How to Connect with Structural Connections in Revit

MICHAEL ECHAVE: Hello, everyone. My name is Michael Echave and I'm here today with my co-host and co speaker Matt Linn, and what we're going to be talking about is how to connect with structural connections within Revit. But first let's talk a little bit about ourselves.

My name is Michael Echave, I am an Autodesk certified instructor. My title right now is Structural Services Manager at Applied Technology Group. We are a platinum partner with Autodesk. We come from industry. I started out doing architectural design then mechanical fabrication for custom windows and doors, and then structural design, which is where my passion finally lied, with structural design.

Then before coming over to the consulting part of the industry and coming over to this part of the industry, my passion for teaching and instructing kind of fed through into that, and that's why I'm on this side of the industry being able to teach, find out workflows, assist, and help, and falls in line with this connecting with you folks out in industry. Again, certified instructor, spoke at AU in 2021 with my co-host as well and co-speaker Matt, who will talk a little bit later and he'll introduce himself here shortly. If you did want to get any of our contact information we do have the QR code top right. Feel free to reach out to us. Our LinkedIn is in there as well.

A little bit more of my background. Autodesk certified professional for structure. I also spoke at Xcon for those folks that are listening in and know Bluebeam products I'm also an Autodesk and Bluebeam certified instructor too. But without further ado, let's introduce my co-host Mr. Matt Linn.

MATT LINN: Thank you Michael. My name is Matt Linn. I am the director of architectural and structural services with ATG. I am a licensed architect, which is where I focus the first 17 years of my professional career. I followed the traditional role of architect, and along with that I was also pursuing the BIM management path, and that's where I ended up finding my passion. As Michael stated, I enjoy finding workflows and training, and focusing on the BIM aspect of architecture. So about five years ago, I took a jump out of architecture traditionally into the role of BIM manager here with ATG. And that's where I am today.

MICHAEL ECHAVE: Thank you, Matt. Matt also forgot to talk about-- I know we're talking about structural connections. He does have an engineering background as well. So take note of that as he goes through and adds some architecture flair to the back end of this teaching for connections. But further ado, let's hop into our full presentation on how to connect with structural connections.

So first and foremost, let's talk about that. Steel connections and what we're going to go through and model within our design environment. I want to take keynote here and talk specifically about level development. We're going to be talking about connections and how to go through and model connections, but I like to talk a little bit about the LOD, level development. There's a great article about this in BIM forum about how you should create this, more from your BIM execution plans and implement it into your design.

Coming from industry typically we don't go through and model connections from a structural building design standpoint. It's more of a fabrication design. And it's typically a level of 350 of development, and typically we're modeling at 300. We cover all of our structural connections typically from a detail perspective. We don't actually put it in our parametric model and replicate it. But maybe it's time consuming factor, or we don't want to have liability. I'm here today to show you how easy it is to go through and create them within your design environment.

This is going to be a basics course. We're not going to get into a lot of the heavy lifting from the automation standpoint and creating rules and exceptions for different types of placement of the connections. More so the connections itself with a little bit of the automations, and then Matt's going to add some back end from an architectural perspective, how we can go through and add some exposed maybe wood structure trusses with some actual connections for them as well, for some renderings. But I won't speak too much of his, we'll just hop into mine and continue forward.

So this first part is where is the panel located. Right? So there's a couple of locations and we'll show you that in Revit when I get inside of it. But formally and foremost, it is the steel tab within the design environment of Revit. From there you have the panel called connections, and within that connections panel there are two portions of that connections panel. So there's the connections and there's connection automations.

Today we're really going to dig deep in the understanding of how to just model connections generically. We'll highly kind of low level talk about the connection automations, and then next to that one is the fabrication elements, which is that kind of two for one bonus. So if you're listening in you get a little bit of extra on the fabrication component parts from the architectural perspective, which Matt's going to highlight. But again, how do we get in, what are we going to access. We're going to be mainly talking about the panel of connections and going through and modeling those withinside of Revit.

