Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture

Paul F Aubin Paul F. Aubin Consulting Services

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 03:00pm

AB214-1P Architectural projects often require alternate design proposals for either a client presentation or for value engineering. The Revit Architecture Design Options feature gives you a flexible way to create, manage, and present your design proposals. In this session, well explore Option Sets and Options for presenting various proposals to your client, zoning board, or other stakeholder. Each option behaves independently from the others, fully managing both the graphics and the quantities reported on schedules. Because many projects include renovations and demolition of existing structures, well also cover the Phasing tools in Revit. Using the built-in facilities of Revit, we can easily manage the class of the project through its phases. Used together or separately, the Design Options and Phasing tools give a level of control to Revit projects not found in other software.
- Understanding Option sets - Learning to create and manage options - Discovering how all parts of the model, including schedules, respond to options - Understanding and working with phases - Learning how to easily manage and present demolition and new construction phases - Revit, Design Options, customization, Phasing, demolition

About the Speaker:

Paul is the author of several books on AutoCAD Architecture (formerly Autodesk Architectural Desktop) and Revit Architecture (formerly Autodesk Revit Building) software, including Mastering AutoCAD Architecture 2008, and Mastering Revit Building and Autodesk Architectural Desktop: An Advanced Implementation Guide. His 19 years of experience in architecture includes design and production, CAD management, mentoring, and training. Currently, Paul is an independent consultant offering training and implementation services to architectural firms that use Revit Architecture and AutoCAD Architecture. He is the moderator for CADalyst magazines online CAD questions forum and has spoken at AU for many years. You can send email to Paul by visiting the following URL: www.paulaubin.com/contact.php

Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin

Design Options
Creating design schemes with traditional design tools would typically require that multiple copies of each drawing or model be created and maintained. With the Design Options feature in Revit Architecture, you can maintain a single model that contains one or more schemes within it. With this methodology, you can explore and present multiple design possibilities while avoiding much of the repetition and duplication of traditional procedures. Furthermore, Revits fully coordinated building information model is maintained and updated on-the-fly accurately representing each scheme as various Design Options are made current. The Design Options feature gives you a flexible way to create, manage, and present alternate design proposals. Using one or more Option Sets each containing various Options, you are able to manage variations in your design that deviate from the Main Model. You can present each option independently in separate Revit views and sheets including Schedules that will accurately reflect the active option.

Design Options Terminology

The following are some basic definitions of common terminology used in conjunction with the Design Options functionality. Main ModelThis term is used to describe any part of your Revit design that has no variation under consideration. In other words it does not have any Design Options associated with it. Before you add Design Options to a project, everything is part of the Main Model. Once you begin adding Options, you can move elements from the Main Model to one or more Options. Option SetEach work area or portion of a project to which you will consider design variations will become an Option Set. For example if you wanted to consider variations for the entrance to your building, you might create an Option Set called Main Entry. To this set, you could add an Option for each variation you wish to consider. OptionEach Option Set will contain at least one Option, but to be meaningful, you should include at least two Options. An Option represents a discreet design variation you wish to consider in your project. For example, if you had a Main Entry Option Set as suggested above, you might have two Options within it called Single Door Entry and Double Door Entry. Each Option would show the appropriate geometry to represent the design intent of that Option. PrimaryThe Primary Option is simply the Option that you or your client favors. It is the most likely to be accepted and implemented in the final design. When you make an Option Primary, all views in the project will update to reflect the change. You do not need to make an Option

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin Primary to edit it. In fact, making an Option Primary is typically done late in the process as a step in the process of accepting an Option and removing others from consideration (see below).

Design Options Intent and Procedure

The Design Options toolset is intended as a means to manage the design variations (schemes) under consideration. As such, it is assumed that at some point in the design process, one of the Options will be chosen over the others. The Design Options tool is therefore meant to be temporary. While you could maintain more than one Option indefinitely, the intent of the tool is that one of the Options under consideration will ultimately prevail. The tools will be most successful when used in conjunction with the workflow described herein. However, like many aspects of architectural practice, procedures and workflows can and often do vary from firm to firm and even project to project within the same firm. Therefore, while the intention of Design Options toolset follows a narrow scope and focus, you will find that with a little creativity, it can be used successfully even when deviating from its intended workflow. The basic procedure for Design Options is as follows:
Create an Option Set with two or more Options within it. Add geometry to each Option Set. Create views with Design Option overrides applied to present your schemes. Upon approval by your client, make an Option Primary and then accept the Primary.

