Optimize Your Structural Design Using Revit and RISA

DEBBIE PENKO: Thanks for attending today. My name is Debbie Penko. I'm here to talk about optimizing your structural design with Revit and RISA. A little background on RISA, I guess, and myself-- I'm a structural engineer. I've been working at RISA for about 10 years, and before that I did concrete design. I did cold-formed steel design. I did cell tower design. But I really love software, so I came back to RISA. I started doing structural modeling, as a junior engineer, and I loved doing cell tower design in RISA. And then I got to work there, so it's been a fun ride back to software.

But one of the things about RISA, just sort of besides my story, is we are all structural engineers that work at RISA. So the development staff is structural engineers, and all of our support staff are structural engineers. PEs is the goal. I think we have about 90%, if you have a PE in our office right now. If you don't have a PE yet, you're working on it. You're taking the test. So that's the kind of software company we are. We're trying to bring the experience from the structural engineering side to the software.

And then specifically with Revit, I started 10 years ago. The Revit link was already underway for a couple, maybe three or four, years, and then I've been working with it since. And, you know, we've been developing this link between RISA and Revit for a long time, so you can see we're in a very developed stage of it. We've been helping to make it better and better every year. So, you know, RISA and Revit, that relationship, I kind of will talk about how that works today, in this software.

Just a show a hands-- who has RISA or uses RISA? OK, good. So I'm talking to an audience that will know some of what we're talking about here, but I'll cover a variety of things, so we can go from the basics all the way up to advanced. Feel free to ask questions too. Along the way, I'm going to hit a different topics. So we're talking about structural modeling. That's the big thing.

What I'm going to talk about, more than just structural modeling, is going to be the different programs we have. So the learning objectives, we want to hit, is talking about RISAFloor and RISA-3D, those two products. We use those two products specifically to do building design. And so, a lot of times people know RISA-3D. That's one of our major products. But RISAFloor is another product that we will talk about, and that's a building tool. It's called RISAFloor, but it's a building modeling system. So it's floor by floor, and that's why we call it that.

And that works with-- we're going to do the gravity design in RISAFloor and take it into RISA-3D. And Revit is, in the heart of things really, a building modeling tool, as well. We can see that we're going to be doing also things like we RISAFoundation. So we can send things from RISAFoundation into Revit, as well. That gives us the ability to take all the building loads down to the structure-- add in some of the foundation elements and send them back. So that's another piece.

We'll do a round trip to show how that works. That's the big piece here-- is that you want to be able to take not just one direction. You want to go round trip, so you can update your models in both directions. And we'll also talk about RISAConnection, so, show of hands, anyone using RISAConnection? OK, so that will be new to you.

So RISAConnection will help you to add connection design, right inside of the program, into Revit. And it's a couple of different workflows, so that's where we'll really kind of focus on the different types of workflows that you might use for different types of buildings. One of the things is you realize is that not all buildings are the same, obviously. A structure, a building structure that we're standing in, is different than an industrial structure, as in different than just the connection design and things like that. So we want to do different things with the software.

The different programs I mentioned-- so this is all of our programs currently that we have here-- so RISAFloor, RISA-3D, RISAConnection, RISAFoundation, RISASection. We probably won't hit on Section today-- that one. The only difference is that one is a smaller program that adds built-in shapes. If you want to build up shapes, you can put that into RISA-3D, for example, but we'll focus on the top products on that list there. So Workflow is-- Revit is going to be talking to these three programs when we're talking about building design. So RISAFloor is going to be transmitting the model from RISAFloor. You build your model in RISAFloor. You can also build your model in Revit.

So I am going to start with the building model that I've started in the RISA side, but you could have also done this in the Revit side and sent it backwards either direction. There's no right or wrong way. I get that a lot. All the time, it's, hey, which way is the best way to do it? Which way do you get your model? Do you have an architect who hands you the model, or do you take the architectural drawings? Maybe he doesn't use Revit, and you put it that way.

So however you start your model is kind of a workflow that you'd sort of answer on your own. What we're trying to do is give you the tools to go either direction. I'm obviously a recent expert, so I will start in RISA for the building tool. But I'll also start in Revit for the industrial-style structure, so we can see it both ways. But RISAFloor is a floor by floor, which is going to fit really well with Revit. And we're going to do the gravity loads, take that to RISA-3D-- RISA-3D's going to do the lateral design-- and then RISAFoundation.

