Getting Started With Strucsoft: How to Setup Your Revit Model

(MWF has been rebranded to Strucsoft)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s webinar. Today we’re gonna see how you can set up your Revit model before you start framing with MWF (now Strucsoft). As you can see I have this little house here. Again it’s comparatively a smaller project and we’re just gonna set up this Revit model even before we start using any features under MWF (now Strucsoft). And yeah let’s just get started.
I think first and very obvious thing that comes up to my mind would be I would just want to resave this file. Again just create a copy or just resave this file keeping in mind that if this becomes the framing model I would want to get rid of some obvious components from this project such as plumbing fixtures and your furniture etc. It’s very important to either resave or just create a local copy. That’s what we’re gonna do first thing first. I’m just gonna save as a project. I’m just gonna name it test 101. I’m just gonna save this. Just give it a second. Perfect.
Since we’ve saved the copy now this could be my framing only project. Again it’s depending on your workflow but that’s what this project’s gonna end up being a frame project at least for this case. And yeah secondly you wanna just get rid of again as I said your furniture and etc. What we’re gonna do is just we’re gonna hide them. I’m just gonna mass select this. Check none. We’re gonna start with your furniture. Obviously your plumbing fixtures. Might as just do the specialty equipment and that’s pretty much it I think. I’m just gonna leave it. I think we’re just gonna hide the furniture and fixtures for the plumbing. And for the height. Our project looks much cleaner this way.
Next we need to purge. For that I’m just gonna go to manage and you have this feature called purge unused. What it does is again as the feature says it removes unused families and types from a project. This is very important before you load any families or use the load data feature that comes out of the box with MWF (now Strucsoft). What we’re gonna do is just click on purge unused. And as you can see it will check almost thousand and fifty items. We’re just gonna click and it will just get rid of the unused families from the project just to make the size of the project a little bit smaller. I usually run it multiple times. Probably two should be enough. Again as I said it’s gonna check 60 items this time but that should be enough.
Once you do that again you’re ready to load the families in your project. The best way to do this is again this is going to be the time where we’re gonna use MWF (now Strucsoft) a little bit. We’re just gonna switch to the wall module and under settings tab you’ll find this feature called load data. It just loads the preliminary MWF (now Strucsoft) settings to the project. We’re just gonna click on load data. And here it’s important that you load both framing and MWF (now Strucsoft) components. Again if you need to see where this root directory is all you need to do is click on the MWF (now Strucsoft) tab and you will find this feature called home directory. And once you click on this — oh it’s on my other window — you should be able to see this path. It’s your program data followed by soft solutions followed by the Revit year that you use followed by walls. If you’re working with walls floors or trusses your framing components imperial and then standard and then you would find all the families that you need to load.
I’m just gonna close this for now. We’re gonna go back to settings, load data, and we’re just gonna load both framing and MWF (now Strucsoft) components. Framing components includes all the vertical members, all the horizontal members, all the framing members, and MWF (now Strucsoft) components consist of families that is your nails, anchor bolts, hold downs, clips etc. We’re just gonna click and it takes a second just to load all of that data that also includes your markers, your joints, and so on.
We’re done with the loading data now we just need to load families. The way you can do it is just go to insert and click on your load family and here we just need to follow the same path that we just saw — your local disk C, program data, structural solutions, whichever you’re using, walls framing component, imperial, standard. I’m gonna frame this project using our dimension lumber family but again if you’re using LGS you can just click on the BMSF SSM S family. We’re just gonna click on as I said dimension lumber family open and this is your types depending on what members you frame with. I’m just gonna select two by three till two by twelve and click on and override the existing with the parameter values and that should be it.
That’s some steps that you need to do even before you start framing. We’ve successfully purged all unnecessary files and families from this project and we’ve imported all the necessary MWF (now Strucsoft) components and framing components to the project. Now we can start with assigning different view templates or just creating different 3D views. What I like is to have a different view for each level and I always make the walls and floors a little transparent. As you can see here they’re already transparent but if you need to do it all you need to do is just either override the graphics through element or you can just open your visibility graphic settings, find walls and just override the transparency — I set it to 60 but it’s totally up to you.
You can create a new template from a view template from your current view or just have something that I have here created. This is my ground level and this is the first level of this house and again if you have your walls transparent it just helps you see what’s going on inside with the framing and you could see the members a little better. Same goes for your floors too — just override the transparency for your floors and you can just create multiple views for the floor specifically.
Secondly we need to also check the wall types. For example I’m just going to take one wall here as you can see I can see my wall type under here in properties. I’m going to click on edit properties and if I just expand this window a little bit for the single layer wall — I think it is very important again this is more a multi-layer wall — but your structure layer needs to stay between core boundaries. You want to set up your wall type accordingly in which your structure layer as I said stays in between your core boundary. If you have more than one layer in between your core boundary MWF (now Strucsoft) might give you an error. This is very important to consider when you select the wall type. Other than that everything seems fine.
And yeah that’s pretty much it. Now if you need to split walls — as you can see I have already split the walls here using the split element tool under Revit — but if you don’t want to use that you also have a feature under MWF (now Strucsoft) that I’ll quickly show you. You can have one single wall profile and you can just create multiple framing panels underneath that same wall profile. Under markers you should be able to see here it’s called vertical split by wall, vertical split by rule, or vertical split by benchmark. We do have multiple ways of splitting the wall. When you click on create you also have the split points menu here. What it does is it just places split marks. Let’s say if we want to have two wall panels underneath the same profile all you need to do is just click on offset, determine what should be the offset of the split marker — let’s say if it’s two or four feet — you just add it here and click on create and that will split your frame wall panels.
