AS500438

Landscape modeling in Revit with Environment tools

Nehama Sehcter-Baraban
Arch-Intelligence

Ilya Volokin
Arch-Intelligence

Learning Objectives
▪ Discover the different ways to create topographies in Revit
▪ Learn about designing with contour lines using model lines
▪ See how to model the hardscapes with slabs (grading plans)
▪ Reveal the secret of architectural walls for site design in Revit
▪ Get to know the easiest way to design planting in Revit

Description
In this session, you will learn how to create an accurate Revit landscape model with Environment
tools and workflows for landscape architecture projects of all scales and types. Revit is a powerful
platform that has changed the face of the AEC industry over the past years, but landscape architects
looking to implement BIM into their work are encountering numerous obstacles. Creating an
accurate site model requires complex, time-consuming tasks but with Environment for Revit, the
designer can easily model landscape and complete the entire design process within the Revit
workspace. Environment is a natural extension of Revit that was developed by landscape architects,
with years of learning from real live projects and developing the smoothest workflows. If you are a
Landscape Architect or a BIM expert working with LA, this class is for you! We invite you to join us
and discover some of the amazing Environment features, and to see how Landscape can come to
life within Revit.

Speaker(s)
[Add your bio(s). Photos are not required, but you can add one if you choose.]

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Speaker:
Nehama Shechter-Baraban. A landscape architect and a heavy Revit user. After graduating
from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, I worked as a Landscape architect with two
landscape firms. For about six years, I had the privilege to take part in landscape projects of
varying types and sizes, many as one of the lead designers. During that time, I also gained
experience in rendering landscapes and creating illustrations both with computers and by hand.
Today, I head up marketing and am the in-house Revit landscape professional expert at Arch-
Intelligence, creators of ‘Environment for Revit®’, helping to bring Revit to landscape architects
around the globe. I also initiated the first academic Revit program for landscape students at
Ruppin Technological College here in Israel, where I currently teach the two-semester “Revit for
Landscape” course.

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 BIM for landscape – What? Why? and How?
While this class is about using Revit® and Environment for Revit® to produce better landscape
designs, it is helpful to take a step back and ask why. Why should landscape architects, or other
site designers, implement BIM in our work, and why, specifically, Revit plus Environment?

The BIM method has been the de-facto design standard for AEC professionals for over two
decades. Providing the basis for collaboration between all members of the design team and
prescribing all of the necessary documentation, BIM, especially as realized by Revit, is much
more than a method for representing and presenting designs, as is the case with paper and
CAD. It is the tool in which architects actually develop their designs and see their creations
before they are built. Any architect, including landscape architects, can therefore understand
why BIM is the way to go.

Regarding the latter part of the question, why Revit with Environment – Revit, developed by
Autodesk, is, very simply, one of the best BIM platforms available on the market and the most
widely used. Providing a full suite of tools built for the 3D BIM space, Revit helps architects
consistently achieve superior outcomes.

With that said, because of the relatively small size of the landscape architecture segment within
the AEC industry, Revit is missing features that most of us would deem crucial to our work as
landscapers. This is precisely where Environment for Revit comes into play. Environment is the
only toolset that offers solutions to all phases of the landscape design workflow, transforming
Revit from hard-to-use to a no-brainer and immensely valuable for landscape professionals.

IMAGE: AMIR MUELLER LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT LIRAN DRORRY.

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The Environment ribbon within Revit contains more than 40 tools for creating and editing sloped
slabs and topographies, for modeling walls, fences, and curbs, and much more. As our time is
limited, in this lesson we focus on the following ideas, tools, and features:

• Slopes and grading – What topographies and slabs are, how we use them when
designing landscapes, and how Environment simplifies this work by allowing you to
easily create and edit topographies, shape and edit slabs, and use contour lines
effectively and efficiently to create smooth slopes and grades.
• Walls (architectural and retaining) – Moving from well-defined architectural walls
between two levels, to designing and arranging amorphous, varying height, retaining
walls with only a base, or between levels (e.g., walls that continue down into a
parking structure).
• Fences – How, with just a few more clicks and parameter values, you can create a
stepped railing atop your wall, that you can easily modify as you change your wall or
other parts of your design.
• Plantings – Building on Revit’s rich library of plantings and the software’s capacity to
display such plantings in a design, Environment eases placement and replication,
allowing you to work at scale.

