MASTERING

Revit

® Structure 2009

WeirWing

RichardsonHarrington

Structure Your Designs the BIM WayWhether you’re a structural engineer, designer, or draftsperson making the move to BIM, you’ll dramatically increase productivity and become a Revit Structure expert with the techniques, workfl ows, and previously undocumented tips and tricks in this thorough reference and tutorial.

The expert authors combine their years of Revit and engineering experience to offer you a solid foundation in Revit Structure concepts, before moving to the structural modeling of such elements as walls, frames, and slabs. You’ll learn advanced family creation, standards development, and model documentation and presentation—as well as such crucial topics as annotation, dimensioning, exporting data, 3D visualization, templates, publishing, collaboration, and more. With detailed tutorials and real-world solutions you can implement right away, this is the perfect resource for anyone who wants to master Revit Structure 2009.

COVERAGE INCLUDES:

• Understanding how parametric modeling frees you to focus on your designs• Exploring the broad array of tools in Revit Structure’s user interface• Viewing and referencing plan, section, elevation, and model views—

simultaneously—while you design • Applying scheduling, annotation, and dimensioning info as you go, for

speedier workfl ows• Creating and presenting 3D visualizations that bring your designs to life• Using analytical models to test and simulate, then refi ne your designs• Adding custom content and building your own component libraries

Increase Your Productivity, Speed, and Accuracy with Revit Structure

Create Dynamic Structural Models Using Best Practices

Design, Draw, Detail, and Draft in a Virtual World

Compare Your Designs to Those of Revit Professionals on the Companion Website

View Striking Revit Structure Examples in the Full-Color Insert

ABOUT THE AUTHORSThomas S. Weir is the Director of BIM and CAD Operations at Brandow & Johnston in Los Angeles. He is President and founder of the L.A. Revit Users Group, moderates the Autodesk User Group International (AUGI) Revit Structural forum, teaches Revit Structure at Autodesk University, and wrote the fi rst Autodesk Offi cial Training Courseware for Revit Structure. Eric Wing has been in the AEC fi eld for fi fteen years and has been managing, teaching, and presenting Autodesk applications for ten of them. Eric is AUGI’s Autodesk Training Program Director and is also a columnist for AUGI’s HotNews monthly newsletter as well as for AUGIWorld magazine. Jamie D. Richardson is an Associate and a CAD/BIM manager for Ericksen Roed & Associates located in the Twin Cities area. He speaks at Autodesk University, is active in his local Revit User Group, and mentors students at local technical colleges. David J. Harrington, former president and former board member of AUGI, is currently a structural designer for Walter P. Moore. He also writes for industry publications, is the technical editor for AUGIWorld magazine, teaches at Autodesk University, and maintains a popular blog (caddhelp.blogspot.com).

www.sybex.comwww.sybex.com/go/masteringrevitstructure2009 ISBN 978-0-470-38440-4

CATEGORYCOMPUTERS/CAD-CAM

$69.99 US$76.99 CAN

SERIOUS SKILLS.

Revit® Structure 2009

MASTERINGThomas S. WeirEric Wing

Jamie D. RichardsonDavid J. Harrington

Harness the Power of BIM in Your Structural Engineering Projects

Master Key Techniques and Improve Your Productivity

These authors are a virtual ‘dream team’ of Revit Structure expertise.” —From the Foreword by Nicolas Mangon, Senior Structural Business Line Manager, Autodesk, Inc.

“

84404ffirs.indd 2 10/24/08 9:20:49 AM

MasteringRevit® Structure 2009

84404ffirs.indd 1 10/24/08 9:20:48 AM

84404ffirs.indd 2 10/24/08 9:20:49 AM

MasteringRevit® Structure 2009

Thomas S. Weir

Jamie D. Richardson

Eric Wing

David J. Harrington

84404ffirs.indd 3 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Willem Knibbe

Development Editor: Thomas Cirtin

Technical Editor: David J. Harrington

Production Editor: Melissa Lopez

Copy Editors: Elizabeth Welch and Linda S. Recktenwald

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher: Joseph B. Wikert

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Compositor: Craig Johnson, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Jen Larsen, Word One

Indexer: Ted Laux

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: © Pete Gardner/ Digital Vision / Getty Images

Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-38440-4

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechan-ical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for per-mission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (877) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mastering Revit structure 2009 / Jamie Richardson ... [et al.]. -- 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-470-38440-4 (paper/website) 1. Architectural drawing--Computer-aided design. 2. Architectural design--Data processing. 3. Autodesk Revit. I. Richardson, Jamie, 1975- NA2728.M396 2009 720.28’40285536--dc22 2008040306

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Revit is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. © 2009 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the prop-erty of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

84404ffirs.indd 4 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Mastering Revit Structure 2009. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than thirty years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at nedde@wiley.com, or if you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feed-back is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

