Trevor Scandalios, Revit Blog

This assignment seemed like a great opportunity to experiment with artificial lighting in Revit as I have only done renderings with exterior light so far. It was also a great opportunity to begin rendering my current studio project, which is a crew rowing center and boathouse on Dexter Lake near Eugene. The view that I chose to render was from the entry lobby of the building.

For my daylighting precedent image, I chose an interior with alot of views to the outdoors and no use of artificial lights, as this reflected the aesthetic that I am aiming towards in my studio project.

For my night rendering, I chose to emulate an image that utilized white and blue colored lighting to accentuate the space. Also, since the building is a boat house, the somewhat aquatic looking effect would be appropriate.

I did not have too much trouble with the exterior lighting rendering. I turned off the artificial lights as I wanted a clearly lit daytime space that contrasted with the more dynamically lit nighttime space.

One problem that I did have involved placing an exterior background image into the rendering. I read in someone's blog post that if the rendering was exported to photoshop as a png and then the background layer was transformed into a normal layer, the sky would be transparent and another image could just be placed underneath the building. For whatever reason, this did not work for me and I insead used the selection tool to select and then delete the areas of sky in the windows and then placed the background image underneath. This did work, however, I definately want to figure out how to make the original background transparent for future renderings.

The night image was a little more tricky as I have not worked with artificial lights in Revit yet.

My first immediate problem was that the light from the recessed luminaires was not showing up. I eventually realized that this was because my cieling was directly under the concrete floor above it and thus the lights were embedded in it. Recessed lighting fixture components cut holes in cielings but not floors. Lowering the cieling would have solved this problem, however, then the beams that I wanted exposed would be hidden. For this reason, since the second story floor is not visible in the view, I temporarily deleted it for the rendering. Next time I will just go into the view properties and temporarily hide the floor as I read this also works.

After this problem was taken care of, the preliminary renderings were so unsatisfactory I didn't even save thumbnails of them even though I probably should have to show my process. The images came out extremely dim and orangish yellow.

I was able to increase the lumen output of the lights greatly through the element properties interface. This solved the brightness problem. To solve the color problem, I raised the light temperature in the element properties interface to be closer to daylighting. This was an interesting process because I had to apply what I had learned about lighting in environmental control systems in order to get the look that I desired.

After this was resolved, it was just a matter of playing with the amount and strength of the lights, and then placing wall washing blue colored lights to create the more dynamic effect.

As far as design changes for my studio project go, this project was helpful in illuminating some apparent problems. First of all, The interior is too stark white and the use of more timber for surfaces such as the floor will give it more of a boathouse feel.

The firm, Attention Deficit Disorder, or "ADD," (har har), gave me a lot of optimism about the capabilities of Revit. Most of the firms that we have had visits from in the past in this class have also shown impressive examples of Revit in the workplace, however  the buildings they presented were very rectilinear. It seems that the firms who presented chose to use Revit in cases where the design of the building was more conventional.  This, along with my own use of the program, has shown me that Revit caters more towards conventional building types.

                However, the buildings that ADD displayed seemed as if Revit's tendency towards rectilinear buildings did not impact their designs. The first building had a gently sloping and curvilinear projection along the second story that seemed very natural and probably transferred smoothly from a conceptual idea into the computer program. This shows me that the abstract form tool can be used in an effective manner to create unique building shapes and makes me want to delve into the tool further.

                I was also impressed with their use of Revit on the multistory building. It seemed as if they used the capabilities of Revit to their advantage in designing this building. The window pattern on the building was somewhat modular, using the same window type arranged in differing positions to create a interesting facade.  Using Revit allows for experimentation with different placements of the windows much more effectively than having to redraw the different schemes by hand or even with AutoCAD. It also provides instant three dimensional visual feedback on a particular elevation scheme.

                On a side note, I was also impressed with their use of composite metal panels in their facades. I have seen this material on buildings in the past and thought it allowed for a very appealing and modern aesthetic.  I wanted to use it in my studio project this term. I was in the process of figuring out what this material was called and this presentation gave me the answer.

                In Revit, one of the material choices is a metal panel. I am assuming that they started with this material and then played with the rendering options to get the appearance they desired. I am also wondering if composite metal panels are commonly used for interiors, or if there is some kind of variation of it, such as a composite plastic panel that is more often used.

 

To create a context for the Revit families, I constructed an interior space from my current studio project. I placed the Husser table family that I created in the room and set chairs from the Revit family library next to these. I used Sina Meier's bench family, which i think compliments the aesthetic of the building quite well, and I also used Joshua Kolberg's Aalto chair, which also has a modern aesthetic that matches the building.
     Creating the context for the families also reminded me how much more streamlined and intuitive the building design tools are compared to the family creation tools, which don't seem quite as polished.

For the Families Assignment, I decided to create Frank Lloyd Wright's Husser table. Its design is reminiscent of his similarly flat and sturdily proportioned houses.

This assignment was more complicated for me than the last assignment. I imagine this is partly because we are getting into the more advanced aspects of the program and also because it is so different than any other program that I have used. Constructing the building model in Revit was less complicated than this because the method of constructing the building mirrored the way it would go together in real life. 
     This project was also complicated by the fact that I am used to making these types of objects in programs such as sketchup where the process is very different. Revit seems to be more involved, as I had to constantly switch between the different elevations, plans, and three dimensional design space in order to create the shape I wanted.
     However, when making the candle holder family after constructing the table, the process was much quicker and I was able to create the shapes that I wanted to more efficiently. For this reason I am hopeful that creating more advanced families in Revit will just be a matter of practice.
     An aspect that I thought was very cool about making families in Revit was the ability to allow people to use and alter your family just by typing different measurements into the parameters. Allowing the dining table to be quickly altered in size while maintaining its overall form is a feature of Revit that is done quite succesfully. With my Husser table family, the table-top and the width of the table can be altered.
     One aspect of families that I would like to learn more about is creating families that have curved shapes. There is probably an effective way to do this that I am not yet aware of, as I was experimenting with this process for a while and having alot of trouble. This was because I could not figure out how to assign dimensions to the curved shapes I made and thus could not figure out how to create modifiable parameters for them.
     One tutorial that was very helpful for this project was David Fano's tutorial video on creating Families at http://designreform.net/2009/01/revit-family-basics/. It was very helpful in crystalizing the most important aspects of creating families.
    This experience of doing this project was quite interesting since it was so different from using other architectural programs in the past, and it has given a better glimpse into the breadth of the program.