Monday, May 14, 2012

Dept. of Echo - Don't use the Basic Ceiling

Originally posted here August 2009 and still true with Revit 2013

When an architect uses the Basic Ceiling-Generic type they are creating a situation for the Revit MEP user they may not be aware of. Face based content does not orient themselves to the correct side or face of this ceiling. For air terminals and others this means they are usually upside-down. I created a short video to demonstrate what I'm writing about.

You can listen and watch below:


Here's an image to convey the issue without watching the video. The left side is a Basic Ceiling and the air terminals are upside down. The right side is the Compound Ceiling and the air terminals are okay.

5 comments:

Erik said...

You'd think they would "fix" that.

Sam said...

I think they left it in there to make it easy to spot terrible modellers who do not actually create their own ceiling or model correctly.

You'd think it's a clue that a ceiling should not be used when it has no actual thickness!

Joseph Troppmann said...

We have been using the basic ceilings where we have an exposed floor assembly above. A not uncommon condition. This allows us to use a ceiling tag. Could make a neww floor tag that resembles a ceiling tag, but that also seems wrong.

BUT we have a lot of face based families and they do as described, and frankly the Revit team has to fix this.

We mirror the first one in section, and then copy them.

Anonymous said...

There is a fix (now):
When you select the face based family that is facing up, click the switch sites icon (double arrow symbol) to switch it over.

Jan

Steve said...

You really don't want to ask an MEP user to fix their family orientation that way. Just don't use the ceiling type and you can avoid the situation entirely (with that ceiling type anyway).