Best regards,

Neil Edde

Vice President and Publisher Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

84404ffirs.indd 5 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

84404ffirs.indd 6 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

To my Dad, William Weir, and my Grandfather, Clayton Sanford. I wish they were here to see how my journey has turned out. —Thomas S. Weir

To my big brother, Shon, and my best friend, Baley, whom I think about and miss every day. —Jamie D. Richardson

To my mom, Susie, because she never gets credit but no doubt made me who I am today. —David J. Harrington

84404ffirs.indd 7 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

84404ffirs.indd 8 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

AcknowledgementsThanks to my wonderful wife, Aida Gonzalez, for all the love and support she has given me this year while I worked all these odd hours writing this book. A wonderful photographer, she also took my photo! Thanks also to Sally, Dylan and Janice, and Josie and Steve. This is also for my grandson, Josh, so he knows that anything is possible if you are willing to work hard and really want it to happen. And as always I thank my mom, Estelle, for her constant and wise support.

I want to thank my colleagues David, Jamie, and Eric for their great effort over these last six months in creating this text. There was no blueprint to follow since no other books on this sub-ject have been published, but our combined creative forces made it happen.

I want to thank all my valued colleagues at Brandow & Johnston for supporting me through this venture. I want especially to thank Gabriel Lopez and Gautam Shenoy for their talented assis-tance in preparing the glossy color insert pages. I also want to thank our friend Paul Anderson for his assistance in preparation of the first chapter. And thanks to my colleague Ken Gebhart for letting me use his house model.

Thanks to Nicolas Mangon for helping create the last five amazing years, and to all the dedi-cated, imaginative crew at Revit Structure in Waltham. They are true revolutionaries in our field.

This whole venture also has to give a nod to the people at our publisher, Wiley, who gave us the chance and provided great professional editors who have helped us to craft a first-rate text.

—Thomas S. Weir

To my wife Katie: I can’t thank you enough for giving me the support I needed and for always being there to provide encouragement when it was needed. Yes, there were days early on when I didn’t think I could do this. I also want to thank my daughter, Avery, and son, Layton, for understanding why Dad was always so busy. I hope that someday this book will inspire you to attempt things you didn’t think were possible. Never have the “I can’t do it” attitude.

Thanks to my fellow authors Tom, Eric, and David for giving me the opportunity to be part of the team. It has been great getting to know you better and working with you. A special thanks to Tom for hanging on in the beginning to help make this happen.

Thanks to Ericksen, Roed and Associates for supporting me throughout my writing efforts and our Revit Structure user base for challenging me every day as well as maintaining great atti-tudes. You are the ones who help keep me motivated and encourage me to learn more.

Thanks to the Revit Structure team (the Factory) for listening to their user base and continu-ally adding functionality to each new release. There are too many names to mention, but you have all listened to my comments and have provided support when I needed it.

Thanks to the AUGI forum community and those who blog for creating such a great source of information. It is great to see so many people sharing as well as expanding their knowledge.

Thanks to the entire Wiley team; you have been great to work with. I will be the first to admit that I was a bit overwhelmed with my first round of edits. In the end they all made sense. I appreciated your comments and suggestions.

This book has been a great experience.

—Jamie D. Richardson

84404ffirs.indd 9 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

x | Acknowledgements

Of course I would like to thank my family for allowing the weeknights and weekends to become “leave Daddy alone time” and for also allowing the house to fall into disrepair as I toiled in the office. You may now cash in on all of the “Soon, I promises.”

—Eric Wing

First off, thank you to the best wife a man could have. Carla has made this writing effort the best ever, with all the encouragement and support that I needed. Second, I need to thank the kids for giving me the time away to write: Kara, Ricky, Kaitlin, Kaylee, Krista, and Christopher—yes, I now have time to go into the pool. And as always I thank my dad John, who even though he hasn’t been here for over 10 years is still my inspiration to write about what I know.

To my fellow authors Eric, Jamie, and Tom, it has been a pleasant and challenging experience. Thanks for not giving up at the outset! Even though the team changed as we went along, the very real need for this book to be made kept it going.

To my fellow coworkers at Walter P. Moore, thank you. I am the first to admit that what I know is because of the people I work with and the projects I work on. We share our skills and knowledge freely, and it makes us collectively so much better for it.

To Autodesk and the Revit Structure team, thank you. Your continued efforts to provide a solution to the structural field gave us something to write about! Not to mention, it is fun model-ing buildings! Thank you, Nicolas and Wai, for your support and enlightenment.

To the publisher, Willem, thanks for your encouragement and belief in our concept and desire to write this book. Without our advocate none of this would be possible. Special thanks to Tom for the guidance as I ramped up and began the work and for the patience as I struggled to finish!