So I want to just jump into a model. Let's see here. This model is a RISAFloor model. And we kind of talk about this. It's a three-dimensional model, and if you look at the structure it's like I mentioned here. It's floor by floor, but it's three dimensions. So it gives you all the ability to see all the design in there three dimensionally, when you go into this.

So what I always find is it's really difficult to look at a model and to figure out what's going on inside of that structure in three dimensions. I love to see it visually, because it does make it easy to understand the structure this way. But to say, hey, what's going on in that elevator shaft right there, it's hard to see that. So what I do is look at it in a plan view, and I get to see that a lot easier. RISAFloor is laid out in a type of system that the way it works is you lay out your beam system on top of your walls and your columns.

We also have a concrete element below there, so I put this kind of on a podium style just to show the different types of things that can go over to Revit. So this is a two-way slab design that you can do in RISAFloor, and you can support that without beams. So this is going to be reinforced concrete without beams. On the upper floors here, you'll notice it says NA, and the reason it says NA is that RISAFloor is a design tool. So you start out with a design shape.

So this model here, if I look at the shape, it just starts out as wide flange. The program is going to lay out all the beams based on the shape that you want to use, and then it will size those shapes based on what's needed in that area. So if we look at this model in particular, we can see that this floor is my typical floor. It's at 20-foot foot elevation, and it has an area office load automatically on the structure. If we look at the area loads there, you can see that it helps you just automatically put some basic loads on the structure-- so 10 pounds per square foot for a dead load. 20 pounds per live load, it's reducible. It has vibration analysis. All that can be done with just one sheet there, so it's easy to do that.

But you also can put in some-- I just put a random point load in the middle of the span there just to sort of demonstrate it can do really whatever you need it to do. You can put tapered-area loads. You can kind of go and make it anything you need it to be, but in this model I'm going to just run it just so we see what it looks like for design. And behind the scenes, it's counting the loads down the structure, based on the load combinations we have here. So there's a load combination generator. It makes it easier for you to build the structure really quickly, and it's going to be counting its gravity loads down in that structure.

And you'll see that the blue elements on my screen, which I think are pretty easy to see here, the blue ones are gravity, and the rest of the red ones are the lateral elements. So the lateral elements go to RISA-3D for design for the lateral system. In this model, I did kind of a combination just to show you guys what different things can happen. I did, like, a moment frame. I did a brace frame and some concrete, you know, elevator walls. So just a variety-- you probably would stick to one, more consistent, lateral system.

But what I'm going to do, let me open one that's already solved for us here. OK. So let me open up a RISAFloor here. So RISAFloor, well, it's going to count all those loads down the structure, and let me see if I have one that I have a model created for us with that one. So we've got-- it's going to count those loads. And I'm to just get into one that I've already done. And we can see this one is already completed us for, so it already has our results for us ready to go. It should.

And we're going to do is [INAUDIBLE] here in the shapes. We'll see these shapes here are going to be giving us just this same exact thing. Let me see. I might have to run this one more time, so we'll run it one more time. So it's running through these calculations here, and we'll just do that with an extra time here. But we're doing it to calculate those.

And we can see the other piece in this model, it's going to be giving us the calculations for cambered and non-cambered. This is also composite. That's one thing that, in RISAFloor, it's doing is composite design, so that's helpful for us to get design really quickly. And we're going to see the studs and all that information there. So hopefully this one runs a little bit faster for us, and we can take over to RISA-3D.

Gravity design, too, in RISAFloor, one of the things you'll be able to do is take this right over to Revit directly, and all these beams will be carried directly over there for us, as well, including that camber information-- including the stud information, because these are composite steel. We'll have all that information there. So I'm hoping this isn't a problem with my-- let me see if I can get a key plugged in if there is an issue, but let's just keep going. We are in a subscription license. I'm hoping that's not my issue. I'm going to run through this model.

The other thing to think about in RISAFloor, it will do that reinforcement design on that lower level. So you can get that and send that directly over to our Revit too, so you can get the reinforcement. And we'll see that in there, as well. Reinforcement's a newer thing that got into Revit, so we have a reinforcement design for the columns. We can see there-- for the footings, for the foundation slabs-- all that can be done in the program and sent over to Revit, as well. So hang on. Sorry, this just takes-- I should have [INAUDIBLE] this model before we started, but here we go. I just wanted to show you some of the results, as it's going.