So with that let's hop right into Revit. I like to do my stuff live. It helps me think as we go through these things. What we're able to go through and kind of visualize when we're creating them. All right, now that we're inside of Revit, we're going to go through and talk about these structural connections. First and foremost, we want to be able to visually see things when we're inside of Revit itself. So when I'm inside of Revit we have to be able to see the representation of these as we're going through in order to visually see them within the model.

So I'm using the multidiscipline template and most of them are already pre-created in terms of view display, but we'll quickly show that. As you're going through you do want to make sure your detail level is set to fine, otherwise I'll go to coarse, you're going to see more of that line representation. Medium is typically your geometry. But then when you go into fine you're going to be able to see your connections that have been created. And that's not the actual establishing of connections, which we'll hit on in a little bit. It's the actual view of the connection being modeled.

The other part would be going into your visibility graphics. So you can just hit VV, Victor Golf or Victor Victor if you want to get into visibility graphics. You can also go to your Properties panel. Again, this is basics but it's not the fundamentals of Revit and design. If you do need some of that, feel free to reach out to me and I can help you along the way, but I'm hoping that most of us are kind of there at this point.

But then you can go through and you can go and look at your panel of structural connections. If I scroll on down, and that's probably looking at me. Michael you could just hit S and get down to the S's. Yes, everyone, you can substitute values. But we'll go to here, structural connections. You want to make sure that you have all of the ones that you're going to go through and model checked. That way you're visually able to see them because you can come in here and not show things like maybe you don't want to show the welds that you're going to be having included in your connection points, but just being aware, right?

You don't want to start going through and trying to model things if you can't even see it anyways. So being aware that you want to go through and make sure that you're able to see things as we're starting to create this foundation of our structural connections. So on that note, where can we find the structural connections panel?

Up at the top tab you have structure. There is a connections panel within here as well. So there's the connections, connections automation, as we saw in the PowerPoint. You also have the steel tab, and from the steel tab, you have the additional points of connections and connection automation here as well. You will have to come here for Matt's portion of talking about the fabrication elements, but for this standpoint you can come from the Structure tab or from the steel tab to get access to the connections point.

Now before we go through and establish a connection, I like to start with adding connections into my templates. Now you can have this in your templates, or you can do it by project, but we all know if we have things in our template it expedites the design process itself. So I would recommend starting it out in your template. But again, completely up to you. So that way end users don't have to add them and add additional types, because you are going to be creating types within those specific connections to add additional placements of what you're looking for.

So in order to get access to those, it's this little arrow right here that you select that has a flyout. Now with this flyout you have the option of your connections. So this is what's going to be available when a connection is established. And Revit actually knows in terms of size of members and types of members being placed what's available for your placement of the connection, which we'll go through and show a little bit of that a little later on, maybe when we're doing bracing, to show you our options that we can go through and select.

It filters it out for you, essentially. But what you're able to go through and do here is select what type you're looking for. Let's just say I'm looking for a general bracing, and I'm going to add some additional ones for what we're going to go through. Maybe I want to add a gusset plate with two diagonals for my bracing. We want to be able to add that connection point so that when somebody models it and they select a connection, it will populate that actual connection.

So if you want to add that one you just hit add, it adds a flyover to it. It's just like adding parameters, shared parameters, or just adding parameters to a schedule, for that fact. Same type of thing add, remove, and then if you don't want these to be available you just hit Remove. So again, the filtering here to help you search through things. So you don't have to go through the long laundry list of all of these completely easier to go through that way.

The next one is this parameters tab. Now the Parameters tab is specifically used for adding statuses. Now this is a great way to convey to maybe detailers or maybe you don't want to model connections because you're worried about being liable for what you're putting in the model, you can come into here and add these parameters of a dropdown option for saying it's not approved, or it's rejected. You can even add some additional ones if you wanted to. This just gives you another step forward.

Maybe if you do want to model them but not have that liability, or maybe you actually are trying to convey to the structural steel detailers that you are approving these and they can start manufacturing it. Right? So from that manufacturing standpoint they can get this metadata and associate it and start actually going through and producing some of these as they've been created. So again, it's a built in parameter. You can add the type of selections to these. It's completely up to you as you go through and do that.

