Explore the hybrid approach to detailing in BIM 303 Detailing and Revit Architecture, with a focus on locking components. Discover how to align and lock detail components to underlying model geometry, allowing for synchronized movement as elements of the model move.
Key Insights
- The article provides a deep dive into locking components within a Revit Architecture project. The process involves aligning and locking detail components to the underlying model geometry to ensure that detail components move in sync with changes in model elements.
- While this technique is powerful, the article advises caution. In some cases, the extra effort required to align and lock detail components might outweigh the benefits as it may be easier to manually move the detail components to new positions later on.
- Anticipated design changes, such as the movement of a wall or floor, can affect whether using the align and lock feature is beneficial. Additionally, mindful use of this feature can help avoid the 'constraints not satisfied' error messages frequently encountered in Revit.
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Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for BIM 303 Detailing and Revit Architecture. This video begins lesson 2, which is a continuation of our look at the hybrid approach to detailing. In this video, we're going to look at locking components.
Open up your BIM 303-lesson1 Revit file, and let's go ahead and save the project as BIM 303-lesson2. When you're adding detail components, it's possible to lock these to the underlying model geometry of your project. In this way, if the elements of the model move, the detail components associated with them will stay attached and move along with the model.
To illustrate this tool, let's go to the view, plan detail, window jam. Go to the modify tab in the ribbon, and in the modify panel, let's select the align tool. Let's first select the edge of the curtain wall, and then second, the edge of our gypsum board at the jam.
And you'll notice the padlock option appears, and we can lock that. And now, if we were to adjust the width of this window, that detail component moves along with it. This is a powerful technique, but use caution when employing it in your project.
In some cases, the extra effort required to align and lock detail components can outweigh the benefit of having them locked. If the design changes you anticipate are limited to the movement of a wall or floor, it may be easier to simply open the detail view later and move the detail components manually to the new position. This can also help you avoid those frustrating constraints, not satisfied error messages that happen quite a bit in Revit.
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Now, let's move this window back to its original location, and we can even unlock that constraint. In the next video, we're going to look at show, remove, hidden lines.