We need to put interior beams into our project and these beams are located on top of our columns. You can see here in our demonstration model we have a beam represented here by just a big piece of timber that is on top of our project. top of our columns and holds up our web joist. Imagine here that this web joist, the distance between where the wall is and the beam is much more significant than what you're seeing here in the model.
The web joist can become long enough, the span of that joist, to where it needs to eventually land on something like a beam in order to be supported. They can only be so long, according to code and physics, before the joist can no longer support the web joist. the floor. So that's why we see columns and beams within any structure.
In a house especially, we see it where the web joists are going to land, the joists on the floors are going to land and be supported from underneath. So you see here the joist comes along, it stops, gets supported by that beam, and then continues as a new web joist after that and would continue on. So let's go into Revit and put that in. Okay, we've got our columns here represented by these squares.
We need to do two things. One, we need to model the beam into place and then we need to represent that beam accurately according to drawing standards that go on to the document. Okay, those are the two objectives that we have. So let's first create the beam and for our project we're actually going to use a wall and represent the wall or represent the beam using a wall. wall.
So let's go to the architecture tab, select wall, and the wall we want to choose, let's start here with just an interior wall. So I'm going to go down until I see interior four and a half inch partition. We'll start with that one.
Okay. And then we'll edit the type and we're going to duplicate this. Thank and rename it so we're going to call it a beam okay so name it beam and hit ok and under structure select edit so let's change the structure of this wall to represent our beam so the first thing we're going to do is i'm going to click on the bottom left of this window so that we can see the structure and get a better idea of what we're doing we're going to go ahead and and represent this beam as having drywall on the outside of the beam.
But the inside is going to have two timber members sort of glued together. That's how we're going to represent this beam. Right now we have one, meaning the structure in the middle is softwood lumber, and that's three and a half inches. So I'm actually going to select this row in the table here, and we need to have three and a half inches of to add another one.
So I'm going to select insert down below. I'm going to select insert and what you see now is we have row 3 and 4. 3 is now the new row within the core boundary of this wall. So we've added another core to this wall. And we're going to add the same thing here where it says by category.
I'm going to type in exactly what I see below. I'm going to type in softwood, lumber. and I'm gonna add a thickness to that. Now for now I'm gonna add the three and a half inches, but we're gonna change that, and I'll show you why in a second, okay?
As soon as I add the thickness to that, you'll see in the core of the wall in the image here, the preview I should say, you've got two cores to the wall and drywall on the outside, okay? If you remember from the column video, the videos are, or sorry, the columns are an 8 by an 8, 8 by 8. And they need to be, in reality, they're 7 inches by 7 inches. Okay? So we need to do some math so that the beam sits directly on top of those columns. So our total is 7 inches.
And if we were to add this up now, we're beyond that. Okay? We have a inch drywall on each side.
So I need... I need to reduce this to 3 Oops. a quarter inch and three and a quarter inch okay that leaves me with half an inch so i have 3 and 3, that's 6, right?
We're doing some math here. 6, then we have half inch on both sides, that's one more inch, so 7, and then a quarter inch equals, two quarter inches equals half an inch. So we have 7 and a half inches, that's the total width of our column down below. That's perfect.
If you have a different size column, you'll need to do some different math there. Okay, so I'm going to hit OK. That is our beam. That is the structure of our beam.
And instead of thinking of this as studs in the middle, think of it as a wood timber. An entire mass of wood that's running through the center of the beam. Two of them glued together.
We're going to hit OK, and we're going to draw this in. I'm going to start by selecting the edge of my furthest column. Oh, and notice I'm drawing along the wrong location. I actually want to draw this wall along the core center, the center of the wall. Okay, so I hit escape.
I'm going to come back up to location line and select wall center line. Okay, and now I'll click, and it looks like I'm a little bit off. Let me, let's just start here.
Now I know, see that blue line? That indicates I'm on the center of the column, so I'm going to start there. Go across.
and end on the other column. Okay? And Reddit yells at me.
It turns everything orange and says, one element is completely inside the other. In other words, this column right here is buried inside of that wall. Let's see what we did. This warning is okay for now. Just hit okay in the bottom right.
Let's look at this in 3D. And there is my column, right? However, it's not represented accurately. It looks like a wall because that's exactly what we drew.
So we need to change the parameters of this column so that it looks right. So on our properties panel, let's change the constraints. So the base constraint is on the first floor, and the top constraint is on the top of wall, which is correct. The top of wall goes up, and then the floor sits on top of the wall. So the top of the beam needs to be directly underneath the web joist, which is top of wall.
So that's correct. So it's our base constraint that's inaccurate. And remember, for our projects, we have 9-foot ceilings.
So we need to bring the base of the wall up 8 feet. and that leaves us with one foot that represents our beam. Okay?
So where it says base offset, I'm going to click in there and put in 8 feet, positive 8 feet, so just 8 apostrophe, and hit enter. Okay? And now you can see it's represented correctly.
Okay? That beam sits on top of the columns. Okay?
And then imagine our web choice would be on top of that. Okay, so we've accomplished goal number one. I'm going to go back to the first floor.
And notice how I don't see the beam anymore. The reason for that is, remember, our floor plan is cut at four feet, right? All floor plans are cut at four feet.
Because of that, we can't see anything up above that. So now we need to accurately demonstrate or represent where that beam is now on our floor plan. And to do that, we need to create a special line.
line that represents that beam. Okay, so we actually need to add a new line style to our project. So we're going to go up to the Manage tab. Select Manage, come over to Additional Settings, it has an icon of a wrench. Click down on that and select Line Styles, about a quarter of the way down.
And this window pops up. This is where you create new line styles. And I'm going to expand what I see here in the table by selecting this little plus in the top left.
And these should look somewhat familiar, not all of them, but these are the line styles. styles that we already have in our project when we hit D DL or detail lines the this is the parameters we have to start drawing those lines okay so let's create a new one I'm gonna come down to the bottom right and select new Okay? And for our purposes, we know that this line is only going to represent beams from here on out, so I'm just going to type in beam.
Our new type of line that we want is a beam, so I'm going to call it a beam. So our subcategory, we're going to just make sure that's lines. That's your only option. So beam and lines and hit okay. Down below, you'll see it appear on the list.
Our line weight for this needs to be 5. It's a thick line. Beams are always represented with thick lines, so it has a thickness of 5. Okay? The line color should be black. but the pattern needs to change.
So let's go in the drop down under pattern and the one we're looking for is, if I'm not mistaken, double dash. There it is, double dash, 3 eighths of an inch, about halfway down the list. The list is long, so scroll down about halfway, find double dashed, 3 eighths of an inch. And that is the line that's going to represent our beam. So I'm going to hit apply and okay.
And now... you can see if i hit dl on my keyboard that um up here in the modify tab you have line style okay and in the drop down underneath underneath this I have a new line that I can create, which is beam. So I'm going to click on beam and draw that in, okay, from column to column. And I'll go right across.
And if I turn on my thick lines, I'll see that gets represented as a big thick line. That is how we represent our beams as just a single line, okay? Let's go ahead and label that as well by selecting the text tool up at the top. Select A. Okay, on the Quick Access Toolbar, I just clicked on the A. I'm going to make sure that my text is 3 32nds of an inch in my dropdown on my properties.
I have no leader line selected. I'm just going to click right next to that beam line and type in BEAM in all caps. Okay, now the contractor knows there's a beam in the ceiling that these columns are supporting. It's labeled correctly and that's how we show that on our plans.