Creating floors - Revit Architecture Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to create some floor slabs for this small commercial building layout. Now, walls and windows and doors are very simple objects to create, because they only require a few clicks, and Revit can infer their shape very easily from those basic locations. But when it comes to floor elements, you actually have to give Revit a little bit more information. So, we refer to our floor element as sketch-based object. Sketch-based objects just simply means you're go into a 2D Sketch Mode. You're going to sketch out the shape that you want the object to have, and then when you click finish, Revit will create the 3D form. So, let's go ahead and get started here. On the Architecture tab, all we need to do is click the Floor button. If you use the little drop-down, it's the first button here, Floor Architectural. Now, that takes me to Sketch Mode. How do I know I'm in Sketch Mode? Well, the drawing will gray out, for one. So, that's one clue. And if you look at the ribbon, it takes us over to the Modify tab, and it adds Create Floor Boundary, to the name, and it tints it in this greenish color. So, those are all clues that we're in Sketch Mode. But the biggest indication that we're in Sketch Mode, is the existence of the Mode panel. The Mode panel has two buttons, Finish and Cancel. Those are the only two ways out of Sketch Mode. So sometimes, when you first go to Sketch Mode, you get a little confused, because it jumps over to the Modify tab, and everything grays out, and you weren't expecting it. So, then folks start clicking on other ribbon tabs, wondering what happened. Well, then everything's grayed out, so you get a little more panicky, you start pressing Escape, and Cancel, and clicking the Modify tool. Don't do any of that. Always just stay on the Modify tab. When you're in a Sketch Mode, everything you need is right here in the Modify tab. So, this is the right place to be, and the only two ways to get out of here, are these two buttons. Now, before we click one of those buttons, we're going to build our sketch. So, let's look at the default settings, that are already enabled here for us, in Sketch Mode. For one, Boundary Line is turned on. So that's good, that means we're going to be drawing the boundary edge of the floor slab. The other mode that's turned on is Pick Walls. The easiest way to create a floor boundary, is to use your existing wall geometry. So, with Pick Walls, you're going to be able to simply click on a wall, and it will automatically trace that wall, and give you a sketch line, like so. So, you'll see that magenta sketch line, that occurs right there. Now, I'm going to zoom in on what I just clicked, and I want to point out this checkbox right here, on the Options bar. This said Extend into wall core. Now notice that the sketch line went to the face of the core, in this particular wall. Now, there's a flip grip right here. So, if you actually wanted the inside face of the core, instead of the outside face of the core, it's easy to flip it, using that little grip. Now, I want the outside face, and I'm going to come over here to my Navigation bar, and do Previous Zoom, to get back out to the entire floor plan. And I will continue clicking on exterior walls, to build this sketch. Now, I want to go all the way around, except for the front wall here, because if you move your mouse here, you'll notice it's actually in two pieces. Now, it would be possible to click both, and let the end points touch end to end, to create that sketch, but I prefer to do it this way. I'm just going to click one side of that front wall, and then go to my Trim and Extend command, and then join up that corner. Now, it's really important that you create this enclosed sketch. If I undo that, and I try to finish, this big gap here, won't let me finish. In other words, before you can create a sketch-based object, you have to have a valid sketch. So, I'm going to click Continue here, and again, I'll trim that corner up. Another invalid sketch is, if you have any lines that overlap one another. So that would cause an error, as well. So, I'm going to just Control Z, to undo that. So, the sketch has to be enclosed, and it can't have anything overlapping. So, once I've created a valid sketch, then I can just simply click the big green Finish Edit Mode checkbox button, and that will complete the creation of the floor. Now, Revit's always looking to create relationships between the various elements in your model. And what it's asking us right now is, do we want the walls that are underneath this floor to attach to the bottom face of the floor? Now, sometimes you'll answer Yes, but in this case, I'm actually going to say No. And I'll explain why I'm saying no, a little bit later. Once the floor is created, it'll stay selected on screen, so you can, kind of, verify the shape that you created there. And if you're happy with it, you can move on to the next aspect of your editing. Or, every sketch-based object, will actually have some sort of an edit command. And in the case of the floor, you'll have an Edit Boundary. So, it's real easy to click Edit Boundary, and go right back into the sketch, and make some sort of a modification, if necessary. Now, if you decide you don't actually want to make that modification after all, that's what the big red X is for. You just simply click that, Revit will say, "Are you sure?", and you say, "Yeah", and it will cancel that modification. So, there's our first floor slab. Now, I'd like to go up to our level two, and create the second-floor slab. Now, as you can see, the second floor plan layout is a little different than the first floor. So, the