Revit Corinthian – YouTube style

Last month, I participated in a conversation over at Jared Bank’s blog where he directed me to some awesome videos created by the Graphisoft team. There are several really neat ones (like Sagrada Familia), but the the two that most interested me were the ones on creating the Doric and Ionic orders. Now let me state right away, that this is NOT a “my software can beat up your software” post. I give complete props to the author of those videos and recommend that you check out the entire YouTube channel of Archicad classic videos. This is some really impressive stuff.

Anyhow, on the above mentioned post at Shoegnome, the discussion turned to Renaissance Revit (my latest book on using Revit to create classical architecture – learn more here) and Jared pointed me toward the two videos noted above and expressed an interest in seeing a video on the Corinthian. Not wanted to shy away from a good challenge, I accepted. I have posted my video on the creation of the Corinthian capital in Revit and you can view it below.  The Graphisoft videos are reasonable in length, being approximately 6 minutes for Doric and around 10 for Ionic. I wish I could  say that mine was of similar length, but regrettably it weighs in at 20 minutes! I know this is WAY out the range of your average YouTube video, but I hope that you will not let the length deter you. I probably cut out as much footage as you will see in the video and it is sped up 4 times overall and some parts even faster, so I have crammed quite a bit into those 20 minutes.

The video shows the process that is followed in Chapter 13 of Renaissance Revit and uses the same content files provided with the book. So after watching, if you want to build it yourself, you can grab a copy of the book and give it a try! Enjoy. Please let me know what you think.

8 Responses to Revit Corinthian – YouTube style

  1. Danny says:

    I wonder if the archicad columns are parametric or can they only scale equally in xyz and keep their proportions?

    • Paul F. Aubin says:

      Hi Danny:

      Thanks for the comment. Someone from Archicad would have to chime in to know for sure. They look like they are created at a specific size to me and not flexible. But I could be wrong.

      Just to be clear though, my columns are parametric, but I have limited them to only scale proportionally as is appropriate for classical Architecture. Naturally Revit would allow them to scale disproportionately, but I have removed this possibility in my families by tying all scaling back to a single “Base Diameter” parameter. This parameter drives the scale and proportion of the whole form.

      Thanks again.

    • Jared Banks says:

      Danny, to answer your question about scaling the columns in ArchiCAD…it depends on how you make them. If the columns were created with GDL (the archicad scripting language) then just about anything is possible. While GDL is super powerful most users aren’t going to use it. That’s a whole different discussion.

      If the column were built geometrically (ie, using the Morph and Shell Tools, which are our free form modeling tools most appropriate for something like this), then the whole thing or individual parts could be scaled up or down any %, but only proportionally (X,Y, and Z changing the same %). If the column is modeled and saved as an Object then its proportions could be distorted (so it could become 20% taller, 50% wider, and 0% deeper). But in this scenario the whole thing is affected, not just the parts you want.

      I’m not sure if that answers your question. In short proportional or disproportional scaling would be easy to do. Locking the scaling ration to certain increments involves GDL and gets a little harder. Adding or removing features based on the scale of the object gets harder still as it requires more GDL.

      Of course the hard part in either program is modeling the damn thing in the first place! 🙂

      • Paul F. Aubin says:

        Thanks for the reply Jared. Interesting that something as simple as proportional scaling is actually not at all trivial in Revit. This is actually one of the reasons I began this project and book oh so long ago… Trying to find good ways to do proportional scaling. Sounds like from your description, that would have been pretty easy to do in Archicad…

  2. wladzimir says:

    Hi, Paul! I just dream that someday will be ready for use the full set of the parametric models of classic order systems based on authentic classic “modules”. Thank you very much for your job. It is a very important and prominent step in that directions.

  3. Devesh says:

    very great. I always wanted to check the kind of video. Thank you sir. Can you make more videos of this type on youtube.

    • Paul F. Aubin says:

      Thank you very much. I would like to do more like this. It just takes quite a bit of time and effort to put these together. I will try to get something new posted soon.

      Thanks

  4. Good Stuff Paul, SMH you’re making ornate columns with sine cosine and tangents and I cant get a stupid chair done. Is there any information or videos in regard to workflows to create furniture? Especially with sweeping legs? I have 3 of your Revit books by the way.

    • Paul F. Aubin says:

      Hello Alexander:

      Thanks for the comments. Everything you see here in this video can be applied to furniture. If one of the three books you have is my Revit Architecture book, then there is a chapter on the family editor that does furniture examples.

      Good luck to you.
      paul

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