In this session, you are going to learn how to use the “Copy” tool to create levels for the project. After finishing the placement of horizontal grid lines, we now need some vertical lines to help us position the elevation of every story. As mentioned before, the lines imported from CAD files are just block files, so we can neither use these lines as native Revit elements nor change their properties. Despite that, CAD lines are good references for setting levels. We can accurately assign the elevation of every level along these CAD lines. Now, let us import the elevation CAD drawing as an underlay. First, in the Project Browser, select the “South” elevation view in the branch of “Elevations (building elevation)”. Next, select “Import CAD” under “Insert” tab to import an elevation CAD drawing. The procedure of importing a CAD file has been taught before. So here, we just do it over again. Find the CAD file we would like to import in the “Import CAD Formats” window. Check the “Current View Only” checkbox. Then, we change the unit to centimeter. On the right bottom corner, select “Auto – Center to Center” in the “Positioning” drop-down menu. This step helps us find the CAD file easily since the CAD file will be positioned at the center point of the bounding box of the BIM model. Once everything is done, click on “Open” and we have finished importing. Now, we can see both existing level elements and the level lines from the CAD file. Then, let us check whether the unit of the imported CAD file is correct. We can ensure this by comparing the distance between the first and second floor with the marked dimension on CAD. Use the “Measure” tool to measure the distance between the two floors. As you can see, three hundred and fifteen. It is consistent with the dimension, so we can say the CAD file has been imported accurately. Notice that the first floor CAD line is not aligned with the level of the first floor. So, we need to align the floor lines with the corresponding levels by moving the CAD block to the correct position. Click on the CAD block, select the “Move” tool under the “Modify” tab, and find the first floor CAD line. Click on the line, then the level of first floor so that the CAD block would move into the right position to overlap the first floor level. Next, we can start adding levels. Open the “South” elevation view in the Project Browser. Because some levels have been given in the project, we can create the other levels by “Copy” tool, instead of using “Level” tool to draw them one by one. According to Autodesk website, the Copy tool copies one or more selected elements and allows us to place the copies in the drawing immediately. Here is how to use the Copy tool: First, we need to select the elements we want to copy, and then click on the “Copy” icon on the “Modify” panel. If we want to place multiple copies, select Multiple on the “Option Bar”. Second, click once in the drawing area to set “Move Start Point”, and move the cursor toward the area we want to place the elements. Finally, click to place the copies by setting “Move End Point”. Continue clicking to place more copies or press Esc to exit the copy tool. Now, let us start adding levels by using the “Copy” tool. Select the first floor level, and click on the “Copy” tool on the“Modify” panel. Here because we want to create multiple levels at once, we can check “Multiple” on the “Options Bar” before we start copying levels. Click on any point on the first floor CAD line as a “Move Start Point”, then click on each floor CAD line in sequence so that we can create levels quickly. These levels are actually horizontal planes, but they look like lines because they are perpendicular to the screen. Without a CAD drawing as underlay, creating levels might become a time consuming task because we will need to use the “Level” tool to create levels one after another and manually set the elevation of each level. Because of the names of these levels are not consistent with those of the CAD block, let us modify these names. After selecting each of the level, we can simply double click on their names and rename the levels according to the CAD block. After we have finished adding levels, we need to extend all the grid lines to intersect all levels in elevation views. Otherwise, these grid lines will be too short to be seen in some of the plan views. Let’s start from the south elevation, and extend the grid lines marked with 1, 2, 3 and 4 to intersect all the levels. Next, switch to the east elevation, and extend the grid lines A, B, C and D in the same way to intersect levels. Finally, we can see all the grid lines in every floor plan. In order to see all the plane views in the Project Browser, go to the “Create” panel under the “View” tab, and click on the “Plan Views” button. And then select the ”Floor Plan” tool in the drop-down menu. Within ”New Floor Plan” pop-up window, select all the levels and click on “OK”. This allows us to add floor plans of these levels in the Project Browser. Now we can see all the floor plans in the Project Browser.
