Creating a table top - Revit Tutorial

- [Instructor] When drawing a table family the first thing that you need to decide is will this table be parametric? Meaning will the dimensions of this table change. If the answer to that question is yes, the dimensions of this table will change. Then you need to come up here to the create tab and then start to draw in reference planes. Because reference planes help with the changing of dimensions of objects like tables. Let's start by drawing a reference plane. Here inside of plane view, click once, come straight across and then click again right about there. What we want to do is draw a rectangular shape out of these reference planes. Click here. Come down. Click about here. Come over. Click about here. Come up. Once you've accomplished that you can hit the ESC key a couple of times to get out of the reference plane command. And if we look we can see that we have roughly a square shape available to us here for the top of the table. Now we also know that a table top has thickness to it. So what we need to do is come underneath the project browser then look for one of our elevations like our front elevation view. So I'll double-click on front elevation. Right now I wasn't seeing where my reference level was so I did a zoom extents. Which is your double-click really fast on the wheel of the mouse or just type in the letters Z E on your keyboard to zoom extents. Next come over here to create. And we'll draw in one more reference plane. And this'll be for the overall thickness of our table top. Actually though, there's probably one other reference plane that we should probably draw in. Because even though this line here will ultimately be for the thickness of our table top, realistically though this is all going to be a part of the exact same family meaning the legs and all the pieces that make up a table will all be a part of the same family. So this reference plane really won't be all the way down here. It will be up where the bottom edge of the table needs to be. So because of that I'm going to draw in another reference plane from here to here. And ultimately the table top will be between this reference plane and this reference plane. Now what I want to do is hit the ESC key to get out of this command. And then select on this reference plane that was just drawn. There's an option here to click to name. Click on the click to name and for this reference plane we'll just call this table bottom. It's really the bottom of the table top. Now your typical table is about 30 inches tall. We'll just make a basically a dining room table. So since it's about 30 inches tall up to the top let's give the table itself maybe a two inch thickness. So we need it to be 28 inches off of this bottom plane. So come here and then type in 28 inch. Then you can hit enter. Now we can see that this line here represents the bottom of the table. Now select this reference plane. We could give it a name but as of right now we'll leave it without a name. The important thing is to change this dimension to be two inches. That will be where the table top is actually at. In between these two reference planes. The next thing we want to do is to go back into a floor plan view. So let's go here to our reference level view. Now I want to draw in where that table top will be. Come up here to create. And then select on extrusion. After clicking extrusion we can either use individual lines to draw in the table top or we can use a rectangle. Let's use a rectangle. After selecting on rectangle click this intersection, come down click on this intersection. Now lock each one of these little padlocks that shows up so that each one of these lines stays locked to the reference planes. Hit the ESC key a couple times on the keyboard in order to get out of the selection. Now select on the big green check mark. Then click somewhere out in here. Now we're getting close to having a table top but we need to make a few adjustments. In fact what we want to do is that we want to assign properties to this which would allow the table top to be able to adjust. To assign properties we need to come up here to the annotate tab and then select on the align dimension. Click here. Here, here, and then off in this direction. Then there'll be this option here for equal. Click equal. Do the same thing going straight down the side. Then click equal. Now we need to do another align dimension. From here to here. And then an align dimension from here to here. Once that's been accomplished we now need to tell each one of these dimensions what they actually represent. So we'll hit the ESC key a couple of times on the keyboard. Then for this dimension, this will be the table length. On the ribbon going across the top we have this label. And we want to create a parameter which will be a new label which will be available to us. So click on create parameter. And this will be a type parameter. Meaning that each type of table may have a different length associated with it. Let's just name this parameter table length. Then click on OK. Select on this six foot dimension or whatever the dimension says for you. And now we want to add a parameter for that dimension. So we'll create a parameter. And we'll name it table width. Also a type parameter. Click on OK to that. Next let's go back into an elevation view. To the front elevation. Notice how far down this table top is? Well all we need to do is select on the table top and then click and hold your mouse button down on the top arrow, and then pull it up to the top line. Padlock it. Do the same thing with the bottom arrow. Click on the bottom arrow, pull it up, padlock it. Now this table top will always be locked in between these two reference planes. The next thing that we want to do is add a couple of more dimensions. So come back up here to annotate, go to align. And I want to add a dimension from here to here. And then just click out here. And now lock this little padlock which is associated with the dimension. Hit the ESC key once. Now draw another dimension. From here to here. And then click somewhere out here in space. By locking this two inch dimension what that means is that these two reference planes will always be two inches apart from each other. That means that the table top itself will always be two inches in thickness. The next thing we need to do is hit the ESC key. Twice on the keyboard. Select on two foot six inches. And it too needs to have a parameter associated with it. So come up here, select on create parameter. And we'll just name that parameter table height. So if we don't always want it to be 30 inches it can be whatever height that we assign to it. Click on OK. And now we have a table height parameter. To test whether or not this is holding together the way that it's supposed to on the ribbon select on family types. For the table height let's change this dimension. And then see if the table top moves up and down. Change it to two foot tall. Then click on apply. We can see that it seems to have moved down. Change it to three foot tall. See if it still holds together. Still looks good. Now let's change it back to two foot six again. Click on apply. Now since we're here on the dialog box already, let's make the table length be a fairly long 10 foot. As for the table width, let's make it five foot. Click on apply. Click on OK. Now because of the view that we're in we can't actually see the table adjust itself, but if we come back into our floor plan view here where we have floor plans reference level under the project browser, we can now see the table length is 10, the table width is five, and this table top is holding itself in place. Next let's take a look at this table top in 3D. If we come up here to the default 3D view we can now see that we have a table top that's just floating there in air waiting to have legs added to the bottom of it.