Understanding wall families - Revit Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this and the next couple videos, I want to talk a little bit more about walls, their settings and properties, and what we can and cannot edit. So the first thing is that every wall that we've used so far throughout the course has actually been part of the same family called the basic wall family. Now, this might surprise you at first until I remind you that walls are system families. Now, if you don't recall what a system family is, that just simply means that it's built into the software and it can't be changed by you and I the users. So we can't edit system families at all. They're already built in the way that they're going to behave. What we can edit is types. So all of the variation that we've seen between stud walls, and brick walls, and concrete walls, that's all happened at the type level, not at the family level. So it's actually the category that determines the behavior that we're talking about. Categories are either component categories, which means that we can open those families in the family editor, make changes to them, and vary them in any way we like, and also customize their types, or their system families, which means they're just built into the software, they're already pre-designed to do a certain function, and the only thing that you and I can customize are the types. So walls are the ladder type, they are system families. So that means that all of the customization that we're going to do on walls is going to occur at the type level. So let me show you an example. So what I want to do here, first of all, is point out that I have a couple different walls here visible on screen, the exterior wall is this exterior brick on metal stud wall. And the interior walls that we're seeing here are this interior four and seven eighths inch partition. Now we can see that in the Tooltip, but you can also see it if you select the wall, and you look over here at properties. But notice above the name of the type Exterior Brick and Metal Stud, it says Basic Wall. And then when I click this one, it also says Basic Wall. So both of those are the same, they're the same family. So what is a basic wall family? We'll just think of it as any wall that has one or more layers of material. So if this was a generic wall, and you remember, we have some generic walls, then it would have a single layer of material. And if it's a brick on metal stud wall, then it has multiple layers of material. But that's really the only distinction between those two types. The family just allows for the possibility that you can have one or more layers. So now what I want to do is customize our own type of wall. So how would we do that? So let's walk through that process. So I'm going to select this wall right here, which is currently using interior four and seven eighths inch partition. And I want to make that into a plumbing wall, something that's a little bit more appropriate construction for the fixtures that are mounted on it. Now that's going to occur at the Edit Type level, there's no way I can edit that family. So let me click Edit Type here. Now, if I click the Edit button and go right to the thickness, and let's just change that to something like two feet, click OK a couple times. What I want to show you is if you don't pay attention to what you're doing, you might make an edit that's ill advised. So notice that I got a few warnings there and it dismissed all of those, but I modified the wall type that was existing, and it actually changed every instance of that wall throughout the model. So that's probably not what I had in mind. So I'm going to go ahead and undo that change. So what you want to always remember to do, is when you select an object and you go to Edit Type, most of the time, you're going to want to duplicate it first, to give yourself a new name, so that you're limiting your edit to just the object you have selected. So I'm going to give this a name, and I'll just call it Plumbing Wall for now. Now I'm free to go into Edit Structure, and make whatever changes I want to make, and it will only apply to the selected wall, and then I could selectively apply that wall type elsewhere if necessary. Now, I'm going to turn on the preview at the bottom of the window, and then I will reposition the window and stretch it wider so that I can read the information in all of the various columns. We've been in here before, but let's just kind of take a more detailed look at it right now. Let's start with the core boundary, layers two and four in this case. Now, they won't always be layer two and four, but the Core Boundary is just the separation between Core layers and Finish layers. So think of the wall as having three different zones. And if you look at my preview, the gray bar at the top is zone one, the white bar in the middle is zone two, and the gray bar at the bottom is zone three, if you want to think of it that way. Or the white one in the middle is the core zone, and the two gray ones are the Finish Zones. So Core Boundary two and four are actually these bold green lines. Now you can't change the thickness of the Core Boundary. They're just there for reference. So it's just the boundary line between core and finish. Now Revit allows you to have multiple layers within each zone. So you could have multiple layers in the Finish Zone, or the other Finish Zone or multiple layers in the Core. Now for this example that I'm going to build, we're going to leave the two Finish Zones zones the way they are. So the lower Finish Zone here is considered the interior side of the wall, and the upper Finish Zone here is considered the exterior side of the wall. As I say you could put more layers there if you needed to. So if you needed two layers of drywall or in the