Pattern-Based Curtain Panel Roof Tile

There are many interesting ways to use Revit's pattern-based curtain walls and panels, and this is one that must have occurred to many users when the capability was introduced in version 2010.

My recent work on smaller scale residential buildings provided the opportunity to develop the technique.

Traditionally in Revit roofing tiles have been represented by a "roof object" with a surface pattern and thickness. The line-based families I had previously created for hip, ridge and rake tiles are great for enhancing 3D views and also elevations to some degree, but these views were still very "flat" - resulting from the imported surface pattern (displayed at an angle) and the lack of definition of the foremost edge of the roof material.

Pattern-based curtain panels are capable of stretching and deforming over complex surfaces. In addition, panels are automatically trimmed along angular edges, which is essential for accurately depicting the hips and valleys of these roof types.

Starting with the Curtain Panel Pattern Based.rfa template set to a 12" x 12" grid  two coincident profiles are blended into a tapered 'S' tile with a 2 inch overlap on the bottom edge.



In the building model roof structure and plywood  are separate objects. The roof tiles are hosted by an in-place mass family. With the workplane set to the surface of the plywood, a boundary line is drawn offset by a few inches from the edge of plywood. The purpose of the offset is to eliminate overlapping tiles. Use 2 inches at hips and edges, 3 inches at hips and valleys.


Selecting the closed boundary, the in-place mass is extruded from the plywood surface. A divided surface is applied to the bottom of this extruded form, with a fixed distance of 12 inches in both directions. The tapered S-tile panel family is applied to the grid. Component flip places the tiles above the plywood. Other settings allow fine tuning of the panel layout.

 

Go to the Files & Families tab above to download sample files. (Edit: directly upgradable from Version 2013.)

Ridge & Rake Tile Families

Line Based Tile Families -
When using Revit on small scale residential or commercial buildings, while we do not model individual roofing tiles, a more realistic appearance can be achieved by adding ridge, rake, and hip tiles to the model.

These families are derived from some very familiar ones which have been around for several years, their origin now obscure. The individual tiles are created using the geometry 'swept blend' with external profile families. This choice allows the profiles to be mirrored parametrically.
The tiles are nested into a line-based generic family and arrayed with constraints to the beginning and end. The tile spacing is variable 


I modeled a Revit roof for each roof pitch that we normally encounter, then used sections and detail views to determine the appropriate angle for each hip and ridge type.

Families are placed by drawing on a selected roof face, or by selecting a roof edge using the 'pick line' tool. (In some cases the families install opposite of the intended direction with this method.)

As the line-based family may be hosted to either face, a yes/no parameter is included to reverse the profile.


The roof tile material may be assigned in Object Styles > Generic Models > Roofing Tile.


With line based families, the Trim, extend and align tools are active and facilitate placement, as depicted in this short video...

The families may be downloaded from the 'Files and Families' tab above.