Explore the intricate process of adding interior walls using a 3D design software. This article provides detailed instructions on how to use various tools and functionalities within the software to achieve the desired layout for a floor plan.
Key Insights
- The article discusses the process of adding interior walls to a 3D design, explaining that the starting point of the wall does not significantly impact the result. Instead, the focus should be on hitting grid lines set up at the intersection.
- The use of the wall tool is explained in detail. It is used to draw walls along grid lines, create a corridor, and form a lobby area. The copy tool is also introduced for duplicating walls at specific distances.
- Further, various functionalities like the trim tool and split tool are described. The trim tool assists in making wall modifications effectively, while the split tool helps in making necessary adjustments to the walls within a corridor.
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Let's jump back into Level 1, and then we can start adding our interior walls. So I'll double-click the wheel on the mouse to Zoom Extents, and then we're going to add some interior walls here. I'm going to stick with that same Wall type that we're using, so I'll go to Architecture, Wall.
You can see the Wall type is set to Generic 6. The only difference here is I'm going to change the Top Constraint to Roof. And then I'll go ahead and also change the location line to Wall centerline, and you'll see why we’re doing that in a second.
When we draw interior walls, or walls that are intersecting or dying into each other, oftentimes the question comes up, does it matter at which point along the wall I need to start? And to answer that, I'll just show you kind of a demonstration here. If I start from the outside, you can see the result. If I start from the middle, you can see the result.
And if I start from the finished face here, you can see the result as well. And so it doesn’t necessarily matter at which point that we draw those walls. More importantly is going to be when we hit things like grid lines that were set up on that intersection.
So I'm going to go in with my wall tool, and what I want to do is I want to draw walls along Grid Line B, Grid Lines 2,3, and 4, to start out by creating the layout for our floor plan. So I'll go in, and I'll start with Grid Line B. And so you can see hitting this midpoint, which is where Grid Line B is set, works out pretty well. So I can hit that midpoint, which is the same as the intersection of the wall and the grid, and do the same thing here at the bottom.
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And then now I can go across and add the horizontal walls at Grid Lines 4,3, and 2. Now this isn't much of a layout, as you can tell pretty quickly here, but we will be adjusting it as we go through. So the first step that we want to do is we want to create a corridor along Grid Line B here. And to do that, I can simply just select the wall on Grid Line B, and I can use my Copy tool, and I can copy it over 6' 6".
If you're a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you'll know that when we hover over our Copy tool, it'll give me the option for a keyboard shortcut. So C-O, if you like that one, you can use that, or you can just use the Copy tool from the Modify tab. Copy works by selecting a base point and then moving it over into a specific direction.
And so you can see I've moved it over to the right, which is which way we want to go. And so I'll type in 6' 6” for 6'6", and that's going to create where we'll have the bank of offices here. The next thing we want to do is we want to form up where our lobby is going to be.
So the wall along Grid Line B is going to be continuous for the most part, and we will have to make a few adjustments in there. But what we'll want to do here is get it started by making some trim modifications. So trim is a tool that we use quite a bit here, and it replicates essentially the fillet tool in AutoCAD.
And so if we go to our Modify tab, you can see that we'll have three different types of trim. Trim Extend to Corner, Trim Extend Single Element, and Trim Extend Multiple Elements. So Trim Extend to Corner is what we'll use here.
And if I pick the side of the wall or the objects that I want to keep, and here, you can see that it'll bring it all to a corner here. So trim or extend to a corner. If those were separated from each other, say in this example here, if I use that same command, you can see it'll extend to the corner, instead of trimming to the corner.
If I were to use the same thing, and I'm using keyboard shortcut (TR) for this, that's another good one to know, along with the dimension one. But if I select the opposite side, you'll notice that it makes the outside corner going this way. So it's all about the side that you want to keep for when you're using these trim tools.
Now, Grid Line 3 and Grid Line 2 have walls that go all the way across, but we definitely don’t want them within this corridor. And so what we have to do is we have to use a Split tool and then a trim option to get this to work. And so I'll show you a couple of different ways that we can make this happen.
The first way is we can use Split Element. And if I were to split the element here, it'll create two different walls for me. So I'm going to hit Esc twice to get out of the split command.
And you can see now I have two different walls that I can work with in the middle here. And so we'll use the Trim Single Element tool, and I'll select my cutting edge, which will be this wall here. And this is where it gets a little tricky if you're really familiar with AutoCAD.
Normally you would pick this side because that's the side you're trimming off, but with Revit, we pick the side that we want to keep. And so I'll do the same thing for this one. And that clears up the corridor.
And so another option that we could do is we can use the Split tool, but we can say delete inner segment. And this one can be a little tricky because you have to be a little bit more precise on how you split. And so you want to make sure as you're splitting that you're actually on the right location.
And so because I know Revit is going to trim my walls appropriately, I want to make sure I'm splitting the horizontal wall at a point that's inside the vertical walls. What I'm doing here is I'm actually making sure that the horizontal center is highlighted. And I'll do that first.
So I'll click here. That's my first point. And then I'll find another point along here and click.
And you can see it deletes the inner segment. This is one that you're going to want to become familiar with before you use it a bunch because it can go wrong pretty quickly. And what I mean by that is if you're using the split with the delete inner segment checked, if you're a little careless with how you're splitting, you’ll end up with these little nubs.
And that's not so great because then you have to just go back in and either drag the extent of the wall or use the Trim tool, you're going to have to make a modification after the fact, which isn’t so great.
