Mastering BIM: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Solid Shapes in Revit Families

This article is from the WeChat official account: excerpts from Yuanchuang BIM.

After selecting the family template, you can begin creating solid shapes for the family. The two most important commands are **Solid Shape** and **Hollow Shape**. Solid shapes are used to build solid models, while hollow shapes are used to cut openings. Both solid and hollow shapes include five key functions: stretching, fusion, rotation, layout, and layout fusion.

Below is a brief introduction to each function:

Stretching: This function generates a model by sketching the cross-sectional profile of the entity, then specifying its height.

Fusion: Fusion creates entities with different bottom and top surfaces. First, draw the bottom and top cross-sectional shapes and specify the entity’s height. Revit then fuses these two different shapes to generate the model.

Rotation: This involves drawing a closed contour and then rotating it around a specified axis by a certain angle to form a model.

Layout: Here, you set a path and then draw a closed contour on a surface perpendicular to that path. The closed contour is then swept along the path to create the model.

Layout Fusion: This combines the features of both layout and fusion. By setting a layout path and drawing different cross-sectional profiles at the start and end points, Revit automatically fuses the two sections along the path to generate the model.

The same family can be created using different methods. For example, creating a conical concrete funnel can be done in two ways:

• The first uses the solid fusion command.
• The second uses the solid sweep command to model funnels that are symmetrical on both sides.

There are two important points to keep in mind when creating entities:

1. When using the stretching function to draw a profile, you can sketch multiple closed contours to create several entities at once.
2. In the fusion function (including layout fusion), if the bottom and top surfaces are polygons and circles respectively, fusion anomalies may occur because the circular section has only one control point. To avoid this, break the arc and add fusion control points.

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