And so, in this model here, we can see as I zoom in a little bit, the wide flange are showing here. There's a camber listed here. There's 26 studs in this one. What I like about RISAFloor is that it gives all that listed there, but you can see the detail report just like you can in RISA-3D. So the same type of information you get in RISA-3D, RISAFloor has that, as well. So you can see, as you scroll down there, it gives you a nice diagram of what's happening in that beam.

You get the hand calcs here, which if I ever had to say, hey, what's going on in this composite design-- I can see exactly what happened, and what was the calculations in this composite design? So I scroll down below that, and I get to see vibration analysis calculations and if the deflections controlling, which typically in most floor systems the deflection is the reason what we're controlling that there. So you can see that you can size those beams in there for this, and this is all going to go like I said into Revit. So you've got this all ready to go.

The next piece would be-- the same thing, you have the type of results that are spreadsheet-based results. You can look in Design Results, and you get the same type of thing you would see in RISA-3D where you get a lot of different reactions, code check. All that can be shown in the screen, as well as directly in the spreadsheets. Once you're done with your gravity design, you would take it, using the-- upper right corner. Using the Director tool, you'll go to RISA-3D. RISA-3D is going to automatically calculate those wind and seismic loads for you.

They are based on either a flexible, semi rigid, or rigid diaphragm. You pick. So in the lower level, I have a semi rigid diaphragm on that lowest level. So you can see, here, this is the wind loads calculated for us. If we look at each floor level, we see-- the program. All you need to do is put in the wind speed, and it will calculate those loads per floor level. It does a length and a width around the structure, and then it applies it right into the diaphragm as a force in the x and the z direction.

So what I like to do is sort of print this out as a good working reference of my calculation sheet for my Calc package. So I would print this, add that into the program, in order to have it as my Calc package. The same thing can happen for seismic, so you can apply the seismic loads based on the factors that you're having for that region. So I'd usually just go up and check out my location for my building and enter those in, and I'd be able to get a calculation based on-- we can see, here, the period that's calculated, as well as the base year. And then below that, it turns into a force in the x and the z direction.

So that all there is good for a Calc package, but I also want to see is it graphically. So when we get over to RISA-3D, I can see that the program has now just brought across-- the only thing that's coming across is going to be my lateral elements. So I'm just turning off my node labels here, so we just see, a little bit closer, what's happening. Just the diaphragms are showing. I'm going to turn those off, so you can see it even closer.

You get to see how these are going to show your moment frame, your brace frame, all of that there. And we can look at our concrete walls that I've placed in here. I had some brace frames on top of some concrete piers. So I have all of that in here. And for reference, if I ever felt like I wanted to see a little bit more information in the model, I could take a look here and look at specifically what the rest of the model would look like, so RISAFloor floor properties can come back just for reference. So if we show it in Rendered View, I can see that as a reference, but it's not exactly in this model here. It's just left over in RISAFloor, but it helps to see it if you needed to see where you were in the structure.

So now that I'm in RISA-3D, the program brought over all of those complex loading cases for us. That's a big piece. You have the dead loads and the live loads-- obviously, pretty easy to do that in the RISAFloor side. But doing all these wind loads-- wind load in the x direction and the z-- and then partial wind loading, and then doing eccentric loading for the earthquake, and putting that right into the structure. And you can see that load right in the program, so we can see it get a kind of good feel about where that is. I always like to do a back-of-the-envelope based on, for example, the seismic weight is really important. If I got that wrong, I wouldn't get very good seismic results on there.

So I do a quick check back of the envelope. Hey, based on that, insert, seismic loads, I say, what was the weight of that structure? That's what's calculated, this here, and then I make sure that if that's the right thing. Then my forces in the x and the z direction will be OK. So I've got this shown here, and I'm seeing this in the rigid diaphragm-- dumped right into the center of mass of the rigid diaphragm. But then on the semi-rigid diaphragm, it'll be in the lower portion there, so let me just get this model started with some solution just so we can see that.

If I'm solving this model, it's going to do a solution based on the batch and envelope. I just picked a few critical load combinations, and it's running through and solving all of that lateral load applied to it. It's going to push on the structure, based on the location there of what we put onto that from the basic load cases. So it is really easy for you to build those load combinations quickly using our load combination generator, but also seeing it in the model quickly, as well, is helpful. One of the things you can see here is you pop up, and it gives you joint reactions-- again, a nice-- I always use the joint reactions as a good envelope idea of OK, what did I use? Did I use the right loads for this structure?

