What's New in ASCENT's Site Planning and Design Guide (Previously Site & Structural Design)

October 19, 2020 Cherisse Biddulph

You gave us your suggestions and we listened! I am excited to tell you about the update to the Revit Site and Structural Design (Revit 2020 or earlier) learning guide. I have revamped its structure to be more in line with a realistic site plan development workflow and given it a new name to fit: Revit Site Planning and Design. The book is now focused on teaching users the fundamentals of Revit's coordinate systems, how to bring a civil engineer/surveyor's CAD site plan into their model, and topographical design.   If you missed my webcast where I discussed these changes, you can view the recording here

This guide is still broken down into two chapters, but now chapter 1 is focused on site planning and chapter 2 is focused on site design. The feedback we received indicated that the structural chapter (previously chapter 2) often wasn't taught, but for anyone who may have used it, the information is still provided in the guide but has been moved to the appendix. In time, it will be removed altogether as the content no longer aligns with the specific objectives of the revamped course.  (For those still looking for structural content, you can check out our Revit 2021 Fundamentals for  Structure guide or talk to us about creating a custom book with this content for you.)

The dataset for this Site Planning and Design learning guide has been updated as follows:

  • Practice 1a - Link and Modify Positioning is a simple exercise that was added to show how the survey point and project base point works in a project when linking Revit or CAD files in.
  • Practice 1b - Working with Shared Coordinates dataset is new but still demonstrates how to utilize named positions.
  • Practice 2c - Modify Toposurfaces, includes a task showing how to add a cut/fill schedule. 

The practices have been rearranged to fit within the workflow of setting up the Revit model, linking in necessary files, and exporting. Then to establishing the coordinates, acquiring and publishing shared coordinates, adding building pads and annotations, and working with site components.

This year's changes include:

Chapter 1 Site Planning

  • Chapter 1 starts off with a generic workflow for site planning and design and I have added a section on terminology that is used when working in Revit. I felt this was lacking previously and could really help users by giving them a solid base for understanding Revit's coordinates.
  • The book dives deeper into Revit's coordinate systems, how to modify, and how to reset them. These are important aspects to know and understand as your model can get off course in relation to the civil engineer's coordinates.
  • Information on linking files and exporting the model to DWG has also been added as this is a crucial part of communicating design intent.

Chapter 2 - Site Design

  • Chapter 2 is now dedicated to creating topographical surfaces, adding building pads, annotating site plans, and adding site components.
  • Information for cut/fill volumes has been added, and a task for creating a cut/fill schedule is included in practice 2c - Modify Toposurfaces.

The intent of this rather drastic reorganization is to get the content to fall in line with professional practices and workflow.  I can't wait to hear what you think about these changes!

We love getting feedback and as you can see it really helped drive the changes in this course so it is more focused. Please keep the feedback coming and remember to sign up for my webcast that will further discuss the changes in this learning guide. You can sign up for my webcast here: What's New in ASCENT's Site Planning and Design Guide.

About the Author

Cherisse Biddulph

Learning Content Developer<br><br>Cherisse is an Autodesk Certified Professional for Revit as well as an Autodesk Certified Instructor. She brings over 19 years of industry, teaching, and technical support experience to her role as a Learning Content Developer with ASCENT. With a passion for design and architecture, she received her Associates of Applied Science in Architectural Drafting and Design with a four-year core curriculum in Interior Design and has worked in the industry assisting firms with their CAD management and software implementation needs as they modernize to a Building Information Modeling (BIM) design environment. Cherisse continues to expand her knowledge in the ever evolving AEC industry and the software used to support it.

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