Creating a standard cove - Revit Tutorial

- [Voiceover] Okay, the first family I'd like to do is called a profile. Essentially, we're just gonna draw this profile right here. It's a basic cove molding. Then what we're gonna do is we're gonna load this into a project, and we're gonna actually sweep it along some walls. But before we do that, we'll see that we're gonna build some formulas to make this thing smart. So to get started let's jump into Revit. Under families, let's go new. Now, in my look in, I want to browse down until I find profile, hosted. Once profile hosted is selected, I'm gonna click on open and here we go. Now, we'll notice that we have two reference planes. These are the most important part of a Revit family. These are what drive the model. I like to consider them the skeleton of the model. First and foremost, we add reference planes, we dimension them, and then we put our 3D extrusions or our line work, on top of the reference planes. So everything is flexible. Now, since this is gonna be kind of a small profile, I want to change my scale. Instead of one-inch equals a foot, I think I'm gonna go to an inch-and-a-half equals a foot. Now what I'd like to do is I'm gonna go to my manage tab and I'm gonna go to project units. I'm gonna go into length, I like to suppress zero feet. I'm gonna click okay, now I'm gonna click okay. Alright, let's get started. What I wanted to do is I wanted to create a reference plane. So everything we do in a family is going to build off these two reference planes that are already here. To do it, the easiest way to make another reference plane, I think, is to select one that's already there, right click on it, and create similar. Now, on my draw panel, I wanna click on my pick lines button and I'm gonna give it an offset of one foot. I'm gonna hover over this reference plane and notice that my new reference plane is gonna shoot off to the right. Once you see that temporary reference plane, pick it, awesome. Now let's do one down, I'm gonna pick here, and I'm gonna offset it downward. Excellent. Hit escape a couple of times. Now, I wanted to mention them before I get lost in reference planes. On my measure panel, I'm gonna click on my aligned dimension button. Now it's very important the order in which we dimension because this is considered our strong reference plane. This defines our origin, right here is the insertion point. So when we dimension something, we have to go from our strong reference, to our weak reference because if this dimension changes, I want this line to move, not this line. So dimension from your strong reference to your weak reference. Now just pick a point off of it. Do the same going down. Go from the strong reference, to the weak reference, and pick a point off of it. Now hit escape a couple of times. Select your top one-foot dimension. Notice that we can add a label to it. If we click the drop-down, we're gonna add a parameter. For the name, I wanna call it depth. Now do we want it to be a type property or an instance property? We want it to be type because of the fact that we want all of these to change if we just change this one. So let's click okay. Now for our one-foot dimension here, let's put another label on it, let's add a parameter. Let's call this height. Now, we have to keep this a type parameter because we're gonna involve this in a mathematical formula with our depth parameter. They have to be the same type. Let's click okay. Now I wanna have that little two-inch reveal here and here. So I'm gonna right click on this reference plane and I'm gonna create similar. On my draw panel, I'm gonna click on my pick lines button and I'm gonna offset this down two inches. Offset straight down two. I'm gonna offset to the right two. Now I'm gonna hit escape a couple of times. On my measure panel, I'm gonna click aligned dimension. I'm gonna go from my strong reference to my weak reference. Pick a point here. I'm gonna go from my strong reference to my weak reference and I'm gonna pick a point right about here. I'm gonna hit escape. Now, I'm gonna hold down my control key and I'm gonna select both of these two-inch dimensions. Now for my label, I'm gonna click the drop-down here and I'm gonna click on add parameter. I'm gonna call this reveal. Notice also how I'm using upper lowercase. This is very important because when we have a mathematical formula, Revit is case sensitive. Let's click okay. Hit escape. Alright now let's draw our shape. So I'm gonna go to my create tab, I'm gonna go to line, and I'm gonna go from here, to here, to here, to here, to here, now on my draw panel, I'm gonna click on my start end radius arc button. And this comes straight up to here, pick that, and let it snap to the tangency. Click right there, now hit escape. Alright, we've got it drawn in, pretty cool. Now what I want to do is on my properties I wanna take a look at my family types. So let's go up to family, types. I wanna add some formulas in here. I want my height to always equal my depth. Notice that in this area here, we can add formulas and they give us a little equal sign. So for my height, I want the formula to just say depth and then hit enter. Depth is one foot. Our height is going to be one foot. But for our reveal, what I'd like to do here is add an if statement. I wanna say if the depth is less than eight inches, I want my reveal to only be one inch. If it's greater than eight inches, I want my reveal to be two inches. So, in the formula, let's type in the word if. Now let's type in an open parenthesis, that would be shift nine, if depth, remember it's uppercase, now let's hit a space, let's add the less than carrot sign, if depth is less than eight inches, then I want the reveal to be one inch. If not, comma, I want it two inches. Now we need to close the parenthesis, and we hit enter. Notice that the reveal is greyed out. Now let's change our depth to six inches, hit enter, notice that the reveal changes to one inch. Click apply, click okay. Everything has flexed along with it. Okay, now let's make some family types. Let's go back to our family types and I wanna click right here and I wanna click on new type. The name is going to be six inches. I'm gonna click okay. Now, let's click on new type again. Type name is gonna be twelve inches. Hit okay. Change your depth to one foot, hit apply, hit okay. Now let's save this. I'm gonna click my save button, browse to where you're keeping your exercise files, I'm gonna call this cove. So filename, type in cove. Let's go to our options. Let's make sure we only have one backup. Then I'm gonna click okay. Now I'm gonna click on save. Now let's test it in a project. So I'm gonna click my purple R and I'm gonna go to new, project. I wanna select my architectural template, and I wanna click okay. Now, on the architecture tab, I'm gonna click the wall button, I'm gonna hit the drop down and I'm gonna come up to exterior brick and CMU on metal stud. I don't care how high it is. Now I'm just gonna click on my rectangle button, I'm gonna draw a rectangle from here to here. I'm gonna go to a 3D view. Now we need to load that profile into here. So I like to come up here and click on close hidden windows, hit control, tab, now let's click load into project. Now let's select our wall, let's click on edit, type. Let's click on the preview button right here and make sure our view is set to section Now for our structure, I'm gonna click on the edit button and down here we have sweeps and reveals and all kinds of stuff. So I'm gonna click on sweeps, I'm gonna get rid of my bricks soldier course. I'm just gonna select it and delete it. But now I'm gonna add and I'm gonna hit the dropdown and I can either choose my cove 12-inch, or my cove six-inch. I'm gonna go with the 12-inch one. My material, I'm gonna click into here, and I'm gonna click my builder button, and I'm just gonna search for concrete. So I'm gonna type in C, O, N, C. Now I'll find concrete precast, and I wanna click okay. My distance, let's type in minus one foot. Let's go from top. Click apply. Now we'll see that it shows up right here. It's on the exterior side which is good. So let's click okay. We can zoom in on it here, let's click okay. Now we've got it. Now we'll see that we can use this cove sweep anywhere we want. All it was, was a simple 2D line work.