Chapter 18 • Site and Topography 814 FIGURE 18.20 The Building Pad button 3. In the Properties dialog, make sure Pads is current, and click Edit Type. 4. Click Duplicate. 5. Call the pad Footprint, and click OK. 6. For the Structure, click the Edit button. 7. Change the Thickness to 6 ″. 8. Click OK twice. 9. Change Height Offset From Level to 6 ″. 10. Place the pad against the outside of the foundation wall underneath the entire model, as shown in Figure 18.21. 11. Click Finish Edit Mode. 12. In the Project Browser, open the East Corridor Section. 13. You can see the pad sitting on top of the footing extending past the wall, as shown in Figure 18.22. Select it. 14. When the pad is selected, right-click and select Hide In View ➢ Elements, as shown in Figure 18.22. 15. Go to the Model Site panel and click the Site Settings arrow. Adding a Property Line 815 FIGURE 18.21 Place the pad to the outside of the wall. FIGURE 18.22 Hiding the pad in the view 16. In the Section Graphics area, change the Elevation Of Poche Base value to –15 ′ 0″. 17. Click OK. The earth hatch is now beneath the slab area. With the pad in place, we can now rest assured that our sections are showing the earth where it is supposed to be. The next item we will cover is creating a property line. In most conventional drafting applications, this involves nothing more than adding a polyline around the site. In Revit that approach is the same, but the property line can tell you much more about the boundary it is incasing. Adding a Property Line If you want to add a property line, Revit provides you with the tool you need. Of course this is Revit here, so we are not just adding a “dumb line” to the model. When you start the Property Line command, Revit will ask you if you want to Chapter 18 • Site and Topography 816 create the property line either by using bearing distances or by Sketch (which can be converted to a bearing table after it has been placed). To add a property line, follow this procedure: 1. In the Project Browser, go to the Site floor plan. 2. In the Massing & Site tab, click the Property Line button, as shown in Figure 18.23. FIGURE 18.23 The Property Line button 3. In the Create Property Line dialog that appears, click the Create By Sketching choice. 4. Draw a series of lines around the perimeter, as shown in Figure 18.24. 5. Click Finish Edit Mode. 6. Select the property line. 7. On the Modify | Property Lines panel, click the Edit Table button. 8. Click Yes if you get a “do you want to continue” dialog. 9. Close the Property Lines dialog, and save the model. You now have a table of deed data that can be modified as you see fit. The next item on the agenda is a powerful tool when it comes to creating a site in Revit. As much as it would be nice to never depend on CAD, most of our topographical information will be coming from the CAD world. Revit has a “By Instance” function that can facilitate this procedure. Creating a Toposurface by Instance 817 FIGURE 18.24 Sketching the property line Creating a Toposurface by Instance Creating a toposurface by instance requires that you import a CAD file. After you import the CAD file, you can go to the Toposurface command. Within the Toposurface command is the choice to use an imported instance to drape a sur- face from Revit. To get started, you can either choose a site that was created in CAD that you may want to experiment with, or you can go to the book’s web page at www.sybex .com/ go/revit2011ner. From there you can browse to Chapter 18 and find the file called contours.dwg. To use an imported instance to create a toposurface, follow these steps: 1. In Revit, create a brand-new project. 2. Save it as Imported Site.rvt. 3. In the Project Browser, go to the Site plan. 4. On the Insert tab, click the Import CAD button. 5. Browse to the contours.dwg file you downloaded. (If you have your own site .dwg, that’s fine too.) 6. Before you click Open, change Colors to Black And White, Layers to All, and Import Units to Feet. Also, change Positioning to Auto - Origin To Origin. Chapter 18 • Site and Topography 818 7. Click Open. 8. Type ZA to see the entire site. 9. On the Massing & Site tab, click the Toposurface button. 10. On the Tools panel, click Create From Import ➢ Select Import Instance, as shown in Figure 18.25. FIGURE 18.25 Select Import Instance command 11. Select the imported CAD file. 12. Uncheck Layer 0 and Defpoints in the Add Points From Selected Layers dialog. 13. Click OK. 14. In the Properties dialog, change Material to Site - Grass. 15. Click OK to get back to the model. 16. Click Finish Surface. 