shape of this floor object will vary slightly. So, let me go back to the Architecture tab, click my Floor button again. And, just like before, I'm going to start clicking on some of the exterior walls. All the same defaults were enabled. Boundary Lines, Pick Walls, Extend into Core. Now, I'm just going to pick those lines that you've seen me indicate there, on the left-hand side of the plan, because in here, in the middle, of the plan, is our reception area, and that's actually a double-volume space. So, I don't want to place a floor across the top of that. So, what I'll do instead, is use my Trim and Extend to a Corner, and trim this line to this line. Now, make sure you pick the left side of this line. If you pick the right side, it'll trim it the wrong way. So, we want a enclosed shape over here. Now, this is a valid boundary, and I could click Finish, but the trouble is, if we zoom in, we wouldn't have any way to get from the first floor to the second floor. So, we need some sort of a balcony to connect that stairwell over to the floor slab. Now, there are no walls here to pick, so you can't use Pick Walls for this. So, what I'll do instead, is I'll just draw lines. So, I'm going to draw a line from the end point of the stair, and snap it to the floor, and then I'll draw another one right here, and another one right there. Click the Modify tool, to cancel out. So now, if I tried to finish, this is not a valid sketch. So, I'll have to click Continue and I need to break out this segment of that line, right there. So, I can use my Split command, with Delete Intersegment, and I can split from here to here, to take that little extra segment out. Now, I'll zoom back out a little bit, to see the whole sketch. Looks pretty good. And I'll click Finish Edit Mode. Now, we're going to get that same question again, about walls that go up to the underside of this floor. So, this time we're talking about all these office walls, in the first-floor plan, so I'm going to say Yes this time. Then, Revit actually zooms out, and shows you all of the exterior walls, and indicates that there's an overlap between them, and the floor slab as well, and asks if you want to address that. And it's offering to join the geometry. So, I'm going to say Yes for that question, as well. Now, to show you what both of those Yes's did, let me deselect the floor slab, come up here to the Quick Access toolbar, create a Section View. And I'll just click two points across the floor plan to slice through where the floor slabs are, and create a new section. Now, you'll see this dash line indicating the extent of that section, and then I'll just sort of click away from it, to deselect it, and then double-click the blue arrow there, to open up that section view. Now, let's zoom in. Over here on the left, on a bay that shows us both the second floor and the first floor slab that we created. And now let's talk about what those yes's, that we answered, actually did. So, the first question asked about the walls that go up to the level of the floor, and did we want to attach them to the underside of the floor instead. And so you can see, that this wall, even though it goes all the way up to the top surface level two, it actually cut it down to the underside of the floor slab, and made a nicer connection right there. The second question, in order to really understand what it's doing, I'm going to come down here to the View Control bar, click the level of detail pop-up, and change to medium-level of detail, so that we can see the internal layers in the wall structure. And now, you can see very clearly, that the floor comes through the wall, and stops at the face of the core. And, more importantly, that second questions said, "Do you want to clean that condition up?" So, when the floor slab penetrated the wall, it actually created this little pocket to receive it. Now, the command for that was called Join Geometry. And Revit just performed that operation for us. Now, let's look at the first-floor slab. It asked us the question that we saw over here, and if we had done that with these exterior walls, they would've actually come down, and made this little unnatural notch, right here. So, that's why I answered no there. So, what I'd prefer here, is the Join Geometry question, that it didn't ask. So, you can go to the Modify tab, and actually use the Join Geometry command manually, to create this connection yourself. So, I'll click Join Geometry. You pick the first object you want to join, and then the second object you want to join, and that will just simply clean them up. So, you might need to create other sections elsewhere in the plan, and do additional clean ups. But, it's as simple as using the Join Geometry command, to perform that action. Now, I'm going to zoom back out a touch, and I want to show you one last thing that we've created here. When we did Pick Walls, inside the Sketch Mode, that was not a tracing command. That actually is a relationship. So, if I select this wall, and move it, notice that both of the floor slabs stay connected to that wall. So, when you use the Pick Walls option, you're building a relationship between the slab and the walls, which means all future edits become more seamless. So Revit's always looking for opportunities to create these relationships, and help make your model a little bit more intelligent. So, floor elements are easy to create. You just go into a 2D Sketch Mode. You sketch out the shape you want, and when you click Finish, Revit creates the 3D floor slab geometry. If you're using features like Pick Walls, and Join Geometry, then you'll even get intelligent connections between the other geometry surrounding the floors within the model.