Best Practices - Split Level Design

Summary:

1. Create dedicated Revit Levels for all the change in levels in floor.


2. Create associated views for all the Revit levels where, you envisage inserting a door / window / wall / room, etc.


3. Whenever inserting a new element, go to the associated view for that particular Revit Level and then insert the element.

Full Story:

Drawing all the elements in a split level design on the same level (plane) looks great in plan. Until you need to elevate them or add stairs / ramps.

Adding Revit levels respective to the actual change in levels in floors would aid in making the sections / elevation look right (by selecting a wall > move to it's correct base constraint; moving the windows and doors with correct sill levels; etc.)

However, the plan may not look right, because the change in sill level of the windows raised them above the cut plane, etc.

However, you can draw "Plan Regions" (View menu > new > Plan regions) to offset this and everything will be fine.

Any wall or room added into the project automatically lands on the level the current view is associated with. And so, if you need to add a wall, etc. on the raised (lower) floor level, and if you don't have an associated view for the level, you would have to add it in a view associated with a different revit level and later select the particular object and move it to its correct level. Sometimes, if the level difference is too much, the inserted / added object will vanish in front of your eyes, with a Revit warning, because of the view range stuff. (alas, if the object you are adding is a room, you cannot change the level parameter for the room and so you are stuck!)

To circumvent this, you need to create associated views for all the Revit Levels.

To add elements to a particular level, you need to make the view associated to that level current before proceeding.

For printing purposes, you can create an overall plan with Plan Regions to show all elements along with annotations in one view.