Adapt your points of view – Revit 2011

A few years back when I worked for a well known UK reseller, a colleague and I put together a presentation to demonstrate how Inventor and Revit could work together. Part of this presentation showed how to model in Inventor and then pass the geometry to Revit as a SAT file for use within a Revit project. Of particular interest at the time was Inventors adaptive capabilities and we used these to great affect in a structural atrium support solution.

Whilst this was a virtual design concept, the original idea came about from a real project I had been involved in 12 years earlier with Househam Henderson Architects. This was for a TV company that were refurbishing a building, turning it into their new offices and studios in central London. The building being renovated had an enclosed court yard which was opened to the elements, but the plan was to enclose this courtyard with a glazed roof to form an atrium. This would provide a cafe and a social area for staff and visiting guests. One issue was that the new glazed roof would need supporting from the atrium floor level. 

So a structural tree support system was designed to support the roof. At the time this was modelled in AutoCAD release 13, yes you did read that right, that's how old the project is! The big challenge at the time was the scheme constantly changed as the designer and the structural engineer refined the concept further. Load distribution was a nightmare! My special thanks goes out to Househam Henderson for allowing me to use the image above.

So when I saw the new adaptive component family in Revit 2011, I immediately got excited as I remembered the modelling challenges I had encountered in the past. Whilst Inventors adaptive tools resolve the problem, I wanted to do this in Revit! :-)

 

Understanding how the new adaptive points react and their various parameters is without doubt the key. This short video introduces you to the new adaptive family and demonstrates how to create a simple structural tree support. Hope this is useful…..