Creating Design Options

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Design options are an important aspect to any project.

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To be able to demonstrate such options to clients and stakeholders effectively,

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and efficiently contribute substantially to the quality, and positive outcome of the project.

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The Design Option tool that Revit provides is just another facet of why we would use BIM over conventional 3D modeling or 2D drafting.

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Suppose you have a client that wants to see some options.

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Certainly you need to show the client these options you have in mind.

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But we can do that in any other drafting or modeling program really.

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Traditionally, you would just make copies of the files, and design different stuff in these different files.

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And once you're done, the winner stays and the loser gets removed.

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But what about the rest of the project, that part that's not affected by these options?

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Do we have the rest of the team working on other parts of the building, or just sit there and wait?

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If not, how do we copy the model?

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What model are we having people working on? And what's the name of the copied models?

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What happens when the options is chosen? Do we copy and paste and merge our models together?

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The objective of this video is to create a few options for the client without creating several extra models.

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Let's go into Revit and see how it's done.

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Okay. Here in Revit, let's open up the architectural model that we've been working on, and it's here in our recent files.

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This is a central model and Revit is going to create a local copy of it for us to work on.

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And we want to override our existing copy of the local copy.

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So to save some time in the subsequent videos, let's create a customized 3D view of our model.

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And we can set that as our starting view temporarily.

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So I go to my 3D views and right click on the default 3D view.

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And I wanna make a copy of that.

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I'm gonna to duplicate that view, right click on it to rename it, and call it "3D Design Options".

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Now let's temporarily set this as our starting view.

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So I go to my Manage tab, and under managed project panel select starting view,

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and I'm going to temporarily override this 3D design options that I just created.

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Then at the end of this video series, we can always set it back to the default starting view.

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OK. In this scenario, we want to present the client with two different options,

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one for treatment of the front of the building, and one showing different options for this roof that we created earlier for the garden.

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Just going to orbit around a little bit.

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Holding my shift key down in the wheel zoom in using my wheel on the mouse.

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So we want to show the client different options for this sign, and different treatments for this facade.

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And another option is for the roof,

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showing them different options for a red roof or a blue roof or no roof whatsoever.

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So down on the status bar, we have our design options.

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I click on that, and we see currently there is no options available in the model.

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Over on the right hand side, I have a panel for option sets, and below that panel for options.

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The only available command currently is new for option sets.

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So I'm gonna click on that and create a new option set with the option that created.

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I click on the title, and under option set, I click on rename.

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We'll call this one building front, Click OK.

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Now for the option itself, I click on option one, and I'm going to rename that one to red sign.

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We want to create another option for the building front.

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So under option, I click on new once again, highlight it, and go to rename,

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and we will call this one fancy sign, and click Ok.

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So for a building front, we have two options, and red sign is the primary one.

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I'm going to create a new option set. So I go to my option set and click on new.

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Click on the newly created option set one, and let's give it a better name than option set one.

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So I click on rename, and I'll call this one garden roof.

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You click Ok, Option one, I select it, and under the option panel,

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I click rename, and I will call this one red roof.

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I want to create another option.

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So I click on new and I rename this one to blue roof.

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And finally, we'll have a third option. Click on that, and I'll call this one no roof, and click OK.

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You'll notice that the very first option that we created becomes the primary option.

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Later on, we can select any of the options and make that one primary. So click close.

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So now we have the various design options, but notice that our current design option is set the main model.

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And in our drop down, we have a choice of selecting any of the design options that we just set up to work on.

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But currently, there is nothing in these design options,

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and everything in the model, the main model is selectable by us to work on.

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What we now need to do is to add the walls and the roof to the garden roof option set.

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And we need to add the front facade, the sign, and these curtain walls to the building front set.

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We will do that next.