In this class handout, I will also briefly elaborate on the principles of landscape modeling in
Revit and the holistic approach (work strategy or workflow) we developed over the years for
modeling landscape in Revit plus Environment. This approach leads to substantially improved
design outcomes in significantly less time.

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The conceptual background for modeling landscape in Revit
Given that it has only been a few years since the use of Revit for landscape and site design has
started to gain popularity, the fundamentals, and basic strategies of modeling landscape in Revit
are still vague and need to be further clarified.

Guiding principles for landscape modelling process

After years of working on real live landscape projects, Environment tools were developed to fit
all the different situations you might encounter while designing your project and to suit various
project scales. These tools are integrated into a holistic workflow of a work strategy if you may,
that combines Revit native tools with Environment automations to streamline the time-
consuming processes, and to reach the required LOD of each model.
The first basic principle is that landscape projects should be treated the same as any other BIM
projects, where your goal is to fully deliver an accurate model.

Here are three main guidelines you should consider while working:
1. Your design is more than just one topography
Just like an architecture project, your model should be comprised of the many different
elements you want to build. When starting a project, try to think about your design
elements such as a path, a planting bed, etc - and you will see that each of those
elements has different heights, slopes, and materials, as well as different information
and detailing requirements. For this reason, you can’t use one big topography for your
entire design, just like there is no one floor to fit an entire building.
Having said that, you should start modeling each of your design components separately,
similarly, to modeling a building.

SITE GRADING PLAN FROM A REVIT MODEL. ALL ELEMENTS INTERDEPENDENT.

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 2. There is no correct category
Softscape and hardscape are term from the area of landscape design that refers mainly
to the material of the ground- whether its soil and planting or a built area such as paved
roads or urban squares. This can be a bit confusing when entering the Revit world and
using its terminology. In your Revit model both softscape and hardscape can each be
represented by using either Slabs or Toposurfaces, each category has advantages and
disadvantages, so its up to you to decide which one to use in every situation.
Here are some parameters to consider-

Toposurface:
• very easy to work with and don’t way heavy on your file even with many of points.
• built-in contour lines
• can show you quick calculation of cut and fill
• Can’t show material volume
• Hides underground elements in section view graphics.

Slabs:
• Can include material layers and calculate volumes
• Easy to handle for simple shapes and slopes
• Harder to handle when grading complex shapes
• Use for higher level of development
•

TYPICAL FLOOR AND TOPOSURFACE ELEMENTS IN A REVIT LANDSCAPE MODEL

For maximum flexibility, Environment provides a wide array of tools for handling both categories
easily and to reach an accurate result.

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3. The surface is your level!
Slabs and walls in Revit are built to attach to model floors. In a building every floor, roof
or wall has a level they refer to, but in site work the ground is your level, so every one
of our elements should relate to a certain toposurface, or in some cases it can relate to
other elements in the model. Going back to the building metaphor, imagine how before
placing a floor in your model you will go to an elevation view and draw your levels and
then on a plan view you will create the floor and attach it to the relevant level. So in site
design if you design a wall to support a raised planting bed it will most likely refer to the
floor or topography it is on, a small path can relate to a building entrance or a retaining
wall will relate to the surfaces on both sides of this wall.

DESIGN COMPLEX SLOPES WITH AUXILIARY SURFACES

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Workflows & Best Practices
Now that we’ve established the main guidelines for landscape design and modeling in Revit, I
invite you to open your landscape template file. As is the case with every Revit project, it is
crucial to work with a suitable template. If you do not have access to a proper landscape
template available, visit our website where you will find our default Revit Landscape Template.
You can start there and gradually develop your own template or templates, as you accumulate
experience working on different projects.

Now, you are all set and ready to start your new landscape project!

Start modeling

When starting a landscape project, you should begin with the following few steps:
• Import information about the existing site or model it.
• Acquire coordinates from a designated linked file
• Import other teams’ models (roads, buildings etc.)
• Analyze and design your project.
• Model the geometry of your primary elements as a flat geometry in a plan view

<any reason for the extra space?>

SITE ELEVATION ANALYSIS CREATED WITH ENVIRONMENT FOR REVIT.