But then if I look back on the model, and then my first step, as what I do, is I go to my Design Results. So popping into the Design Results gives me an idea of whether it passed code check. That's what we all want to do, right? We want to get this building past the code check and built. So I click on the Code Check, and I do a sort on that. It gives me an Absolute Max and an Absolute Min, and I can see there's about 14 items that are failing right now.

So RISA-3D is a different type of system, where it doesn't just size them up for me. It says, hey, you probably want to think about this, so we can either suggest some shapes for you-- which it does do some suggested shapes for me. It also will let me just change those shapes manually, as well. Maybe some of the suggested shapes, I want to go a little different shape, so it doesn't always mean, for example, the single angle. Maybe I want to go to a double angle? Maybe I need to do something a little different here? Maybe do a WT instead. So you kind of have to think through that, and that's the philosophy in RISA-3D. It's more of an analysis tool, but it will give you a design suggestion, which is helpful.

One thing, if you are RISA users-- I've gotten this as a popular request lately. I want to just show it off, because it's kind of a hidden feature, like in and out its hidden menu here. If you unselect everything, if you go to the Design Results tab, you can find these members in your model-- just by highlighting them, and then right clicking, and saying select Mark Lines in the detail here. So that helps you to find the ones that were failing, and then you can work off of those ones, in visually seeing what's going on in those members. So I'm going to go ahead and say Suggest a Design, and I'll just Solve again-- just doing a couple of the Solves here.

Now the reason why I like to Solve this and just point this is it's an iterative solution design. Once you push on something, and you change the member's stiffness, it's going to redistribute all the loads differently, especially when we're talking about a rigid diaphragm right now-- so on the upper floors. So that doesn't mean that, all of a sudden, it works, because I just subbed out one. Everybody knows that from hand calcs. You just iterate back and forth a little bit. So it's going through a little stiffness matrix right now, solving it, checking it again, and saying, OK, now did I find any more shapes? And then it's found some more. It's getting closer and closer towards design, as far as the code check. So you go through that process, you find what works and what doesn't work, and we'll keep going from there.

Let's see. The next thing here, I guess we can take a look if you're not familiar with RISA-3D, you can see very similar information in RISA-3D for what we saw over in RISAFloor, with a Detail Report that would be really helpful to understand why it's passing, or why it's not passing, and how to move from there. The Detail Reports are interactive, so you can always see what's going on specifically in this member. So RISA-3D, once you're finished with this design, I'm going to leave it off on this step here. I'm going to move over to RISAFoundation.

So going from all there-- to RISAFloor, to RISA-3D-- over, now, to RISAFoundation, it takes all of those loads, and what it works on is the Categories. So all that's done for you behind the scenes, you don't really have to think about that. But it is something to just understand-- when you bring over something from a steel model, that was ASD design-- that you might want to factor it, when you get over to RISAFoundation, for a concrete design. So the Categories is how that works. So we bring over all the categories that you ever have over there in RISA-3D or RISAFloor, and then you can build your own load combinations here to size this up a bit.

So in RISAFoundation-- you can go from RISAFoundation-- you've got footing design in here, and then this model I put some footings in to demonstrate that. I've got a grade beam here. I have some foundation slabs. One of the ways we do combined footings is we draw a slab and put pedestals on that. You can do that. You can do all sorts of stuff, and it's all coming across no matter what you did in the other models, as the point loads are coming across based on the categories. So you can see them all here.

So you can run this model based on load combinations. I'm going to solve it really quickly. One of the cool things is RISAFoundation just got a quad-core solution, so it makes it really fast. If you have RISAFoundation, it's really, really fast. We're about to bring that to RISA-3D, so stay tuned for that fast solution over there. And my computer's not even that powerful, but you can see it just really goes very fast now. And you can look at, in here, we have the same type of results that we saw in RISA-3D, where we have spreadsheets. We can see all sorts of spreadsheets about whether the footings are working-- and quickly just looking at footing results, and saying, OK, it passes. It fails. What's the steel required, footing code checks?