Now that all being said, how do we go through and establish a connection? So I've already placed a couple of these in this example. We're going to go through and show you how you can quickly create an example or just create a connection overall. So I'm actually going to go over to this area over here at the top left. I'm going to go through and select my column, and you can do multiple selections if you have all three if you want to do all three of these on this column that's supporting the three members coming in as the girders. But I'm just going to do one, so if you wanted to do more, I'll show you that too.

I can select the column then select the framing member. And if you wanted to select an additional one for them to connect to, it will show you-- and I'll show you how it establishes the main member that's supporting it as well and how you can transfer that. And then you can hit the connections. I'm going to subtract this one though because I'm only going to show this example. Then I'm going to go to my structure tab or the steel tab, either one, and then you can go through and hit that connection.

It's going to establish this node of connection. So you have your main member here, and then your secondary member here. Now let's say it didn't establish the correct supporting member for your loads. What you're able to go through and do is there's a circular node underneath-- beneath the number, and you can switch the primary.

So if I wanted this to be the primary one, I can actually select it and it will rotate that. So being aware of which one's the primary item that's holding the loads is going to be the appropriation for what you're selecting with your connection. And again, you can transfer those, if you have three of them, which I'll throw I'll show when we're going to do the bracing connection. Again, it's that circular node you select this to make a different one the primary for it.

Great, now that that's established, this is called a generic connection. Nothing's being represented above it it's just saying, hey, Revit, there's a connection from this point to this point. Now you need to actually show the representation of that connection which we talked about earlier, right? I like to have these loaded in so that I can establish from a generic connection into an actual viable connection. So when I go down to my type selector my properties over here, what I'm going to be able to do is see what's available for those connection points. And Revit will filter out what's specific to what you're able to model in these instances here.

So from this point, I do have some additional options that I can go through and select. Now I've created an additional one here for this clip angle three bolt for the size of the member that I'm going to be going through and using. This is going to be too large for this instance, but I wanted to show you an example of how we can modify these later on.

And this is why it's important, again, as we look back at our objectives, we want to make sure we have things in our template to speed up this process. If these are already built in people aren't going to have to go through and create custom ones every single time. They have a basis to start their design. And then we can go back if we do need to create custom specific ones outside of this.

So if I go through and select this clip angle three bolt, I'm going to see it's going to populate, right? And that's not the actual one that I want for this specific model itself. So I can go back and select this one and go back into my clip angle, which is two bolts for this one. That's the appropriate size for this specific member here.

Now hey, Mike, that's great, but how did you go through and customize these? With them itself they are a built in parameter that you can create selections for these options. So if I go back into Edit type here, I'll be able to see this new selection of what I can do by modifying parameters. Now if you're going to create a new one for a specific connection point that's going to be replicated in other areas and whatnot, you want to rename it. Typical old fashioned creating a new system family for this type for folks to select. Right? So I already had that three bold, I'm going to do this clip angle. I would probably hit duplicate or rename, whichever workflow you want that's already available for end users to do.

So now in 2024-- I need to confirm in 2023-- the modifier ranges. This one's specifically for your ability to go through and do the automations with ranges. So we'll touch a little bit on that. We're not going to go in depth. Right now we're specifically talking about modifying parameters for this type within this system family.

So I hit Edit type, I can go through and look at the specific type that we're looking at for this specific option. So as we're going through and looking at this creation of this one here, I can go through and look how we can modify this one if need be. So from here I have my clip. The great thing is that it has examples of the numbers what each is going to representation of when you're modifying these parameters.

So you have your clip angle, you have your clip welds, you have your top cope, you have your bottom cope if you wanted to go through and modify that. You have your bolt parameters if you want to go through and change those out as well. If you want to change out your horizontal bolts. And I can go on and on and on. But being aware that you have that option to go through and change and modify these for your specific needs, and save it as that type so people can reuse it. Right?

