Setting up levels and grids - Revit Tutorial

- [Presenter] In this video, I want to introduce you to levels and grids. Now, levels and grids are what we call datum elements in Revit and datum elements are quite simply just objects that we use to help us locate other real geometry within the project. Now, level is our most common datum element, and it will mark where the heights, the important heights of a building are. So if you have a three-story building, then you're typically going to have at least three levels in a building like that, but you could possibly have more. Now grids are typically used to mark where the structure in a building is. So we use grids to locate things like columns and beams and other sort of structural elements. Now you're not required to have both levels and grids. Most projects will have levels. You need at least one level, but grids are not required, but they are very common. So you will see grids in most architectural projects. In this video, what I'd like to do is start in this really basic file that I have here, which is just created from the default multidiscipline template and it's empty otherwise. And what we're going to do is just create a couple new levels and talk about how the tool functions, and then we'll add a few grids. And then at the end of the video, we're going to jump back to the sample model that we looked at in an earlier video and look at some real examples of levels and grids in practice. So the first thing you need to know about levels is they run parallel to the ground. So we can't actually work on our levels from a floor plan. We need to be in either an elevation or a section. Now if you look here at my project browser, you could see that there's a section one right here. So I'm just going to double click that to open that view and these two dash lines here. And here are the existing levels that are already here in this project. So there's an L1 and an L2. What I'm going to do is add a couple more. Now the level tool is on the architecture tab here on the datum panel right there. And notice that on the tool tip for level right next to the name in parentheses are the letters LL. So you could either click the button or alternatively, you can type the letters LL. Now don't press enter, just type LL and that's a keyboard shortcut in Revit. So any time you see letters in parentheses next to a tool name, you can use that as the keyboard shortcut. And it's just another way of running the command. I'm going to go ahead and click the button, but feel free to type LL if you prefer. So the way this works is you draw it just like drawing a line. I'm going to click my first point and then start moving laterally. And notice that I'm only able to move horizontally, so it doesn't matter where my mouse is. Levels always must be parallel to the ground. So just click your second point anywhere you like, and that creates that first level. Now if you're paying attention, when you go to build a second level, you should see a little extension line from one of the end points. And if you click and then again at the other end, click and snap to those extension lines, then you will benefit from an automatic locking behavior. So notice this little lock icon that appears right here. There's a small open circle icon at the end of the level on both sides. And if you put your mouse over that, you should see a tool tip that says drag the extent of this level. You can do that and notice that it carries with it the other endpoint as well. So even though I'm dragging the top level, it is also reshaping the bottom level. Now that only works when they are snapped together. So notice that the two original levels that were here in this model are unaffected by that change. We'll talk more about that in a few moments. Now I'm going to click the modify tool to cancel out of here for a moment. I'm going to put my mouse right about here between the existing level that was already here and the new one that I created right about there. And I'm going to roll the wheel in to zoom in a touch and then hold the wheel and drag to pan over slightly so that you can see the symbol next to all four levels. So the two original levels were L1 and L2, the two new ones just pick up where we left off there. And we got L3 and L4. So that's just the way that Revit names these automatically for you. However, I want to also point out something else about these symbols. Notice that the two at the bottom, L1 and L2 are blue in color, and L3 and four are black in color. So what does that mean? Well, if you hover over one of these, you will see that there's a tool tip that says go to the floor plan that corresponds to this level. If you hover over one of these, it just simply says the name of the level. So the clue is that the blue indicates that there's an associated floor plan. And if we look over here on the project browser, you can see that there's a level one architectural, level two architectural. Simply double clicking this symbol would actually open up that view. So notice that I get a new tab here, L1 architectural. Now I don't currently have any views associated with L3 and L4. If you want floor plans associated with your levels, you can do it in one of two ways. One way is to create them just the way that we've done and then come back later and go to the view tab, use the plan views dropdown, choose floor plan, and then pick one or more levels that you want to create a floor plan from. So if I just simply click, OK here, I get a new floor plan with the same name L3, and notice that it appears over here on project browser. I'm going to go ahead and close that. And when I do, notice that the color here has changed to blue, so that's one way to do it. The other way to do it is to return to the level command. And there's an option here on the ribbon that says create plan view. If you check that, then you will have plan view types, and there are actually going to be several plan types listed here. Now for this example, I'll uncheck structural plan and just accept architectural ceiling plan and architectural plan. Click OK, start somewhere, click over here, go ahead and click the modify tool to cancel out. Notice that this one is automatically blue and now I automatically got an L5 floor plan. And then down here, we also got an L5 ceiling plan. So those are the two ways that you could get a floor plan to associate with those levels. Levels can exist without floor plans. Floor plans cannot exist without levels. So if you were to come