—David J. Harrington

84404ffirs.indd 10 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

About the Authors

Thomas S. Weir Tom is associate principal and director of BIM & CAD Operations at Brandow & Johnston, Inc., a consulting structural and civil engi-neering firm in Los Angeles, California. He has almost 30 years of structural design experience on numerous architectural-engineering building projects both large and small.

An early adopter of Revit Structure modeling software and a longtime modeling enthusiast, Tom continues to be in the vanguard of those seeking to help transform the AEC industry as it transitions into the new BIM design era. He is cochairman and founder of the Los Angeles Revit Users Group, one of the most dynamic user groups in the United States. Tom also helped start the AUGI Revit Structural forum.

His first book is used widely for training, Autodesk Official Training Courseware (AOTC) Revit Structure 4 Essentials. Tom is a frequent lecturer on Revit Structure and building information modeling (BIM) and has taught classes at Autodesk University for the last several years.

Tom grew up north of Boston, Massachusetts. After high school and some college, he did a tour in the U.S. Army, leaving as a sergeant in the military police corps. He then studied at UMASS Amherst, where he received his BA in philosophy with minors in english and education. With few jobs available for philosophers, he went to engineering school at Northeastern University in Boston, got married, started a family, and eventually moved cross-country to California, where he began his 27-year tenure at Brandow & Johnston.

In his spare time Tom likes to camp with his family. Music and Astronomy are his main hobbies. He likes to play all sorts of American roots music on his Martin D-18 guitar.

84404ffirs.indd 11 10/24/08 9:20:51 AM

xii | About the Authors

Jamie D. RichardsonJamie is an associate and CAD/BIM manager at Ericksen, Roed and Associates, a structural engineering firm based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has collaborated with several of the archi-tectural firms in the Twin Cities on multiple Revit Structure projects. Jamie joined Ericksen, Roed and Associates in 1996 as a structural designer and, over time, completely modernized its AutoCAD customization.

Throughout his 14 years of using Autodesk products, Jamie has been instrumental in the rollout of several versions of AutoCAD as well as the implementation of Revit Structure. His responsibilities include oversight of all Revit Structure produc-tion. Jamie has been a beta tester since RS2, an avid speaker on Revit Structure at Autodesk University, and a contributor to the Revit Structure forums on AUGI.

His local Revit Structure involvements include being a member of the Minnesota Revit User Group (MNRUG), participating in other speaking engagements on building information modeling collaboration efforts, and mentoring students at local technical colleges.

Outside of work, Jamie enjoys spending time with his family at their cabin in northern Wisconsin. There he likes to fish, play on the water, and relax by late-night campfires.

Eric WingEric Wing is a CADD/BIM support specialist for C&S Compa-nies in Syracuse, New York. Eric has been in the architectural engineering industry since he graduated from Delhi University in 1991. Eric is also the director of the AUGI Training Program (ATP) and is a monthly columnist for various publications. He is also a popular speaker at Autodesk University and many other national events.

84404ffirs.indd 12 10/24/08 9:20:53 AM

About the Authors | xiii

David J. HarringtonDavid is a senior associate with Walter P. Moore and Associates, one of the premier consulting structural engineering firms in the United States. He has over 21 years of structural drafting and design experience on projects ranging in size from a con-venience store to an NFL stadium and convention center cover-ing millions of square feet.

He has been working with Autodesk products since 1987, starting with AutoCAD and later delving into 3D Studio Max and Architectural Desktop, and with Tekla Xsteel (Structure). David has also been customizing the AutoCAD working envi-ronment with AutoLISP and other interfaces to aid in controlling and managing standards for Walter P. Moore. He began using Revit Structure at version 1 and conducts in-house training and customization for this application.

David has written or coauthored for many years. He created the PaperSpace newsletter produced first by the North America Autodesk User Group (NAAUG) and then by Autodesk User Group International (AUGI). He then began assisting in the editing arena and is the current technical editor for AUGIWorld magazine. Books he has worked on are Inside AutoCAD R14, Inside AutoCAD 2000, Inside AutoCAD 2000i, Inside AutoCAD 2002, and Inside AutoCAD 2005.

Back in 1994, David was elected to the board of directors of NAAUG, where he served as the local user group represen-tative. Later he was elected as the AEC industry chair; then within AUGI he was elected to the position of president and served in 1998–1999. Other major contributions during these times are the AUGI Guild, an email-based support system for Autodesk users, and the formalization of the Wish List into a web-hosted system for real-time voting.

He has also been an instructor at Autodesk’s annual training event, Autodesk University, teaching classes on Revit Structure adoption and other Structure-related subjects.

David has lived nearly all of his life in the Tampa area of Florida. In his spare time David enjoys wine and an occasional cigar. His hobbies are limited to relaxing and computer gaming.

84404ffirs.indd 13 10/24/08 9:20:54 AM