Add Design Options

The default Revit templates do not contain any Design Option Sets or Options. Therefore, at the point in a project when you decide you wish to consider a design variation or create and present more than one design scheme, you enable the Design Options toolset by adding one or more Option Sets and Options to your project. You can find the Design Options features on the Tools menu or the Design Options toolbar. This toolbar is not loaded by default, but you can load it by right-clicking on other toolbars in the Revit interface. If there are no Option Sets in your project, the only command that will be available is the Design Options command (the first icon). This command calls the Design Options dialog where most of the Design Options features are located.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin

When you open the Design Options dialog for the first time, the list will be empty reflecting that there are no Options Sets or Options. Start by clicking the New button beneath Option Set. This creates Option Set 1 and a single Option 1 indented beneath it. Next to Option 1 the designation of Primary will appear. You can add as many Options to an Option Set as you like, but only one can be Primary. The Primary Option is visible in all views of your project by default. (You can apply overrides (see below) to make a particular view show an alternate Option). Use the New button beneath the Option heading to create additional Options. You should have at least two Options per Option Set. After creating an Option Set and/or an Option, you should immediately rename them. The default names will not be very useful in helping you manage your schemes. To rename an item, select it and then click the appropriate Rename button on the right side of the dialog.

Editing Options
Once you have at least two Options, you can begin adding geometry to each Option. This will involve moving items (that require multiple schemes) from the Main Model to one or more of the Options. Once an element is part of an Option, you can vary it in any way you like to represent the alternate scheme and the resultant change will appear whenever the corresponding Option is active only. For example, continuing with our hypothetical Main Entry example, you will need to copy the Door (and its host) into both Options. Once copied, you can edit each one to represent the single and double door schemes respectively. Note: you cannot add an insert (Door or Window) to an Option without also adding its host. Furthermore, adding a host element to an Option will also automatically add all inserts on that host as well.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin If you try to add an insert to an Option without its host, you will see an error similar to this

To add elements to an Option, you select them and then use the icon on the toolbar (the one with the plus (+) sign on it. The available Option Sets will appear at the top in a dropdown list and the Options within that Set will appear beneath that. You can add the selection to one or more Options within a single Option Set. Once you successfully add elements to an Option, you will notice that they no longer prehighlight when the mouse passes over them. By default, you can only select elements in the Main Model. A checkbox on the Options Bar labeled Exclude Options controls this. With the Exclude Options box selected, you can only select elements that are part of the Main Model. If you deselect this checkbox, you can also select elements visible on screen that belong to the Option currently displayed. However, it is best to leave this box selected and instead use the Edit Option feature when you wish to modify Options. You will get more reliable results this way. To edit an Option, use the final tool on the toolbar. When you click the Edit Option tool, a drop-down menu will appear listing the available Option Sets and Options that you can edit. Select one from the list to go into edit mode. In Edit Option mode, the Main Model will gray out and the items in the Option will appear bold. Furthermore, you will only be able to select elements in the selected Option. (There is a checkbox on the Options Bar allowing you to override this behavior and select items in the Main Model, but it is better avoid this if possible). With the edit mode active, make any changes you wish to that scheme. When you are finished, click the Edit Option button again to exit the mode.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin