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Slopes & Gradings
Since the ground is our base level, we should start by modeling the ground.
The structural framework of your design, such as a park’s paths, lawns, and planting areas,
usually contains one or a few elements that dictate the overall elevation of your project. You
should start by identifying the primary design element that all other elements can refer to. (For
example – in a park, your primary element will typically be the main path connecting the street
to a certain point within the park; in the case of an urban square, it will likely be the main paving
leading from the building to the streets; and so on.)

Since designing sloped slabs is very limited in Revit, you should start by creating an auxiliary
surface for this slab, and this surface will be the ‘attached level’ for the slab.

(If the slab shape and slope are very simple, you can grade it using Revit’s slope arrow or by
using the ‘Match slope’ tool)

ACHIEVE A HIGHLY ACCURATE MODEL WITH ENVIRONMENT TOPOGRAPHY TOOLS

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You might want to create more than one auxiliary surface, so you should create a dedicated
view filter to be able to hide it in all your views (as these are not modeled for scheduling
purposes).

Here’s how I define my view filter:

You should also insert a comment indicating the specific element the auxiliary surface was
created for, to simplify things if you decide to update the slope.

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Out-of-the-box, Revit offers three primary methods for creating topographies:
• Place each elevation point manually
• From a CAD file
• From a CSV (point) file

When designing landscapes, you can find your self designing topographies with thousands of
points, such that working with Revit’s built-in tools can be, at best, very time-consuming.
Environment offers additional tools for creating and editing topographies, above and beyond
Revit’s own tools, that give you the flexibility to design and edit your slopes quickly and
accurately.

In the following section we will review the three main methods for creating topographies
with Environment:
• From model edges
• From contour lines (model lines)
• From contour lines that snap to model edges

Create a topography from model edges – ‘Surface from Edge’

With the ‘Surface from edge’ tool, you can create surfaces that connect to any edges
within a model, such as: slabs, walls, topographies and their contour lines, CAD links,
and Revit links.

Go to the Environment tab and click on the drop-down arrow in the site panel to select
‘Surface from edge’

A pop-out window will appear. Select ‘New topography’

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The ‘Surface from edge’ dialog allows you to select whole edges, points on edges, a
chain of lines, or contour lines. For additional flexibility, you may also change your
selection method while the command is running.

Start clicking on model edges to create your surface.

You can de-select an edge by clicking on it again, and you can assign a height offset to
place the surface under or above your selection.

Once finished click ‘Apply’.

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Create a topography from contour lines (model lines)
Model lines in Revit are three-dimensional lines that are easily created, making them a
good fit for use as contour lines, However. assigning elevations to model lines is very
difficult, nigh impossible!
As you might have guessed, the Environment tab includes tools that help streamline
working with model lines as contour lines, allowing you to use them to design gradings,

We will take a closer look at 3 of these tools:

• Set elevation

• Check elevation

• Create surface

Once you have your model lines drawn in a plan view, there are two ways to assign
elevation to them:

Select the ‘Set elevation’ tool in the Environment tab under the “Model lines” panel.

Enter a starting value in the ‘Elevation’ text box and an increment value below it (make
sure to hit the ‘Enter’ key). If you don’t change the reference level, it will relate to
absolute elevation – meaning the internal origin point. (we refer to it as sea level
elevation and in all landscape projects, survey points must be on the same elevation as
the internal origin point.)

Click on the ‘Set elevation’ button to assign the desired elevation to a line by clicking on
it
or
Click on the drop-down arrow to assign elevation by crossing between two points.

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The color of the lines will change in the specific view, to indicate which ones have been
changed. You can learn more about these settings in our user guide.

The ‘Check Elevation’ tool allows you to add a dynamic text label indicating a line’s
height. Click on a line to see its elevation or use the ‘by Crossing’ option to label a
sequence of lines.

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You can easily change a line’s elevation by double-clicking on the label and inserting a
new elevation value.

Now that the lines are correctly located, select them, and click on ‘Create surface’

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Or, you can use the ‘Surface from edge’ tool and select the lines one by one.