Making it a lot easier on an end user, maybe, if you're the structural engineer and you have a designer that hasn't done this before, isn't that at that point of being able to create their own connections, or maybe you have a list that are already pre-created your designer can come in and modify them. Or maybe you're the structural engineer and you need to add them into your template. Again, we're just trying to increase that overall efficiency when you're going through and designing.

So I'm going to hit Cancel out of here. And that is modifying those parameters, again, creating additional ones for end users to go through and select, or for you to go through and select in your model. Now I'm actually going to go down here. I'm going to establish the same connection again, selecting these two members here. I'm going to go through and add structure, and I'm going to populate a connection here. I'm going to also decide what connection point is available for this one. And for this one it's the three bolt.

This works, great. Now hey, Mike, do I have to go to each and every one, establish a connection, add a connection point? Actually you don't. If they're the same members you're able to actually go through and select an existing one, and then you can right click and you can propagate that connection to all of the similar instances in your project. So all I need to do here is just hit propagate connection, and then of course, a little good old exit out. As it loads real quick. And all of them have been created in the same instances where those needed to be placed.

Now, hey, Mike, that's great. What about placing it from a base plate standpoint? You don't need a foundation item or element. So footing, for this instance, to place it. But I added both so we can see what it looks like maybe from a detail perspective. Same thing here. I can just go through and I can say, hey, there's a connection point. This time I'm not selecting the elements. I'm actually clicking connection. And I'm going to establish one at the bottom.

You can do the same thing at the top by the way, if you click the top of the element. But I'm clicking at the bottom of the element here hitting Enter. And now it's going to apply it here.

Now when you start placing these, and I'll do base plate here, you can as you go through and establish your next connection point, it will when you decide to place your option, same thing you can establish the selection for it. And if I go back to over here, you can establish the connection versus it just being by itself. You can go through and just say, these two are going to be a connection point here. That way you can establish it to those two having that selection for them both.

Hit enter. Now again you have two. And then you have the one here. You're probably going to flip those here. And then you can go through and establish that connection point for generic connection or you can go through and establish it from the opposite connection. Actually this has to be the opposite. Oh, that's right. So I need to go through and establish the base plate connection for these, which we'll do in a second. But being aware of those two options of going through and placing them.

Now, hey, Mike, what does this look like in a section? You can also go through and do a section, but let's jump into bracing first. That way we can go through and show the bracing and then come back to this as well.

So for bracing you have the same option. I'll just show an example I've already created. This is more of like, hey, Mike, how does it look when we go through in detail things? Same thing again. You can change the naming of this. I just did a generic out of the box, but this is the type, this is just a type tag. So if it were to go through and change it updates for the type selection that it is, and then you have the dimensions again, just being able to go through and design these.

So hey, Mike, that's great. You showed us where we can get to. How can I go through and create these? I have another model that has one that's not created yet. Right? And all I did to create this for those folks that are wondering, hey, Mike, that's awesome. You have all these examples. How can I go through and actually model them?

And we'll just go quickly fly through this. For bracing I like to use a elevation for framing. And we can go through and grab this just by going to View, and then when you go through to your elevation you can do a framing elevation. This attaches to the grids. It's a lot easier to model. You're bracing this way because then you're not clicking past it to some other 3D element. That way when you click into this elevation here, you're modeling on that plane of the grid. It's a lot easier to go through and model bracing in that manner.

So how can we go through now and establish those two? So this is that two click method. I can say, hey, here, here, well, I guess it's three clicks. And then establish my connection point. And then from here. So I already used the gusset plate in this model. So as you were able to tell, hey, Mike, you've it automatically went to it.

But I would have selected the option for it and then it would have placed the same one. But as you can see it already gave me my coping for it, and it already applied those. So if I go into 3D here for this specific model, I can go through and look at that bracing here, and the connection that it's made for it. It already placed the weld symbol as well, how they're going to weld the plate to the actual wide flange member that's above it. And if you were a little bit looking over here, this is what happens when you don't have a connection established to something. So if it's a generic connection, it's going to give you a warning. So just being aware of that.

