Following on from my previous post, I decided to get a bit more adventurous with conceptual form and create a family based on David Fano’s hex glass panelling.

As you can see, this appeared to work well on my conceptual roof form and allowed me to create a series of different options:

The next thing I thought to my self was, “wouldn’t this look good if I rendered it”; but this can only be done at the moment within the context of a project file so there was only one place to go.

Having loaded the family into a project file, as I’d done several times in the past, I was a bit shocked to see the mess that it made of my panels:

This one had me scratching my head for a while, and investigating my interpretation of the curtain panel family, until I asked the Autodesk expert on these matters, Zach Kron, who kindly blogged the following answer:

http://buildz.blogspot.com/2009/05/flip-flop-fly-apart-panels-workaround.html

Apparently this is just a bug, which I can forgive them for now amongst all of this new stuff; and it relates to the following surface parameters in that if both are not set to the same value, the aforementioned problem will occur and the panels will fly out of position:

It is sometimes necessary to use these parameters to get the panels positioned correctly within the divided surface, so you may just have to work the grid settings a little harder in order to ensure that both of these settings can remain the same.

Upon setting both of these to be ‘ON’, and reloading the form family, the panels fell right back into position and rendered up quite nicely:

It also gave me the perfect excuse to try out some soft shadow rendering:

Hopefully this will be corrected in the not-too-distant future but hopefully this will be enough for you to avoid the issue until then!

So far I’ve been really impressed with the new conceptual form modelling tools in Revit Architecture/Structure 2010 and managed to find some time to get my head around the various components of this new design process while preparing for our recent Revit User Group.

The new modelling tools are currently available exclusively in the conceptual mass editing environment, which can either be accessed by using the new ‘Conceptual Mass’ family template file or by defining an in-place mass within a standard project.

For the same reasons that I would recommend defining separate family files, rather than create an in-place family, for certain regular family types; I would also lean towards this approach when using the new conceptual design environment to develop and evaluate a proposed design.

As an example, the following image shows a conceptual family file containing some familiar family elements , such as reference planes, reference lines and various dimension parameters.  However, what we also have now are ‘Reference Points’, ‘3D Levels’ and ‘3D Reference Planes’ that allow us to make much more flexible and freeform models.

As a significant added improvement, we can also now adjust any custom parameters by directly manipulating the geometry that relates to each parameter; whereas previously this had to be dialogue-driven.  In the image below, the reference point that defines the top of the end arches is driven by a common angle and distance parameter that can be manipulated by dragging the point on screen.

The parameters are still available in the ‘Family Types’ dialogue, which is still useful for controlled manipulation and particularly for defining multiple ‘Types’ so that various form iterations can be assessed within the project environment.

This skeleton can then be ‘skinned’ easily by using the new ‘Create Form’ tool, with either a surface or solid created, depending on the lines selected.

This form remains fully parametric and can be adjusted using the same parameters previously mentioned.

So we can create much more complex forms than before with the added benefit of parametrically controlled dimensions but that’s not all; we can also divide any surface into any of a series of geometric shapes.

In this example, the top surface has been divided into a notional rectangular panel roof surface for the specified form.

As well as the visual representation, the idea with these surfaces is that they are produced as something that can actually be built in the real world.  For example, at any time the divided surface can be selected and an accurate surface area will be reported.

The configuration of the chosen geometric grid can be altered to suit the desired layout, and there are a number of parameters and on-screen editing tools for manipulation.

The next step is to define and load a new type of family called, ‘Curtain Panel Pattern Based’ for which there is a specific family template file.  In the panel family file, you can add parameters as you would with any other family type to control the likes of dimensions and materials.

These can then be assigned to the divided surface to create a range of interesting and varied effects.

In the form family you can access the parameters of the panel family and make changes to see their effect on the divided surface configuration.

Once the desired panel family has been applied any changes to the form family type parameters will reconfigure the whole surface and the individual panels.  This may take some time depending on the complexity of the geometry and how fast your workstation is; it certainly makes a 64-bit machine a much more compelling proposition!

Once you’re happy with the form and any types that you wish to specify, you can load the conceptual family into a standard Revit project environment.

These can then be placed in the desired location and any defined ‘Types’ will be available in the new ‘Type’ selector on the Ribbon.

In addition to being able to utilise these forms to generate otherwise potentially difficult production information, it can also be used to derive quantitative information using the option to schedule curtain panels.

It also goes without saying that the rendering tools in the project environment are a great help in evaluating each design iteration.

There are obviously a number of additional steps required at each stage, depending on your requirements, but hopefully this gives a useful insight into the basic workflow and who knows, it may even inspire you to give these tools a try!