General Questions

Below is a series of good questions from one of your classmates. The questions were timely and something I thought many people may be struggling to resolve. Below, they are posted with permission (sort of) and my comments.

How do I make a truss that does not look like a big blob of giant W beams? I tried going to edit type but did not find the list of beam types that you showed one of the first days.

Load separate beams individually using the Structure>Beam tool then change the properties of your truss to include the structure elements you have loaded. To start, I think it will just have a single bigass wide flange so you will 'load family' (far right button on the ribbon) and then navigate the component library to find what you want. Alternately, some components you can load are already populated. Revit considered these to be joists and can be found in the component library in Structural>Structural Framing>Steel -- if you go this route (which much faster than trying to manually change the elements of other trusses) I would aim for the K or SLH series Joists.

What would be a good way to attach interior walls to the roof? I had to go into wireframe mode to be able to select the walls I needed.

On the interior walls, there are a couple ways to make it happen. The way I usually do is a bit sloppy and not what Revit wants you to do, but it always work. I would select those walls in a plan view and give them a ridiculously large Top Offset, say 20'-0". Next I would go to my 3D view and select these walls (either individually or right click>select all>in view). With them all selected, the ribbon should have a Attach Top/Base tool available; select this and make sure you're attaching the top and not the bottom of your wall. This will connect them and keep them connected until the roof is deleted or you manually break the connection. This is helpful when a prof. tells you to move the roof a foot or so higher… it takes everything with it.

What key(s) do you hold to cycle through objects you are hovering over?

To cycle through objects just hit the Tab key. A small yellow box will appear next to your cursor and tell you what is highlighted and what would be selected if you were to click, this same information is shown in the bottom left corner of the screen and just helps you keep things straight. Both locations shown here:

Is there a better method to get a roof plan than using the site view?

I like using the site view for roofs to start just because I do not have to change any view ranges for a Level. If you're wanting a roof plan to show in the Project Browser and don’t want to duplicate the site plan and then change the crop/scale to work, the easiest way would likely be to just create a new level Architecture>Datum>Level at that height. This will work, but if your roof slope is extreme, you will have to change the view range in the Properties menu of that view. Let me know which way you proceed and if you have any trouble getting either of them set and I will do my best to help troubleshoot.

On the sheets, is there a way to hide the bounding box for the section views?

Yes and yes. There are a couple of way to hide the bounding box on a view and I seem to alternate between the two depending on which I am closest to. Likely the easiest can be found down in buttons on the bottom left of the screen (where scale, detail level, visual style, etc. are found). There are two button side by side, one that turns the crop on/off (left button) and one that shows/hides the crop region (right button) – seen here:

Alternately, in the Properties menu for that specific view there are three options in the Extents menus towards the bottom. Checking/unchecking the top two is the same as clicking the icons on the bottom of the screen.

The third box that can be checked is for the Annotation Crop. The best way to see this is to click once on the crop box in a view. When you do this, you will see a dashed box on the outside of the crop box. With Annotation Crop checked, any text/tag/note that is outside the dashed box at all will be hidden from view. This is helpful when you want a callout or enlarged region on a plan but do not want to show all the elevation markers throughout the project.

Is there a way to move the title/scale line without moving the entire view?

To move the view title, click on the view title once (be sure to not click the actual drawing). With it selected, you can move, drag, drop it wherever you would like.