From the course: Revit 2026: Essential Training for Architects

Locating walls - Revit Tutorial

From the course: Revit 2026: Essential Training for Architects

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Locating walls

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- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to begin laying out a two bedroom condominium unit, and we're going to use the sketch then modify or progressive refinement approach that we talked about in some of the earlier videos. Now, just to remind you of what that means, it means we're going to first roughly place the elements that we need, the walls in this case, and then we're going to come back and refine the position of those walls using tools like temporary dimensions. So to get started, I am here in a working view, and it already has the outline of the overall unit, and we're going to begin placing the walls that we need on the left hand side of the plan. So I'm going to come over here and click my wall tool or type WA. And if you're working in imperial, I want you to change the wall type to the four and seven eighths inch interior petition. And if you're working in metric, that's going to be the interior 123 millimeter petition. So once we've done that, we'll accept all the other defaults. And I want you to start drawing up here roughly near the middle of this top wall and click and then just sort of pull that straight down and then kick back over to the left and highlight the center line of the wall on the left like so. Now if you go center line to center line like I've done, it should automatically break the chain in both cases. However, let me demonstrate again by doing a second set of walls down here. So I'm going to start drawing out this way, pull it out just a little bit, and then what would happen if you stop short of the center line? Maybe you pick this inside face right here. Well notice that that does draw the wall, but it leaves me connected instead of breaking the chain. It's not a big deal, you can just simply press the escape key one time should that happen to you. So if you find yourself in that situation, then that's the simple remedy to that. Okay, so we need a few more walls. I'm going to do a wall here. I'm going to do a couple verticals here and here. And then I'm going to create a small closet in the corner here. Now all of that has been placed very roughly, and none of those dimensions are currently correct. So that's the sketch part of the process. Now we're going to do the modify part or the progressive refinement part. So we're done with the wall tool for now. I'll click the modify tool to cancel and we'll now move on to making the required modifications. Now to remind you how that works, what you do is you select the object that you want to move, and then on screen, you will see some dimension objects appear. Now when you manipulate a temporary dimension, it's important that you click on the dimension value. Right beneath the dimension value is a small little symbol that looks like a miniature dimension. If you click that, that will actually make that a permanent dimension. And if I deselect the wall, notice how this dimension remains. So if you end up with permanent dimensions on your screen, that's what happened is you missed when you tried to click the number and you ended up making it a permanent dimension. Now, I don't really want to keep this permanent dimension, so I'm going to select it and delete it. So I'm going to come back and select this wall and be careful to make sure I'm picking the actual number instead. And if you're working in the imperial file, put in 8'1, eight foot, one inch. If you're working in the metric file, put in 2575, 2-5-7-5. Okay, now here's a common mistake that folks make. I want to direct my attention to this space to the left now. So I click right on this dimension here, and I want that space to be five here in imperial or 1525 in metric. But notice what happens. The same wall just moved back again to this new location. So what did I do wrong? Well, you always need to think about what object you want to modify, and that's the one you want to have selected. So I'm going to undo one time and that's going to move this wall back to where I wanted it to be. And now the correct thing to do is to switch the wall selection. So I'm going to select this wall, and now I get two dimensions. It's this one I want to modify, five feet in imperial, or 1525 in metric. So now that's the basic process. So now we just kind of keep working our way through the floor plan. All of these walls will continue to interact with one another. So notice that if I select this wall and we move it, not only does it change the position of the wall I've selected, but all of the walls connected to it stay connected. So all of those T intersections take care of themselves. So with that wall selected, I can come up here and give it a value, 10 feet imperial or 3000 millimeters in metric, and all of the other walls take care of themselves. Next, I'll go to this closet right here, edit this value. In imperial, I want that to be five foot three inches. In metric, I want that to be 1550, 1-5-5-0. I'll move over to this wall next, and I want this value to be five or 1525 in metric. And then I will direct my attention to this small closet down here. Now I'm going to start with this little horizontal wall, and I want to set the location of that wall, but this time, the number that I know is the size of the closet, but I happen to know that size of the closet to the outside face of the wall. And you'll notice that right now my witness line right here is to the inside face of the wall. So let me zoom in a bit here just so you can see that better. So right now it's here on the inside face. You can click it, it'll jump to the center, click it again, it'll jump to the outside face. And now that's the dimension that I want to modify. So if ever you're in a situation where the temporary dimension is not displaying the distance you want, you can just simply move the witness lines before you put in the number. So 8'2 in imperial or 2500 in metric. I'll do the same thing here. This one I also know to the outside face. So once again, I will click that little grip control and then click it a second time and then edit this value to 2'8 in imperial or 875 in metric. Now, I obviously don't have enough room between here and here to fit a doorway. So the final thing that I need to do is move not only this wall, but I don't want to leave the closet behind. If I move just this wall, notice what happens to the closet. So what I want to do instead is select all three of these walls and move them as a unit. Now notice on my screen I'm seeing temporary dimensions. This is because in an earlier video, I toggled on this activate controls button right here, and it will stay persistent until you turn it off. If you haven't turned that on on your screen yet, then you're not going to see any temporary dimensions. So all you need to do is click the activate controls button right here and you'll see a series of temporary dimensions appear. Now, unfortunately, none of those temporary dimensions is giving me exactly what I want. So what I'm going to do is grab this little dot right here, click it, start to drag it, highlight the inside face of this wall, let go, and it's this number right here that I want to modify, 12'7 imperial or 3775 in metric. So that completes the left side of this floor plan. And let me just give you a quick look at all the dimensions here just so you can verify your work.

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