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Create a topography from contour lines that snap to model edges

Use the ‘Snap Work Plane’ tool to place a work plane at a specific elevation by picking a
reference point in the model.

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Once the work plane is created, the “Model line drawing” tools will open in your top
ribbon. You can now draw model lines on this work plane, and they will be assigned the
selected elevation.

Hit ‘Esc’ once to create a new work plane or twice to exit the command.

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You should now select the contour lines and use ‘Create Surface’ to create a new
toposurface. Toposurfcaes in Revit can not be created using a boundary like floors, so to
connect our new surface with the model edges around it you should again use ‘Surface
from Edge’. This time select ‘Edit Existing’:

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Select the surface you want to edit and select the model edges you want to connect to.

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Walls – working with multiple retaining walls
Walls of all kinds are another important element in landscape projects. Similar to all other
elements, wall heights are determined according to adjacent surfaces. Revit’s architectural walls
are a great category and can contain material layers, rebars, and foundations.

Walls in Revit are designed to connect between two flat building levels and, as we’ve mentioned
a few times, the site ‘level’ is the ground. Very often, we need to design stepped retaining walls
with each section having a different height. With Revit alone, you must model such walls one
section at a time, which can be tedious. We face the same issue with railings – without
Environment, you need to model each section of the railing separately and manually attach it to
the relevant host wall section.

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In the following section I will introduce Environment’s two primary tools for simplifying these
processes:

• ‘Arrange Wall’ tool

• ‘Wall Railing’ tool

The ‘Arrange Wall’ command is a powerful automation based on an algorithm that analyses the
surface elevation on both sides of the wall and based on parameters entered by the user, the
command creates an optimally stepped wall along said surfaces.

Begin modeling your walls only after your ground elements, such as soil, paving etc., have
already been modeled. First, create a ‘place-holder’ wall in a plan view, disregarding its heights.

Then, select the walls and click on the ‘Arrange Wall’ command in the Environment ribbon.
In the command dialog, insert the desired parameters, such as minimum height, the desired
height of the steps, and embedment depth. In most cases, Environment will automatically detect
the adjacent surfaces, but if you are working with multiple layers of slabs (for example, when
you are designing above an underground structure, such as a parking lot) check the ‘Manual
Selection’ option. For detailed information about each parameter, see our user guide.

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You can run the command several times on this chain of walls, each time with different
parameters, to see several design alternatives, or to manually adjust some of the wall segments
to your liking.

Next, use the ‘Wall Railing’ tool to place railings on multiple walls. Tab-select all the walls and
click on the ‘Wall Railing’ command in the Environment ribbon.

In the ‘Wall Railing’ dialog select your preferred railing type and click ‘Ok’.

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If you check the ‘Combine connected railings’ option, Environment will automatically create a
single railing element on all wall chains of the same You may also assign an offset from the wall
edges if this is needed for a specific fence. I recommend using a railing element for wall
capping, as well (rather then using a wall sweep that does not adapt to the wall if you change its
profile). You can do this by running the command multiple times on the same chain of walls.

Railings created using the ‘Wall Railing’ feature are dynamic and linked to the wall, such that the
railings will update automatically if you edit or change the underlying wall.

Additional recommended tools to complete this workflow are ‘Wall Layout’ to create an unfolded
wall elevation, ‘Stretch Wall’ to change a wall chain’s height, or ‘Flip Railing’ to flip multiple
railings.

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Planting plans
There are two primary approaches to designing and documenting planting plans:
• Creating an area for each plant type
• Drawing a symbol to represent the exact location of each plant

Either approach can be easily implemented with Revit.

Creating an area for each plant type

Create an area plan using a designated type.
You can create a new type in the ‘Room and Area’ menu in the ‘Architecture’ tab.

Here is how I defined my area plan type:

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Next, use the same dropdown to select ‘Color Scheme’ and create a dedicated color scheme to
use for your planting plans.

Notice you don’t have to associate all of your plant types with this scheme. You can create new
types as you draw the plan. Next, create a new area plan and assign the color scheme to its
properties. Schedules will be created for each area type separately.

