From the course: Creating Construction Documents with Revit

Revisit the Revit interface: A refresher - Revit Tutorial

From the course: Creating Construction Documents with Revit

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Revisit the Revit interface: A refresher

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- [Instructor] Let's remind you now of how the Revit interface is organized. Revit was developed to be used by more than architects. Structural, mechanical, plumbing, and electrical engineers also use it. Information from these disciplines is incorporated into the output from architects. It's possible for views in the same project to show discipline-specific subsets of information. So let's take a look at the interface. Let's go to Revit. Revit is a Windows-based software. The tools that you would need to create your project are organized at the top of the screen in tabs. The tabs expand to show dedicated ribbons, which are made out of groups of related tools. The Revit interface is where you'll be able to find all the tools that you would need to work in a model. So let's start from the top lift, which is the quick access toolbar. This shows all the tools that you would need very frequently. You would use them very frequently on a regular basis. And you can customize this too. You can customize the quick access toolbar to add in tools that you use regularly, very frequently, or you could right-click on a tool and add it to the quick access toolbar. The ribbon incorporates the tools that you will need to create the building model. And these tools are all grouped by the name of the task to be accomplished. When a tool is activated or when an element is selected, a contextual tab with object-specific tools will appear. To exit this tab, you would need to click the modify tool. The drawing area displays views and sheets and schedules of the current model. The project browser, a super important element of the interface. This is a roadmap to the project. You can navigate your project by scrolling through 2D and 3D views, sheets, families, all the elements involved in your project in the project browser. The Properties palette allows you to see information about any element that you have selected. So now I have selected one of the elevation tags in the drawing area, and now I can see information about that elevation in the Properties palette. The options bar is located below the ribbon. This displays conditional tools dependent on the current tool, or the element that has been selected. The status bar right at the bottom. This gives us tips and tools to get the job done, or to show progress on something that has been done, or allows you quick access to tools like Design Options or shows you the options that you have available to select elements on the interface. It also points you towards the filters where you can filter out selected objects, depending upon the categories that you would like to see. And finally, and this is really cool. The little zero over here shows you the number of elements that are available. So let's say you select a whole bunch of chairs. This will show you the number of chairs that you have selected. It's really a nice way to keep tabs on the elements that you have selected in your project. Finally, let's take a look at the view control bar, something that I use a lot. The view control bar over here gives you control over the scale of the view. You can control things like the detail level, like the visual style, whether it's wire frame, whether it's hidden line. One of my favorite things to use in the view control bar is temporary view properties, which allows me to make changes to the way that elements are displayed in the view without making them permanent. Let's go on to take a look at some common Revit terms that we'll be using. For example, you no longer start by drawing. Now you use modeling to create a virtual building. You don't use blocks anymore. You create families to place repetitive elements. All of these elements go together to create a view. You no longer create drawings. You create views. You control the views with visibility graphics and overrides and view templates. And you place these views on sheets. Parameters tell the software what it is that can be done. Constraints tell the software what it is that can't be done. Elements that you model are created on a work plane. The elements belong to category. So you've got doors that belong to the doors category. You have got maybe lab equipment, which can be placed in the specialty equipment category. And the family elements that you create, they may be of different types. So you can have a table family with a type that is two feet by two feet in size, another type that is four feet by four feet in size. When you place families, you place them as instances. So when I have placed five tables, I have placed five instances of the tables family. All of our elements are placed on levels, and all of this put together gives us a project. So you know what? Think of this as walking around an actual building, taking pictures with an imaginary camera. With the camera, you can take pictures or views. The views are then placed on a sheet. You have full control over the appearance of the views and the information that is placed on the views. For example, two floor plans can appear completely different and show entirely different sets of information depending upon the discipline that they belong to and their intended purpose.

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