And that might be good for a Calc package, but I do also like looking at, for example, the Detail Report of a footing. It gives us a lot more information visually. We can see things like soil bearing and information directly. It tells us whether the pedestal looks like I have a pedestal failure, so we need to size up the steel in that pedestal and go from there. I have Sliding Checks, Overturning Checks, all that's done here. Same for a slab, slabs are done the same way. So slabs, you have a Reinforcement Design. Just like you do in a footing, Slab gives you that same ability to give you a slab cut here based on whatever's required in this footing.

So I have all this information. And the big trick, it's not really a big trick. But the only thing I ever have to do to get this over to Revit is just say Save. That's it. It's not hard, but save the results. You know, you want to just make sure, because what's happened is these have been designed, and the solution contains all the design information. So just saving those results now will be able to bring all of that information across.

So I'm going to jump back in here, and what I have-- I brought it across this morning just so I could save time and not have to wait. It is a little bit of a process. These are larger products that are bringing things across, and now we're bringing rebar across. Things can take some time. So it will bring it across, as I get a bigger model, and I want to show you a bigger model. I did it for you ahead of time.

So looking at this model here, I'm just going to kind of play around here a little bit and see what happens. So as it comes across it's color coded, and there's a RISA Import Summary here. So let me show you what options you have. When you bring it across, you have a choice to do a couple of different basic choices. You want to use a Project Base Point-- Project North or True North-- Update Geometries in Sizes or Member Sizes only? I bring this one up a lot, because as you go into a more round tripping, and round tripping, and round tripping, things can change in the models, and the structural model may not exactly be the same as what the architectural model is. There is going to be a departure at some point.

We, as structural engineers, sort of make some assumptions that the real life may not exactly make. An analytical model, thinking about how braces fit together in an analytical model, is not exactly how that works in real life, where you have to do offsets and all sorts of stuff. So at some point, we might just say, hey, I don't want to keep trying to change the geometry every single time and having to make adjustments. So I just want to update the member sizes, but it will still link the two models, which is helpful. So that is something you can do, and it helps take more control of the model just by updating the member sizes only.

You can choose to bring some things over and not other things. I would always typically bring walls across. I don't know why I wouldn't. Diaphragms-- maybe you don't care about the diaphragm if it's, you know, that's something you're going to do separately. You can uncheck that. Boundary Conditions, if you want the footings you got to bring those across. Beam [? End ?] Reactions are really nice to have over here in Revit, so that would be definitely something you'd want to do. Project Grids-- one of the cool things is Revit has a really great ability to do very interesting Project Grids. If you do that any different direction in Revit, you can send it back over to RISA, and it's supported. So I would always say, if you get creative with your Project Grids, you can start them in Revit and bring them over. That would be really cool.

Loads and Loads Combinations, that's a hot topic. I typically don't bring loads across. It's just because Revit isn't really a structural design. It wasn't born that way. Maybe it's evolving that way, but it's not born that way. So it means that RISA talks about loads a little bit differently than they do, and that's OK. You can have your loads be in one model and not in the other, or you can bring them across. It really is-- if it's required by whoever you're handing off your model to, that you won't need to have these loads in both, then you can do that.

And it'll come across, and we'll see that you can send them across. But I would say in most cases I leave them off, because you just do that in your structural design software. So you've got that ability. Foundation slabs and elevated slabs can also be brought across. And then concrete rebar, that's come a long way too. We've added a lot of different rebar, as I mentioned. That is one of things that Revit's gotten way better at, because in the beginning it was very piecemeal, one by one. And actually I remember 10 years ago, Revit said, do not do it. Don't model the rebar. It's too much.

But now it's becoming much easier to do. So as Revit is evolving that, we're doing the thing-- bringing it across right with them. So it doesn't seem to bog down the model too much. You still have a very good model with the rebar, so I would say that's a good idea.

There's Advanced tools. Most of this, you don't have to worry about. It gives you some reliability. If you're coming out from out of the country, have a different kind of imperial library versus metric, these are kind of ways to adjust that. You can bring it to a new model if you needed to. But these are mostly kind of more advanced, and typically I don't really get into much of this except just remove the link if I want to bring it to a new model. So you've got that on there.

And what's color coding-- is it's telling me here, if things didn't come across quite right, it put a shape as a place holder. So the purple ones tell me that those members didn't come across, but this is a place holder for it. The ones in the lower levels had no problem. So I must have had some special joist, which is why it had some problems on that one, but it's a nice indicator, visually, that there was a reason I need to now address these upper levels. The other thing I can look at is I have my footings in place.