And side note, because I was just thinking about warnings, if you can't model connections, there's actually a folder file issue. It happened to me when I was going through and doing this for 2024. We're going to add it in your handout. The form that was from Autodesk that you can just go to the web page, that way you can come back into here. And then fix that. There's a couple file locations. So just a little tidbit as you're going through this, it's not modeling, something's wrong. There's actually an install issue with some of these too, so we'll put in the handout that way you have it at your leisure to go and look at it.

Now, if you wanted to add some more connections, again, from this point to this point, we're going to go through and then establish this as a connection. Hey, Mike, that's great. Again, what type of connection point am I going to establish from here. This is going to be one diagonal. And we can go through and establish that connection. So once we've modeled this again, you have your weld symbol here for the plates, and then you have your bolted connection.

If you had a separate connection that's specific to this one, you can create your own. You can also override just the instance. So a little hot tip, here override just the instance. That allows you to go through and modify this specific one, so you're not modifying all of the types created. Because I know that's going to be a question, hey, Mike, what if you have a one off. That's how you're going to go and do your one offs. Get some type of example there come in here and modify those parameters for this specific one.

Moving down in that instance properties, because again these are all instance parameters. How can I go through and change some of these, so like that code checking that we talked about earlier. Sorry, we didn't talk about code checking. We talked about the ability for it to be yes or no.

But code checking, this was like its predecessor. So in 2022 I think, don't quote me on that, 2022 or 2023, you were able to do code checking. Now it's built in to code check from standards with using the automation tool. So we'll cover that quickly, but being aware that's kind of where it's built into versus where it was before. You can come into here run a report, and you can have it export with a report with it. That's no longer, well, it's not that it's no longer the case. It's not leveraged in that same manner. You're going to use it through connection automation, and you can do it for ranges as well as you're looking through that.

But OK, so now that we're done with that. Again, if you wanted to propagate these everywhere you can do the same thing. You can select a connection and then just propagate those over if you wanted to, or just simply go through and select what you're going to want to place for those. So that is connections. The ability to go through and select the connections panel. And getting started with placing your structural connections within your design environment.

Secondary is this connection automation. Now this is a great tool. I was talking with Matt about this. I was extremely excited about it. It definitely has some room for growth, but this is using the Dynamo player and the built in Dynamo option for going through and placing these within your model. So the room for growth is just a selection. So if I wanted to go through and place my base plates and over here, you want to be able to be in a view location that you can cross select. So let's just say, well, guess let's say, hey, Mike, this is great. You're just going to jump right into it.

Nope, let's say choose folder. So these are your samples that you're going to add in if you have your own created samples, you can point to a separate location. And these are all of your options to have it automate placement for what you're looking for.

So you could do base plate by end member forces. And this is all subject back to when we go through and select and here. You can add those ones from that specific range one, and I'll show you that location here in a second, after I quickly place some of these. But being aware that's for like end member forces or ranges. So if I select into this base plate by ranges, it's going to say, hey, Mike, select elements, but then it's also going to go through when it finds the element the size, it's going to see if it's actionable-- I can't say it-- for those specific placements, so we'll be aware of that when I show you how you can go through again. We're not going very in depth with that automation, but just being aware of that.

But I'll go back. This is what we're definitely going to use. So it's to say, hey, Mike, select the elements that you want. And that's that kind of room for growth here, because I can say show elements, great, but it's not going to let me like deselect them. And then if there's any angled ones, and then column beam type if you're going to add any connections, so ours is just going to be any. And the type of connection that's going to be established, so these are just from the ones that I've already added. Again, which you need to add at the beginning, for available placement of these. So I'll just go through scroll up, Select that, if true hit Run. As it loads.

Now we have our placement, and I did the one with our hooks in them. So as you go through and select I added hooks to this specific custom example here. But hit back and that allowed us to place them on the ones selected. So again, being aware of going through and placing them specific to the needs of what's being created. I added hooks for this one, so if I go back to Edit type I'll just show you hit Edit. As it loads, loads, loads. And then we can go back into our anchor and whole connection. My anchor type was our hooked anchor. So again, just being aware that you can modify those.

