Quick Slab Depression

I'm working on a building that has several areas where the concrete floor slab must be depressed for ceramic tile finish and sloped for drainage. It would be easy to place a couple of hidden lines on the floor plan, drop in a 2D floor drain, and be done with it. That's what I did on the first pass. I soon realized that the slab depressions would also need to be shown on several other drawings: Slab Plan, Export Plan, Enlarged Plan, etc.

The general guideline for Revit is that if an object or feature appears in more than one view...

Model it!

I created a floor-based generic model containing a void extrusion with instance parameters to control the length, width and depth. I used symbolic lines for the hidden "slope to drain" lines as I prefer them to appear in plan only. I copied the generic annotation from the Floor Drain family and used equality constraints to locate it in the center of the family. Yes/no visibility parameters (Show Drain; Show Lines) allow the appearance of these to be controlled in the model.

As with all basic Revit families, this is just a starting point. The possibility for further development is apparent. 

• Multiple floor drains. 
• Sloped slab using a void blend below the extrusion.

Download 'GEN_Slab Depression.rfa from the Files and Families tab above.

~

Like architecture, great software doesn't just happen, it is designed. 

Revit is designed to be expansive. Operations are consistent, logical and intuitive. Learning is incremental and the curve is steep - which means users achieve high productivity in a relatively short time.