And when I first got this from my development staff, I was like, oh, it's a bug. That looks bad. That slab is underneath there. That's fine.

What's happened is you can actually have a slab at all sorts of different elevations, and we don't know what elevation you want to bring it in at. So we bring it out at all one elevation, and then you can set them how you want. But it kind of gets you in the habit-- if you are bringing these slabs in-- OK, then I know I have to move them to wherever they are supposed to be. Footings are actually assigned to column bottoms, so that's easy. I know where a column bottom is. I don't really know-- because there's a bunch of walls and a bunch of things attached to the slab, they could be all sorts of different places. So it's up to you to sort of move that after the fact, which is obviously very easy to do in Revit, so you can do that.

If I go over to Floor Plan 2, I can see, in here, I have that same floor plan I just was looking at in RISAFloor. And I have a lot of cool things. It's going to be my parametric model, so this is what we're all trying to get to, this parametric model I have. I know exactly the shape. I know the material, and then beyond that I know a lot of cool stuff about the reactions. So I know the moment, the reactions, the label.

That's a newer thing. We added the RISA label to it, so if you ever have to map back you can. And that's easy.

You could also go into the analytical beam and kind of figure out a little bit more about whether this is a pin pin beam. We had some moment beams, I think, on the edges over here. And if we're looking at the analytical beam, we can see that. I don't know. It must be on it there, but you can see your moments connections. It'll give you some information-- whether it wasn't a gravity element, or whether there was a lateral element. And then that labels, also, on that analytical member.

So you have all that information. For walls too, you'll have a lot of information inside of that. You can see this is your analytical model. This is your center-line model, so it gives you that same center-line information right in here. And whenever you have issues, typically, you just jump into this analytical model, and you'll start to see something wrong in your analytical model. It might not be connected. We were talking about this a little before the presentation-- that you have to have an analytical model. It has to think like a structural model. It has to be a center-line analysis, so things have to be connected in the analytical model.

And once that is the case, then the structural model will understand that just as much, but I typically see the issues where things aren't connected properly. That's what happened. So this is RISAFloor. I want to talk about the next one is just RISA-3D. So that's the workflow that we also see.

So if you're a non-building-- and the reason why we said Floor was such a good fit-- I jumped back here-- is that you had these floor plans just like you do in RISAFloor, so you can see-- if we look at East Elevation-- I see these floor plans. Everything just resides perfectly on that floor level just like it does in RISAFloor. That's how Revit does things. I always see things exactly the way where people have things in the middle of floor plans, and they have it defined from 0 to 0 with an offset, a large offset. That's just not how Revit was intended to be used.

So you can fake things out in Revit, but if you're going to follow the building, the way that they would have you laying out a structure, that's how RISAFloor wants it to happen too. So those two are a really good married couple of how they work together, but not everything fits a building structure. It just doesn't, so RISA-3D fits that mold a bit. So we can jump-- I'm going to jump over to another model just to show you how RISA-3D works.

So in RISA-3D, I've got a model here. It's just an industrial type model, and it's kind of a one I like to use a lot because it's just different looking. And then I'm going to just show you here this three-dimensional model, and I actually met the guy who designed it last year. But it's a industrial type frame, and you can see it just doesn't fit your normal mold of a structure. It would not have a floor level that would really make much sense. You know, it's got braces all over the place in different directions, and RISAFloor would want to have a diaphragm. This does not have a diaphragm. Maybe do B decking or something like that, but you wouldn't have a diaphragm on that. So this fits your RISA-3D-type structure.

So let me just show you just taking this across to RISA-3D. So if I do the import-- excuse me, Export to RISA option. And that's in my add-ins at the top here, Export to RISA. I can choose either RISAFloor or RISA-3D, and we've all kind of see this is a RISA-3D-model-type format. So I can launch there, here to RISA-3D 3D directly, and this check box lets me launch the program right in behind the scenes. I own RISA-3D, so that's why I would do that. But if you have somebody who-- you own the software, and they don't own the software-- things like that, where you need to hand it off to someone, you might just want to uncheck that. And it will just create the file for you, but you don't actually have to do anything with the program on your computer. So that's a check box you might want to do.

