Discover how to simplify your architectural drafting and design workflow by using the Repeating Details tool in Revit. This tool can help you efficiently create and place linear arrays of details, such as a stone veneer pattern, at regular intervals in your designs.
Key Insights
- The Repeating Details tool in Revit can be used to quickly create and place linear arrays of detail components. This can be particularly useful for elements like masonry that need to be shown at regular intervals.
- A detail component, such as a stone veneer pattern, can be created by using the filled region tool to draw a specific design, which can then be saved as a Revit family file for later use in the project file.
- Once a detail component is created and loaded into the project file, the Repeating Details tool can be used to automatically place the detail at specified intervals. This can create a consistent and visually engaging representation of elements like stone veneer in architectural designs.
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In this video we're going to use a tool called Repeating Details, and Repeating Details is something that's used to place linear arrays of other detail components at a regular interval. So you could think of an example like masonry. In a wall section, you'd want to show it at a regular interval, and it may be a little cumbersome to copy 20 detail components.
So this tool will allow you to quickly draw a linear array using it much like a line tool. So let's first create a detail component of our stone veneer, and what the goal of this exercise is to create a stone veneer pattern that could repeat on our detail, and then we can also use it in one of our wall sections. So let's go to the Revit application menu at the top left corner of our window, click it once, and select new family, and we're going to create a detail item.
So use the detail item template, open that up, and we're going to use a filled region that will represent our stone veneer, and one side is going to be slightly rough and irregular, and then the inside will be smooth. So let's go up to our create tab in the ribbon, detail panel, we'll select filled region. Let's edit the type and duplicate it, and we'll name it stone veneer, and let's change the fill pattern parameter to diagonal up drafting.
So right now it's set to masonry concrete block. Let's just change that up to diagonal up drafting. Okay, click okay, and we'll change the subcategory which will be the edge style to heavy lines, and what we're going to do is draw a rectangle that is one and a half inches deep and seven and five-eighths of an inch wide, and then we're going to create a three-eighth inch joint where the mortar would be so that we have an even eight-inch interval that we can use for our repeating detail.
So let's first start at the intersection of our two reference planes, and we'll go down an inch and a half, and then let's go across seven and five-eighths. We can just type zero space seven space five-eighths and create a closed loop, and what I'm going to do is delete this bottom face and then draw in any regular edge on the outside, and you can use the shortcut s o to turn your snaps off, and you can kind of adjust this as you'd like to make it work for you. Now we have an exterior face and then an interior face that's smooth.
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Click the green check box to end, and you'll notice our lines are very wide where we use the heavy line boundary, and that's because our scale is set to half inch equals a foot. If we just change that to three inches equals a foot, it'll be a more reasonable line weight, and that's how it's going to appear in our detail that's scaled also to three inches equals one foot. Now let's make the mortar joint that's going to be three-eighths inch wide, and we're going to place it on the right end of our filled region here.
We'll go back to create filled region. Let's change our type to gypsum, and then we'll also use heavy lines for this filled region, and what we're going to do is draw a three-eighths of an inch wide by one and a half inch deep mortar joint. Hit the check box to end it, and I'm going to adjust my stone a little bit.
It's going a little bit behind my mortar joint, and I want it to kind of be a bit proud of it, and then I just want to verify that I keep the same edge here. Okay, so they're both at equal distances. Okay, so now that we have our rough face, now let's save this file as stone veneer, and this will be a Revit family file, which will be a detail component, and now that we've named it stone veneer, we can load it into our project file.
Now we're back in our view plan detail window jam, and we're going to go to the annotate tab in the ribbon and the detail panel, and expand component, and we're going to select now repeating detail component, and in the properties, right now it's set to repeating detail for brick. Let's change that, edit type, duplicate, and let's call this one stone veneer, and then let's change the detail parameter. Instead of using a brick, component, let's go down and browse and find our stone veneer family we just made, and the layout is going to be a fixed distance, and let's change our spacing to be eight inches, and the rotation, let's set it to 90 degrees counterclockwise.
We'll click okay, and now let's draw our repeating detail down here, and you can see I'm just simply drawing a line, just as you would with any other line, whether it's a drafting, or detail, or model line, and it automatically will repeat at every eight inches the family that we just created. Turn back on our thin lines. Now you can see we have a nice representation of our stone veneer, and we can now reuse this repeating detail at any other view in our project file.
So let's go to our wall section, number three, double click that, and in this section we're showing our solid wall at the edge of where the stair intersects it, and we have stone veneer all the way up to 14 feet 8 inches above finish floor, which is that reference line here. So what we'll do is go back to annotate, component, repeating detail component. We can start at the bottom, all the way to the top here, and then simply select our repeating detail and move it back one and a half inches.
And you can see now we have a graphic representation of our stone veneer in this wall section, which will match exactly what is shown in our details. In the next video we're going to review a command called symbols.