case of a brick wall where you want to do brick, and an air gap and insulation, all that would be considered part of that exterior zone. Let's focus on the Core however. What I want to do here is have two stud layers, and then a gap of space between them for the plumbing. So whatever layer you select, if you click the Insert button, it will place a new layer above it. So notice that it shifted everybody down, and now my new layer three is this brand new layer that I just created. Now, I can come over here to the thickness, and I can type in the thickness I want, 0 3 5/8, or if you want to save a little bit of effort, I could select the existing thickness do Ctrl + C to copy it to my clipboard, and then click up here and do Ctrl + V to paste it. So I'll do that for the material. Notice that currently the material is by category, which is essentially the same thing as not having a material. And I'm going to select the Metal Stud layer, do Ctrl + C to copy that to my clipboard, then click on by category and do Ctrl + V to paste it. So now I've got two layers that are the same as one another. I'll click layer four again, and choose Insert. And because it inserts the new layer above the selected one, I now get a new layer four and everybody else moves down. Now here, I want to just type in my own thickness, whatever I want this to be. So how wide do I want my cavity. I'm going to put in six inches. So you'll see that kind of stretch our preview rather wide here, you can actually click in the preview and just roll the wheel on your mouse to zoom it back a little bit. For the material in this case, I can't copy and paste, because I don't want this air gap to be metal studs, I want it to be open air. So I'll click in there and then a small Browse button becomes available. And I'll click that. And that will display the Material Browser. Now here you could scroll through the list and find inappropriate material, or you could just search for something. So I'm just going to type in air, and any material in this list that contains air in its description or in its keywords will show up here. So there are several choices, and really, you could choose any one you want. But I'll choose this one here Miscellaneous Air Layers, Air Space, and then I'll click OK. Now, the function column is a pre-built list of functions. And if you open up that list, there are five numbered choices plus a membrane layer. The membrane layer always has to be zero thickness, and so it doesn't really impact the structure of the wall too much. But the other five have a name, which serves their function and then a number in square brackets. The number is the priority that that function has. So Structure has the highest priority with a priority of one, and Finish two has the lowest priority with a priority five. Thermal air layer is the most appropriate choice for this airspace that we just created. So I'm going to choose that from the list there, and that assigns it a priority of three. Now finally, in this final column over here, we've got structural material. And what that does is you can only check one thing here in the Core, and I don't think air gap is the right choice. But whatever you check here, when you click OK, it will assign the structural material to the wall based on that layer. So when your structural engineer queries the model, that's the material that they will see. We now have this new wall assembly, and as you can see, we've added two layers, and it's adjusted the thickness and the overall thickness has been calculated for us right here. So now I'm going to click OK, and that single wall that I have selected will get thicker. I have median level of detail turned on in this view, so you're kind of seeing the result. But what I like to do is get in a little bit closer to see that a little bit better. So the way that I'm going to do that is go to the View tab, click on a Callout, make a callout around this intersection right here. I'll select the call out, I'll just sort of move the bubble out of the way. And then you can right click the Callout and choose Go to View. Now that'll take us to that view, and by default, when you create a callout, it just simply doubles the scale of the view it came from. I'm going to increase that scale even more, I'm going to go to one inch equals a foot and then I'll zoom in nice and close and turn on medium detail. So now you're going to see much more clearly what those different layers are doing. So notice that the drywall is cleaning up nicely with other drywall, the studs are cleaning up nicely with the studs, and the air gap is being interrupted by the studs. So if you think of it this way, priority one materials are cleaning up with other priority one materials, but interrupting lower priority values, and that goes down the line. So the drywall is cleaning up with other drywall, but being interrupted by everything else. If you set up the priorities differently, or you set up the materials differently, it will impact the way that this wall cleanup occurs. So if you're getting seams in here, it's because you didn't match up the priorities and the materials. So as long as the material and the priority match, then you'll get a seamless joint between those two materials when they come together. So that gives you an illustration of the kinds of things that we can customize with a wall. That wasn't editing a family, this is still a basic wall family, but we now have a new type called Plumbing Wall. And if you want you could return to your level one floor plan and you could assign that type elsewhere in the model, because it is now a type on your list that's available for use. But by duplicating it first, we limited the Edit to a small area and then we can apply it selectively throughout the model that's considered best practice.