17. Go to a 3D view. Your topography should look like Figure 18.26. Now that would be a hard toposurface to create entirely within Revit! The next item we need to explore is how to grade a surface, giving us areas of cuts and fills. The process itself is straightforward, but as you are about to learn, we need to first deal with project phasing. Creating a Graded Region This section of the chapter will focus on creating cuts and fills within a site. We do this by lowering and raising points that already exist within the topography. The problem is, after we alter the site, we do not know which part of the site is original, or existing, and which part is new. This means that we have two issues at hand. Creating a Graded Region 819 FIGURE 18.26 The new toposurface in Revit The objective of the following procedure is to move the site to an existing phase to prepare it for the grading procedure. 1. Type VG. 2. In the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog, click the Imported Categories tab. 3. Uncheck contours.dwg. 4. Click OK. 5. Select the toposurface. 6. In the Properties dialog, change Phase Created to Existing. 7. On the Massing & Site tab, click the Graded Region button, as shown in Figure 18.27. 8. In the next dialog, click Create A New Toposurface Exactly Like The Existing One. 9. Select the toposurface. 10. You will get a warning stating that you may not be able to see all the points. Click the X to close the warning. 11. In the Properties dialog, change the type to Floor Plan: Site. 12. Scroll down to the View Range field, and click the Edit button. 13. Choose Unlimited for both Primary Range: Bottom and View Depth Level. Chapter 18 • Site and Topography 820 FIGURE 18.27 The Graded Region button 14. Click OK. 15. Select a window around the center of the site (this will select a bunch of points), as shown in Figure 18.28. 16. In the Properties dialog, enter a value of 0 for the elevation. FIGURE 18.28 Selecting a range of points Orienting a Site 821 17. Click Finish Surface. 18. Verify that your site appears similar to Figure 18.29. FIGURE 18.29 The site with cuts and fills 19. Save the model and close it. Now that we know how to create graded regions in a site, it is time to delve into physically rotating a site to true north. Orienting a Site How do we rotate a site to true north while keeping the rest of the model posi- tioned in the 0 degree orientation? Well, there is a specific procedure, which you will learn by following along: 1. Open the NER-35.rvt file you have been working on (or any file with a site that you may be using). 2. Go to the Site plan (if it does not open there) and find the Orientation category in the Properties dialog; change it from Project North to True North. Chapter 18 • Site and Topography 822 3. On the Project Location panel of the Manage tab, click Position ➢ Rotate True North. 4. In the Options bar, type 130 for the CCW Rotation Angle value, as shown in Figure 18.30. FIGURE 18.30 Rotating the site 5. Go to the Level 1 floor plan; the site will still be oriented to Project North while the site plan is of a different orientation. Of course, now this mind- set makes the North Wing and the East Wing nomenclature irrelevant to the actual orientation of the site (see Figures 18.31 and 18.32). TIP You must physically reposition the property line based on the northing easting coordinates that were preset. In the future, add the prop- erty lines after you rotate the site to true north. Now that we have accomplished rotating the site, what happens if we need to move the entire model to a datum point recorded from sea level? As it stands, we just started modeling from an elevation of 0. This situation needs to be addressed. The objective of the following procedure is to relocate the datum elevation to 100 ′–0″: 1. In the Project Browser, open the South elevation. 2. Select one level marker. 3. In the Properties dialog, click Edit Type. Orienting a Site 823 FIGURE 18.31 The site rotated to true north FIGURE 18.32 The Level 1 floor plan rotated to Project North 4. For Elevation Base, select Shared. 5. Click OK. 6. On the Manage tab, click Position ➢ Relocate Project (see Figure 18.33). 7. Pick the point labeled “1” in Figure 18.33. . will still be oriented to Project North while the site plan is of a different orientation. Of course, now this mind- set makes the North Wing and the East Wing nomenclature irrelevant to the. the topography. The problem is, after we alter the site, we do not know which part of the site is original, or existing, and which part is new. This means that we have two issues at hand. Creating. close it. Now that we know how to create graded regions in a site, it is time to delve into physically rotating a site to true north. Orienting a Site How do we rotate a site to true north while