beam, and assigning parameters to manipulate them in the model.
- The article also details how to give the grade beam depth and align it with reference planes. It demonstrates how to add parameters for offset from the finished floor dimension and depth, allowing for the creation of various types of grade beams with changeable information in the model.
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Hello and welcome back to Revit Structure. In our previous videos we had placed elements in our structural model, columns, and walls. Now it's time to place foundations on them.
But first we need to create a grade beam for our earthquake resisting elements, since Revit does not provide us one in their basic program. So let's get started. Let's go to the application menu.
Let's go to new and family. And this opens up a dialog box, family template files. We want to go to the structural foundation Revit template file, because that will give us the basic information we need for creating this foundation.
Let's pick it and open it. This takes us to our reference level. In this reference level we're shown an intersecting set of reference planes.
This is the insertion point for our grade beam in our model. So to start with let's create new reference planes that are going to define the extent of our grade beam. Let's go to reference plane.
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Let's draw a reference plane anywhere, it doesn't matter, we will define that later. One above the center line, one below the center line, one to the right of the center line, one to the left of the center line. Now what we want to do is give them dimension information to define them.
So let's go to dimension. First line at the top, the center line, and the bottom line. What we want to do is we want to create an equal offset for these lines.
Let's do the same for the vertical lines. Left, center, right. Okay, let's give them an equal offset.
Now what we want to do is define the width and the length of our grade beam. So again let's pick the first reference line and then the out-to-out of the other reference plane. Again we do that in the vertical position, out-to-out.
Okay, let's escape out of that. And right now we have lines defined with a dimension that we really can't work with. So what we want to do is we want to give them parameters, meaning a way to manipulate them in our model.
Okay, let's pick the first one. What we want to do is we want to go to label and we want to give it length. This is going to provide us the length of our grade beam.
We want to go to the second one and since we're looking down on this we want to give it width. Okay, now we have given our grade beam general parametric information. What we want to do now is create the actual line of the grade beam.
So go to create, extrusion, and we want to go to the rectangle in the draw mode. Just create a box inside of our reference planes. Okay, now what we want to do is align these lines with the reference plane.
So go to the align command and modify. Pick our first reference plane and our first line. Make sure this symbol is locked.
Now it is tied this plane to this reference line. Let's do that all around the other ones. Don't forget to lock as you do this.
It's important because when you give a dimension to the parameter it's going to move that line with it. Okay, let's escape out of that. Okay, so what we've done is we've created our basic shape that we're going to see in the top of our grade beam.
Is it okay? Now what we want to do is we want to give it depth and we don't see it here. So let's go to the elevations which will be the left face of our grade beam. Now what we want to do is we reference plane down and we'll stretch this reference plane down.
Okay, so what we'll do now is we'll find our extrusion again, but first we'll need to provide another reference plane for the bottom of our grade beam. We're going to go to reference plane, create the base of our grade beam. Now we'll create the top of our grade beam.
Okay, so what we want to do now is align the top and the bottom of our grade beam to these reference planes. Let's escape out of that. Let's go to align, pick our first reference plane and the first line of our grade beam and lock it.
We'll go to the next reference plane and align the top and lock it. Okay, these were locked previously in the reference level or looking down on it. Let's accept out of that and now we want to give ourselves the ability to manipulate these levels.
This reference level will refer to the floor plan level that we place this grade beam in our package. Okay, let's go to dimension. Let's give it a first dimension here.
The dimension doesn't matter at this point, we will define that later. And let's give a dimension here. Okay, let's escape out of that.
Now again we need to give these parameters. Again we go to label and we find we only have two parameters, one for length, one for width. We're going to now add a parameter.
This takes us to a parameter properties box. Let's name this one. We're going to call this offset from finish floor dimension.
We're going to have it be a type parameter, not an instance parameter. That way we can produce different types of grade beams and change information on them in the model. Okay, now we're going to give this dimension a label and again we don't have a parameter for depth so we're going to again add another parameter.
We're going to call this one depth. What that will do will give us the ability to give our grade beam a depth by design from the engineer. Okay, so this is finished.
Let's save this and we're going to place it in our folder. We're going to call this grade beam. Save and there you have it.
We now have a grade beam. This is interesting. Now we can manipulate the parameters.
We pick that and we can give it a number. Let's call it three feet and you see we now have a three foot wide grade beam equidistant from the insertion point. We can do the same thing here.
Pick that parameter, change it to six feet. And again our parameters are equidistant from the insertion point of our grade beam. And again we can go to this view on the left side of our grade beam and we can pick this and give that a parameter.
Let's say one foot. And we're now one foot from the finished floor level. And here we can give it a depth of let's say two feet.
Now we have a grade beam that's two feet deep as our initial insert into our project. Do you want to save the changes? Yes. Okay, now that family has been created and we're going to finish this video with that information and we'll see you in the next one.