back and delete L5, it would warn you that it must also delete the two associated floor plans. So it's important that you understand that, that in order to have a floor plan, it must be associated with level. I'm simply going to cancel this. Okay, now the last thing I want to point out about levels in this view is notice the difference in Ls1 and two that were already here. Their small little open circle here is a little bit different. Notice I'm not able to drag that one like I was with the others. The reason for that is these two levels are actually associated to this green dash box right here, which is a scope box. Now we talked about scope boxes briefly in an earlier video, there we focused on the scope box's ability to set the extents of a view. Well, a scope box is also able to set the extents of levels and grids. So if I click on this scope box and I start to drag it, notice that that takes L1 and L2 with it. It does not affect these three. And the reason for that is these three are currently not associated to the scope box. Well, if you wanted them to, all you need to do is select one, hold the control key, Select the other two. Over here, it will say levels three on my properties palette indicating that I've selected three levels. I'm going to scroll down and locate the scope box property. It currently says none. And when I open up that dropdown list, you can see that there's views overall that we used in a previous video. And here's grids and levels, which is that level one and level two are using. Now if I stretch this, you can see that it affects all five levels. Okay? So you don't have to use scope boxes, they're not required, but it can be a really handy way to control the extent of all your datum elements in a more consistent fashion. Now I'm going to return to the L1 architectural plan, and now I'm going to create a few grids, okay? So the grid tool is here on the same datum panel where we found level. Notice that level is now grayed out because we're in a floor plan. You can't create levels in a floor plan, you must be in a section or elevation as I indicated earlier. The grid tool has a keyboard shortcut of GR his time, and you draw it in much the same way that we drew levels. You just click a point and then another point, it will automatically suggest number one as the first name, it behaves the same way as levels. You can get them to snap together such that now if we drag one of the endpoints, it will drag all of them. Now, if you turn the corner and change direction, it will not change the numbering automatically. So it's important that you click right on this label and put in your new value so that when you create another grid, it will then pick up from that new designation. So if I'd have left it number four, this fifth one would've been number five, but because I changed it to A, now it switches to B. So that is the basics of grids. And as you can see, they behave in much the same way as levels. And just like levels, we can select one, hold the control key, select the other four for a total of grids five, and if we wanted to, we can assign them to that same grids and level scope box. And now if we adjust the scope box, we're changing the extents of the grids as well as the extents of the levels. Also, you'll notice here in section one, we're seeing grids one through three because those intersect that section line, but like levels, they need to be perpendicular to the view as opposed to these two which are parallel. We don't see those in the section view. Feel free to experiment further in this file if you like, but I think a good way to really make sure you understand levels and grids is to return to our sample model that we talked about in an earlier video. So what I'm going to do is just simply go to file and close this view. I'm not going to save it. There's no need to save the changes there. And then I'm going to reopen the architectural sample model. Once again, we talked about how to locate this model and where to find it and how to open it in a previous video. So if you need to go back and review that now. Now the file does typically open read only, and that's perfectly fine. Now I'm going to double click L1 to open up a floor plan. And what you're going to see here if you zoom in a little bit, I'm just rolling my wheel is that we've got grids one, two, three, all the way to nine over here. Now notice that grids one through eight are running vertically, but grid nine is actually at an angle, and that's because this exterior wall of the building is at an angle and grid nine just follows that angle. So your grids can go at any angle that you like, it's perfectly fine. It depends on the needs of the project. Furthermore, if we look at the naming, I've got A, B, and then notice it goes to B.1 and then C. So in our example, we did numbers and letters, and that's the more common way to name these. But as you can see, it can be any combination of letters and numbers. So you're able to name or number them any way that you like. Okay? Now if I go to an elevation view, like say, let's scroll down here to building elevations and maybe use the south building elevation, you can see all of the levels that occur in this project. Now again, remember the levels are running perpendicular to the view in the elevation in this case, or parallel to the ground. Notice that there's a parking level down at the bottom here, and then there are actually two level ones, and that's because you can see the street there is at a slope. So this is sort of your high level one and this is your low level one. Then there's a mezzanine L2 through L5. There's a variety of different roof levels marking different heights on the roof, and there's even some parapet levels. Notice that some of the levels do not have floor plans such as the parapets and the R1. So they are just simply datum elements marking where geometry goes, but not necessarily a location for a new floor plan. So I think if you can spend a little time in this file, just kind of exploring the levels and grids, you'll get a better understanding of how grids and levels are typically used in a typical project, you can certainly play around here or you could return to the file that we were in a moment ago to practice creating your own and just to get comfortable with both levels and grids. These are the fundamental data elements that are going to mark the locations of all the important geometry in your project. So, it's a good thing to kind of get a little bit of practice with.