You can also Export Selected Items Only. So just selecting in Revit is just as easy as clicking on the selected, and just boxing it, and that's a selected item. So you can send things out like that, as well. I'm going to send the entire model across. You have the same type of options, whether you want to bring things over. Versus the analytical model or the physical model, you can do that. We would typically be, in this case, both of the same, so it doesn't matter for me.

Optimize member sizes, or you can just check. That's a way to do things like that here. Oh, let me see. I'm going to go RISA-3D. I didn't show you that in RISAFloor, but yeah, same thing, if you have a starting design in RISAFloor you could start with optimizing it. Or you could just check the members. So I'm going to go to RISA-3D, and it will chooses for me.

And then I can send across walls, boundary conditions, project grids. I have some loads, so I will bring those across. I don't have any foundation, so it won't matter. And I'm going to just say Create the File there for me, so I'm going to go ahead and launch that. Whoops, sorry about that. I might need to put a File in here, so I'm going to Create a File. And let's go to My Desktop here and just call this Test Presentation, and I'll Create this File here and just say, OK.

And it's going to ask me to Save the Model. That's the big trick. You have to Save your Model. So I'm going to say, Yes, Save the Model. And it's going to Export. It's exporting, behind the scenes for me, everything that's in the model, and it will give me, here, this list if there's any problem. So it doesn't like one of the line loads that I have-- and I have three of them-- so it told me that. And it tells me that I have 298 beams that went across. Columns, braces, all that went across. And it can say, OK.

So it launches into RISA-3D, and it's now opening this file in RISA-3D for me. So I've got an ability to, now at this point, go ahead and design whatever I need in RISA-3D, so we can see all the members came across, if I zoom in here. So I did have some loads, and I'm not sure if everything-- I did get some loading in here, so I have some rig loads that were created in that model-- reactors, side loads. So I do have some things, but I guess a couple didn't go across. So it could investigate that, as well.

One of the things you have is you do have a Log File, too, that's created. So if you have any problems, you can always go back to your Log File. I can see some area loads in here, so I have a lot of different things happening in this model. And you can run this model, and solve it, and check all these different elements.

But what I want to show you too-- before we get too far along I want to show you the one thing is you can make changes to this model. So I can Delete things, I can Add things, so I'm going to go ahead and delete some members and just add some-- maybe for example, let's just say these, bottom braces, we decided to delete. We can do that, and we can say, for giggles, we added a couple different members into this model. Just let's add a couple members. I just, for any specific reason, put in a cross brace for there. So I have a couple different members I added to that model, and now I'm just going to Save it.

One of the new things in Revit, the way you Import and Export is just nothing actually. You don't have to do anything. You don't do any-- if I click on Export, it tells me, hey, you didn't need to do that. It's not necessary. So we try to take a step out for you. I don't know. I still actually do it a lot of times, because I'm in the habit of doing it, but I just needed to Save it. And then when I go back into Revit, I'm going to say, Import from Risa. And then I can come back in here.

It remembers a lot of the things I have. It knows it's a RISA-3D model. It finds that file there. It's going to import whatever I want from there, and we can say, OK, Start to Import. See this model? Sure. And I will import it. Oh, it does like you to close this in the behind the scenes.

And that's just a good way to say, hey, you've made a change on this one, and you can make a change on that one. And I don't want to do an import while you're in progress of making changes. So just Close the Program. Be safe. Don't make changes in that program while it's importing. So it's a good habit to get into.

So it comes back in here. You can see it regenerates in the behind the scenes. It's pretty quick when it's regenerating from this side here. It should just be checking. That's what we tried to do some more optimization-- so it's just checking what existed and what didn't.

And then it gives you a Summary. So it tells you, OK, four Braces were Deleted. And we can see-- OK, let's go ahead and Zoom In here. We get to do a RISA Import Summary. Again, that's a color-coded, so you can see what happened. And I can see that those bottom braces are missing, for sure. It's just going through the last stages of color coding for us, and we can get from there. And I can see those green ones were added in there.

So it Deleted those other ones, and those green ones are Added. And it helps us just to visually see what I did to the Model, and it's tracking all that in a log file behind the scenes too. So you always kind of want to dump on top of your existing Log Files. Just keep the files in the same location, if that's possible on your machine, because it's trying to be smart about it. But you know you can fool it if you start moving files to all sorts of different places, so we're trying to keep that information going.