Now going back full circle to the ranges. This is what you need to modify for your ranges, and add conditions essentially. So when you're in here, you can just go through and say, hey, what's the new name of this range that's going to look for these specific elements, and let me move over this guy. You can say the section shape. Or you can go through family and section name, and then you can say what families is this condition going to fall into. We'll just do my W shapes. OK, what W shapes is this going to fall into?

Great, what material value? What member forces? And that's for that secondary one if you did member end forces. So being aware that you're setting these conditions for it to go through and find the ranges as it's going to go through and establish your connection point. We're not going to get into this deep in the weeds, create these conditions. That's for another time. With the time allotted, not enough time to go in depth into these as well.

So I'll hit Exit out of here, and exit out of here. So with that, that is the connections panel and the ability to go through and create custom connections from that standpoint. But without further ado, I believe it's time to let Mr. Matt Linn jump in and talk about the ability to go through and use the fabrication elements panel. That way you can learn more from an architectural perspective how you can go through and add these from a little bit different of an angle than what I'm coming from, but still show it within the model. So let's let Mr. Matt Linn jump in and continue onward for us.

MATT LINN: 3, 2, 1. Thank you, Michael. Great presentation. Michael showed a great example of a lot of steel connections, and how you can connect steel members, posts, girders beams to each other with steel connections. So what do we as architects do with those?

Well, more often than not, we try to hide them, right? We conceal them with chipboard furring, or we put them above the ATC ceiling, or maybe it's a gyp ceiling, but more often than not, we're concerned with hiding the connections. Usually.

Now there are times like the screen shows where we want to expose the structure. So in the case of this we have an exposed wood truss. Beautiful wood, and then we're using steel plates with exposed fasteners to show it. So these plates, as you can see, they are not out of the box, per se. I don't know that I'd be able to find this in the connections panel. They are highly custom to the geometry of this truss.

OK, so I'm going to use the panel that was directly adjacent, and I'll just flip my slides here. OK, so we are still in the steal tab of Revit. But we are within the fabrication panel. Excuse me, the fabrication elements panel, which is directly adjacent to the connections panel that Michael just reviewed.

OK, so I am going to jump into Revit 2024, and just as Michael did I'm going to use the multidiscipline template, which is really nice, especially for cases like this where we have both an architect and a structural engineer in the same model. So I'm going to start with the level 1, and the level 2, and I can't see these. So I'm going to go and unhide the category so they look similar to both L1 and L2.

And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and draw a truss. OK. Now in the template you can see the only option I get is this flat truss. OK, that's really not what I want I want. More of a gable looking truss similar to what we saw in the photo. So I'm able to jump over to the Insert tab, go to the load Autodesk family, and scroll down to the structural trusses, and you can see, we have several to choose from. Here's the gables. We got some scissor tails, some warrens, but I'm going to go with this one. The six panel gable truss. OK?

So now when I jump back to the structure and go back to the truss command, you can see it is now available in the type selector. All right, so I'm going to draw one over 40ft, going to go to the section view so we can see that. It is populated as such. And if I take a look in the 3D view, and first I'm going to hide these scope boxes.

All right, so if we take a look, you can actually see the members, right? And we can tell these are wide flanges. OK, I'm going to jump back to the section view. Now here it's very diagrammatic, right? It would probably show the loads. We can see the top [? cord, ?] the bottom [? cord, ?] diagonal members, but it's more of a diagram. OK? So just as Michael showed, the detail level plays a role here.

So when you jump to fine, now you can see the individual members as they are. Again, the wide flanges. Now this one looks pretty clunky, right? And trusses often do when you first bring them in. But what you have the option to do is change the structural framing to any shape you want. Now I want to make a nice wood truss that we saw. I'm not seeing those members in here. That's OK. I'm going to jump back out and go back to the Insert Load Autodesk family, and I'm going to filter back to the structural framing, and then isolate the wood category.

And now I'm just going to pull in the dimension lumber. Like so. Perfect. OK. Now I can choose any size I want. I'm just going to grab the 4 by 12 and I'll grab a 4 by 6 while I'm in here. I don't know that I'll use it, but I'll grab both while I'm here. OK. And just to prove I'm going to jump over to the project browser, go down to my structural framing category, and right here you can see is the dimension lumber. There's the two sizes just added, the 4 by 6 and 4 by 12, and what that allows me to do is come back to the type properties of the truss and when I come through looking for that member, it now exists.

