RAM Best Practices

The problem child of Konstru's brood.

RAM consistently presents difficulties for Konstru, and this section and the others that follow are dedicated to some tips to help smooth the road for these translations.

Planar Floors + Planar Beams

RAM requires any floor framing objects to be 'hosted' at a single Level, and for each Beam to be coincident with the Floor object that it 'supports'. This is generally the most common issue with translating from Revit to RAM (as Revit floors are generally not this flat!), but is also the most easy to keep a handle on through a simple Revit 'best practice' modeling tip. This tip is to create and host all Floor framing in Revit on it's own Structural Level, such as a 'Top of Steel' level. Whilst this is not the most common floor level condition in our models, for a Revit Structural model, the benefit's of this approach are many, particularly when you are planning on translating your Revit model to an analysis platform like RAM.

Suggested Addition of a Structural Level to Revit to assist in maintaining a 'connected' model:

Benefit's of including a Structural Level in Revit:

2.1. Minimize Framing Offsets - With the standard Architectural 'Top of Slab' model setup, the framing that supports the slab is forced to use offset parameters, preferable the 'z offset' parameter but often also the 'start and end level' offsets, to position it correctly in physical space. This model organization is 'architect-centric', with Structural engineers generally ceding control of the 'edge of slab' geometry (often rightly so) but at the same time, losing control of the 'Levels' in a Revit project. By including a Structural level to host framing in Revit ('Top of Steel' or 'Top of Framing' for concrete) users can avoid having to maintain hundred's of localized Beam offset's which are at the whim of the slab geometry and level.

2.2. Leverage Revit's Automated Analytical Model Connectivity - During the standard process of modeling in Revit, the analytic representation of the framing objects will do their best to automatically snap to the closest analytic floor. If this floor is hosted at the same level as the Framing (as shown in the 'Elevation of Level Setup' image above) then the analytic representation of the model will more often than not keep to the 'planar floors + planar beams' requirement of RAM.

2.3 Column Splits - If you are planning on translating this model to RAM....you'll need to split the Columns present in the model at the relevant Levels. If you were to split the Columns at a 'Top of Slab' level with the Framing hosted at a 'Top of Steel' level....obviously your floor framing will not be connected to the split Columns. See #5 for specifics.

Miscellaneous

Columns that span multiple Levels (i.e. you didn't split them!)

Columns that span multiple levels in the Revit model will be created by Konstru in RAM in the correct 3D position as defined by the Level hosting in Revit (where the end points are + 3' from a existing Revit level). However, any updates to the RAM model will result in the RAM forcing the Columns.

Sloped Columns

Sloped Columns are supported in RAM! However, they will also need to conform to the 'level to level' nature of vertical columns specified above, and the general difficulty of accurately modeling sloped Columns in Revit will almost certainly result in a need to use model repair to align these objects prior to translation to RAM.

Braces

For Revit objects that have been created as a Brace (either as a Vertical or Horizontal brace) Konstru will create what RAM defines as a Brace object. As with Sloped Columns, Vertical brace objects need to be built exactly between defined levels.

Grids

Konstru will create any Grids present in the Revit model in RAM, however the slight hiccup in RAM is that each individual grid created by Konstru will be a 'grid system' in RAM. These gird system's in RAM still intersect, and as such RAM modelers are still able to utilize them to assist in RAM based modeling.