Present your Options

Now that you have two variations of the front entrance, you will want to compare them, possibly edit them further and certainly present them to your client for review. You can do this in two ways. The quickest way to see an Option throughout your entire model is to make it the Primary Option. This method has the advantage of applying the change in every view (plans, sections, 3D, schedules, etc) of the model. The disadvantage is that it is fairly common for errors to occur as Revit attempts to resolve all the changes required to make an alternate scheme primary. (Often these errors involve the annotation associated to the model elements contained in the various Optionsmore on this below). The alternative approach is to apply a display override to one or more views. This method requires more setup effort on your part, but allows a great deal more flexibility. For example, by using view overrides, you can present two Options together side by side on a sheet and print them for your client. The process for doing so is simple and rarely will there be errors when doing so. The procedure to make and display views with Option overrides is as follows. Duplicate an existing view using either the Duplicate or Duplicate with Detailing commands. Rename each copied view to include a description of the Option you intend to display. Next, access the View/Graphic Overrides for each view. (Type the keyboard shortcut of VG for example). You will notice that in addition to the normal tabs like Model Categories and Annotation Categories, there is also a Design Options tab. Click this tab and then choose the desired Option to display for each Option Set listed.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin Repeat this process for as many views as you like and then drag them to a sheet for presentation to your client. You can even override Schedule views. To do this, duplicate and rename them the same way. Then right-click the view in the Project Browser and choose Properties. There you can click the Edit button next to Visibility/Graphics Overrides. (You cannot type VG to access the overrides in a Schedule view). Once your client has approved a scheme, you can make it Primary and then use the Accept Primary command to apply the scheme to all views and delete the other schemes. This will reduce the models file size, and make further editing easier (since you will not need to switch between Options to make edits), but there will be no way to retrieve deleted schemes once the command is complete, so be sure to make a backup of the model first.

Make and Accept Primary

To accept a scheme and remove the others from the model, you must first make it Primary. Open the Design Options dialog, select the Option you want and then click the Make Primary button. In some cases, you will get a warning or other dialog indicating that you must delete certain elements before you can continue. In most cases, the error will refer to annotation whose link is now broken. Annotation elements like tags, detail lines and dimensions cannot be added to Options. Therefore, if the item to which they are attached is added to an Option, it is likely that when you make another Option Primary that Revit will be unable to resolve the potential discrepancies without deleting the affected annotation. Unfortunately, this means that the most successful time to use Design Options is early in the design phase of a project before detailed construction documentation has occurred. Once you have made an Option Primary, you can choose the Accept Primary button to finalize the design. This command will delete all secondary Options and their geometry and move the geometry of the Primary Option back to the Main Model. The Option Set will be deleted. If you have views with deleted Design Option overrides applied, these views will also be deleted. A dialog will alert you for confirmation.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin

Phasing
Phasing in Revit gives us the ability to apply the fourth dimensionor timeto our projects. Revits approach to phasing is simple and straightforward. A simple timeline is established for the project that includes one or more phases. The out-of-the-box project templates include just two phases: Existing and New Construction. You can add additional Phases as project needs dictate. To add or edit Phases, choose Phases from the Settings menu.

Project Phases
Every element in your Revit project exists at a period in time defined by two phasing parameters. These are the Phase when the element was created and the Phase when it was demolished.

You can find these settings in the Element Properties dialog for a selected element. Every element must be assigned to a creation Phase, but the Phase Demolished parameter can be set to None. In other words, all elements must be created at some point in time, but they may or may not be demolished during the life of the project.

Graphic Overrides
There are four conditions (Phase Status) that can be used to describe (and graphically convey) an element at any point in time. These are built into the software. You can edit their characteristics but you cannot add or delete them. The Graphic Overrides tab of the Phasing dialog shows the four Phase Status conditions and each is described here:

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin Each of the Phase Status conditions is relative to the currently active phase.

ExistingRelative to the currently active Phase, items created in an earlier phase are considered Existing. NewItems created in the current Phase are considered New. DemolishedItems created in an earlier Phase and demolished in the current Phase are considered Demolished. TemporaryThis designation is used for items that are both created and demolished within the same Phase.

Phase Filters and View Properties

Each project view is assigned a Phase in its Element Properties and can also have a Phase Filter. The Phase assigned to a view is the active Phase for that view. In other words, if a plan view is assigned the Existing Phase, all elements drawn in that view will automatically inherit this setting and become existing elements. You can of course override the setting by editing the elements properties, but working with the currently active view Phase can be a much more efficient way to work. It is often desirable to create a view for each major Phase of work and then simply make the appropriate view active before drawings any objects. Phase Filters work with the settings on the Graphic Overrides tab (of the Phases dialog) to determine how to display each Phase in a given view in your project. The default Phase Filter called Show All is the only required Phase Filter and also the only one that you cannot edit or delete.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin

Each Phase Filter has settings for each of the four conditions noted above in the Graphic Overrides section. For each condition, the filter can apply one of three settings: By CategoryThis setting makes no change to the items in this category. They will display in their default settings as determined by the Object Style command (Settings menu) or any graphic overrides applied to the view directly. OverriddenThis setting applies the override listed on the Graphic Overrides tab. Not DisplayedWhen this setting is active, elements meeting the condition are invisible in the view. The default Show All filter displays only new construction in its normal graphical settings and applies overrides to the existing, demo and temporary construction. Remember, all conditions are relative to the current views Phase setting. So if you have two new construction phases such as: Phase 1 New Construction and a Phase 2 New Construction, items added and displayed as new construction in a Phase 1 view will appear as existing in a Phase 2 view. The best way to get a good sense of the behavior of each of the Phase Filters included in the out-of-the-box template is to try them out one at a time. Before doing so, create an additional Phase like Phase 2 New Construction. With at least three Phases, the various filters will be easier to understand.

Working with Phasing Procedure

The most efficient way to work with Phasing is to create views for each major Phase. In this way, when you add new elements to your model, they will be added automatically to the correct Phase.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin The basic procedure for Phasing is as follows:
Open the Phasing dialog on the Settings menu and edit or add Phases (if required).

Note: The default project settings include Existing and New Construction Phases and all new views default to New Construction unless you specify otherwise.
Create an Existing construction view (floor plan and/or others) for each level of the project. Open the First Floor Existing floor plan view and layout the Walls, Doors and Windows of the existing construction. Switch to the New Construction views and add geometry representing the new work. Repeat for each Phase/view combination you have.

As you work, you can switch between views to add or edit geometry or simply edit the properties of an element to change its Phase settings after it is drawn.

Working with Phasing Understanding Behavior

Using a default template, try this experiment. 1. Create three Walls in Level 1. Add a Door or Window to one of the Walls.

2. Select one of the Walls, edit its Properties and change the Phase created to Existing. Notice that the Wall you just added is now halftone gray and its lineweight is lighter. (Review the Phase Filter and Graphic Overrides tabs above to see whyremember; the current Phase in the Level 1 plan view is New Construction). 3. On the toolbar, click the Demolish tool. Click the existing Wall. Notice that it now turns dashed. Edit the properties of this Wall. Notice that the Phase Demolished property is now set to New Construction.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin 4. Use the Demolish tool again on a different Wall (the one without the Door). Notice that this Wall now appears dashed, blue and has a hatch pattern within it. This indicates that it is now temporary construction. If you edit the Properties of this Wall, you will see that this Wall is created and demolished in the New Construction Phase. 5. Demolish the final Wall. Notice that the Door is also demolished. You cannot demolish a host without also demolishing its inserts. Revit therefore does this automatically. 6. Undo the last change to return the Door and Wall to New Construction. Select all three Walls and the Door, edit their Properties and change their Phase to Existing and their Phase Demolished to None. Everything should now be halftone gray and solid lines. 7. Add a Door to one of the Walls. Notice that Revit automatically demolishes a portion of the Wall to accommodate the new Door. Use the Demolish tool and demolish the existing Door (the one we created above). Notice that Revit automatically fills the hole with a new segment of Wall. 8. If you want to demolish a portion of an existing Wall, use the Split tool to break the Wall into segments and then demolish the portion required.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin 9. To see the final result of all edits, edit the View Properties of the Level 1 floor plan. Change the Phase Filter to Show Complete.

As you can see, Revit automates much of the behavior you would expect when drawing and assigning elements to different Phases. This makes working with Phasing nearly transparent in day-to-day usage.

Design Options and Phasing Together

The aim of this session has been to introduce you to the concepts and potential of the Design Options and Phasing toolsets in Revit Architecture. These are separate functions that do not require each other. In other words, you can use just Design Options or you can use just Phasing. Neither tool requires the other to function properly. However, if you wish, you can use both together. For example, if you had an existing structure and you were considering modifying it in some way, you can use the Phasing tools to assign the Walls, Windows, Roofs, etc in the existing structure to the Existing Phase. Then you can set up Design Options to show one scheme where the existing structure is left as-is and another scheme where you make modifications to it. All of the tools and functions that we covered above would be applicable in the project that uses both.

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Design Options and Phasing in Revit Architecture Instructor: Paul F. Aubin

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