OK, so I'm going to do the same thing for this I'm going to grab a 4 by 12, and I'm just going to use a 4 by 12 on all of these. Again, set framing, type, select the member you want. And then so now my top chord, and my vertical web, diagonal web, bottom chords, that are all set to the 4 by 12. OK. So that looks better. A little better. It's still pretty clunky though, right? It looks like someone just threw it together and left the jobsite.

So what we need to do now is select all the members, and I'm going to use my filter to deselect the structural truss, because all I want are the framing members themselves. So I can simply uncheck that. And what I'm going to do is unpin them and that will allow me to move the members independent of each other. OK, so after you do that you can come in and you can grab the grips within each member and you can pull it. Now really you just need to pull it far enough to where it's fully within the other member.

I like to go all the way to the node, because that's just a central location. And these nodes are the nodes of the truss, not the members. Regardless, you really just want to make sure it goes past the line to where you would want to cope to. OK? So it doesn't take too long. I'll simply grab all of these.

Now it's important, you do have to use the Tab key because otherwise you can see, it does try and grab the truss first, but with your Tab key you can go through and select each individual member independently. OK. So now that I've done that, you can see, it's a little better, it's still pretty clunky. They're running into each other, but we're getting closer. All right, I'm going to go through and select the members again. But now what I can do is come up to the Structure tab, and there is the cope command, apply coping.

And first you select the member that you want to cope as indicated here. And then you select the member you want to cut it with, like that. So I'm going to select this member, cut it with this one, and this one, OK now I am slowly, casually, coping all the members. So this is my first caffeine break. This is where I go into supersonic speed and cope incredibly fast. OK? Have this one left over here.

Now sometimes if you overlap you can see, I do have to pull that back a hair. And then you can go through with the cope command. And just like that we are coped. OK, end of caffeine break.

OK, it's starting to look better. But there is something wrong. There's these gaps between the members right here. So what's happening there? It's still a little bit diagrammatic, but we're getting closer to what we want. So now what you can do, again, come through, go ahead and select everything, and then go to-- I'm going to go-- I just want the structural framing. So I'm going to deselect the other two and say, OK, and one of the instance properties here you can see is the coping distance.

So I'm just going to swap that to zero. And boom, there it is. I'm going to come back to these top chords, grab them individually. That same parameter exists for these. Now I did have to select them separately, because it is looking for like instances of elements. So it wouldn't have got them all together. OK?

Now we're getting somewhere. This is looking really close. Now keep in mind I still have not gone out and done any model in place. And I haven't done any component families. I was very intentional that this demo is completely native Revit commands. OK, this is a native Revit command.

All right. So now this is what Michael covered, and we're now into the fabrication elements. So I like to think of this panel as an extension of what Michael covered in the connection. This is for elements like this where it is incredibly architectural, and it's more about the shape and it's custom. Highly custom. It's not very likely I'm going to find exact shape that I'm looking for in the out of the box connections.

So for these pieces, these are for these more custom instances. So you can draw a plate, select the face on which you want to draw it, and you can see, it does give you the draw panel. And I'm just going to go with orthogonal lines between the members. And then coming around the outside, and I'm going to offset them out 8 inches.

Now no, I didn't run structural calculations on these distances. That's just what I want to see architecturally. OK? So you can see it is more of a free form plate, I can draw any shape that I want. And again, this is not model in place. This is not an extrusion. This is an actual plate. And what does that mean? It means I get all the native parameters that go along with your typical structural plate.

OK, I'm going to uncheck that. I'm going to offset these by an inch again. Purely aesthetically, because I want to see the edge of the truss around the plate, like so. And just finished. And where did it go? I got this warning. It says none of the created elements are visible. Just as Michael noted, there's a couple of reasons it could be hidden, right? And two of the more common ones, especially when it comes to structural connections, are your visibility graphics.