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You can now use the ‘Area Boundary’ element to design the different planting areas and use
‘Area’ to assign a type to every planting area element.

Tip-
Most area parameters are instance parameters, so you should assign most of the values
(accept the name) through the planting schedule.

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Creating a planting plan by placing Revit families:
The second approach is to place every plant instance in your model separately for a more
detailed planting plan, and this is where Revit’s category system comes in handy. Use one or a
few basic planting families and create a type for every plant you want to place in your model.
Here is an example of a few planting types bearing their botanical plant names:

‘Scatter Area’ tool

To streamline the process of placing multiple elements, e.g., plants, use the
Environment ‘Scatter’ tools. These tools enable mass placement of multiple elements in
a model. It can be used to place plants or any other Revit family according to predefined
parameters.

The advanced algorithms underlying Environment’s Scatter tools allow you to:
• Scatter elements on a selected area according to a grid or randomly.
• Scatter elements on every slab, surface, subregion, area, room, or zone in your
model.
• Scatter elements on elements in a linked model (slabs, surfaces, subregions,
areas, rooms, or zones).
• Scatter a single element type or create a mix of elements.

And more…

When designing a detailed planting plan, we recommend:

Opening a new project file for the detailed planting plan and linking it to your main
project. This way you can avoid having to work with a heavy file.
Creating a planting area plan for preliminary design and then placing instances
according to this design.

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In this example I created an area planting plan in the main project file and linked it to a
new project file to start creating the planting plan:

In a new plan view, I set the Revit link to show the area plan:

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Next, select the ‘Scatter Area’ tool

Once the ‘Scatter Area’ window has opened, you can select one or more of the linked
areas, and click on ‘Apply Area’

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Now you can select a family from the dropdown list or pick a family from your screen.
This tool allows you to create an assembly and re-edit your scattered elements. Read all
about the different options available with the ‘Scatter Area’ tool, or simply try to use
several options to get to know this advanced tool.

Note:
Elements (plants) can’t be hosted on a linked file surface, so once you place them, they
will be placed on the lowest level, and you might not see them. To solve this issue. we
suggest placing them on the ‘View range elevation’ so they will be visible during your
scatter edits.

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After you finish placing all instances in a plan view, you can move to a 3D view, select all
the plants, and host them on the linked surface with the ‘Align to Surface’ tool.

Select the plants and click ‘finish’. Then select the linked surface to host the plants. You
can select as many instances and as many surfaces as you need.

And the result is perfect!

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‘Line Scatter’ tool

Use this tool to place multiple elements along a line. Similar to the ‘Area Scatter’ tool,
you can use ‘Line Scatter’ to position rocks, lamp posts, trees, or any other Revit family.
Think of it as a very sophisticated ‘array’ feature, where you can draw a line or chain of
lines just like you would draw a regular Revit Model line. You can use splines, curves, or
use the ‘Pick Line’ option to use lines from your model.

In this example, I will show how to create a curved rockery on a surface.

Click on the ‘Line Scatter’ icon in the Environment ribbon to open the command dialog.

Select ‘Draw path’ to create the reference line for your elements. (You can also use
‘Select Existing’ to select any line from your model)

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Notice that your top ribbon is now showing sketch mode, so you can start drawing your
scatter line. Remember, you can only create one line or a chain of continuous lines.
Once you finish click on ‘Apply Path’ and select the family to be scattered from the
‘Scatter Selection’ drop-down list.

You can use ‘Irregular method’ for a random positioning by the number of elements or
define a fixed distance between the elements for an orderly placement.

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Check the ‘View Range elevation’ box to locate the rocks above your design so you can
see the instances while making changes, and click ‘Apply’ to view the final placement.
You can keep making changes until you are happy with the result than click on ‘Finish
Scatter.’

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Once you finished scattering the rocks, they will appear above your design.
To host them on a surface, use the ‘Align to Surface’ tool to align all rocks to
the selected surface.

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Thank you for watching this class.
I sincerely hope you found it interesting and useful.
If you don’t use Environment for Revit® yet, visit our website for a 60 days FREE trial.

Still have questions?

Write to me at Contacts@Arch-Intelligence.com and I will get back to you with an answer.

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