Now we’re almost done with the setting up these walls. A couple more things that I would like to mention. I would also see the way my walls are joined. As you can see here again you would be using a join marker to configure your joint condition. It’s very important that you configure your joints according to your preferences. Alongside with that I would also select my opening and just check them. The way you can do it is I would just first go to edit properties. I need to go back for a second — oh no thank you — back to my ground level and I’ll just click on edit properties and just to make sure that my rough width and rough height are set. If not it’s totally up to you. You can also have some of the opening marker settings that use this parameter — both your rough width and height — you can also come here and change that. Other than that I would also go to edit the opening type. I would click on the reference level and here I would see the center line and I would make sure that it is indeed in the center with this opening because MWF (now Strucsoft) will frame around the center line. It is really important to make sure that this is placed in the center. If not you can just manually adjust this and load it back into the project. Make sure you are aware of that.
And that is pretty much it when it comes to the walls.
Now we can move to floors. As you can see for the level one I have my floors here. Again it’s just a sample project — they don’t have to look accurate — but just change the view. The way this works is you can have openings in your floors but if you’re using the floor cutter tool it would just consider your opening as a floor as if you have model lines around your openings on floors MWF (now Strucsoft) will just frame as is. There’s another way you can create an opening and manage it the way you want to frame around it but that’s something that you would find under MWF (now Strucsoft) under opening manager and you can just frame around it.
A couple things that I would check. I can just start with the edit type. I would make sure that I have appropriate members loaded for the joist that goes with the type of the floor that I have. I would edit type and go to the edit properties and here it is very similar to what we’ve seen with the walls. I would make sure I would pay attention to my finish layer and what material it is using especially if you’re using the sheathing tool that also comes with MWF (now Strucsoft).
And yeah that’s pretty much it for this. I would also click on edit boundary and make sure everything’s in a closed loop. I know it is a fairly simple profile for the floor but depending on the typical floor that you use it is always important to make sure that everything’s in a closed loop.
Now again if you need to split the floors into floor panels all you need to do is just have a model line. That’s something that I’m going to do here. I would have a model line — let’s say if I just need to split this floor into two keeping the same profile, just need to split the floor — all I need to do is just select both the floor and the model line. And I always use this feature called a floor cutter and I would see this popup. Again you have your floor type — necessarily it is the same that you chose — but you also have an option to change them. Alongside with this you have this feature which says delete the original floor. I usually do not check this feature but what it does is it will split your floors into two while keeping the original floor as-is. I’m not sure if you need to have some dimensions of what the floor originally was — it could be useful — but in my practice I usually don’t check this. And we’re just gonna click on — as you can see now our floor is split into two.
I would also like to show you that you can also have some of the panels created just outside your project with different kinds of openings. That helps you set up your templates. You can have different templates saved in your template manager. If I just go ahead and open this and let’s see — if I go to the wood — as you can see you can have multiple templates such as your two by three, two by four with different opening conditions etc. And you can set up everything according to your preferences. Again how do you want to frame a door? What opening marker do you want to use when it comes to windows or when it comes to the walls that have no openings? You can have as many templates as you want. Again if you use the same framing condition across your projects you also have an option to export these templates. You need to work on them or set them up once and you can just use them across different projects — you can always export them and import them in a brand new project and use the same template over and over again.
You can do the same with the floors—again you just need to switch to the floor module and when you click on template manager you would be able to see different templates that I’ve already saved or that come out of the box with the default template folder. Again you can just create your own templates and just export them and keep using them across different projects.
Now let’s talk more about how you can frame both walls and floors and have everything aligned — all the stud members ideally how you want to align them. For that we have a new feature under settings called project benchmark. Now the way this feature works is what it does is again as I said it just aligns your floors and walls. What you want to do is first place it. We’re gonna go and click on the project benchmark. And you will have this window pop up. Again under benchmark type you would see two different types of benchmarks. One is the default, which is more a point, and the second one is the rectangular grid. It speaks for itself — it’s a rectangular grid. When it comes to aligning studs with each other I think this goes a little better. We’re gonna click on default. Then you have prefix — we’re just gonna call it BM for benchmark. And initial sequence number I’ll just keep it as one. And then you need to turn on different templates. We’re working with the wood. We’re gonna turn on all the wood templates for your wall module, floor module, and rafters.
And once you click it will ask you where you want to place this benchmark. Let’s just place it somewhere over here. Now what we want to do is just frame walls. We’re going to start with selecting walls and click on create. We’re going to click on template and under default template you would find this template called wood benchmark which wasn’t there before. We’re going to set this as active, select, close, and create. We’re going to click on all. As you can see my wall member is aligned with this benchmark and it doesn’t matter if I move the benchmark — the studs will shift accordingly.
The second thing is I need to frame the floor. I’ll do that — just gonna select floor here and click. We will switch to the floor module and we’re going to click on create. And here again you would find the same template called wood benchmark and we’re going to click on frame now and click on create. Our floor is ready. Sometimes if you don’t see the members that is because your view range is not set up. We’re going to click on edit. You can extend the preview just to get a better idea of what we’re doing but your view depth is set to zero — that is going to be your number four. As you can see here all you need to do is just negative value. I’m gonna put negative three inches and let’s see — yeah and that’s pretty much it.
As you can see your members are now aligned with the benchmark. I think the only reason the rest are not aligned is because the spacing between your floor members is not the same as the spacing between your studs. You can just simply go ahead and change it through MWF (now Strucsoft) and that’s not a big deal. But this is the purpose of the project benchmark — just to help you align your members with each other.
And that wraps up our webinar on how you can set up your Revit model. Again we did go through some very simple and basic strategies on how you can set up your Revit model before you start framing using MWF (now Strucsoft). Thank you guys so much for your time and see you guys in two weeks. Bye.