Revit for Interior Design - Part 1

A recent demonstration at a potential client got me thinking to post a blog entry for the Interior Design discipline. It is common knowledge that if one requires staff resources who are absolute experts on Revit scheduling, one appoints an Interior Designer with Revit experience.

This particular blog entry will however not focus on the scheduling of Revit categories, but rather the visual aspects of a space in a Revit model, because pretty pictures sell the service to a client. The client does not care about the countless hours of grafting you have spent to provide a single representation of the development. So the question remains: How can we streamline this process? How can I save time, resources and money?

The core principle of interior design using Revit are families. If you can source manufacturer specific Revit content, that has been created using Revit Best Practices, you will be miles ahead of your 2D-based competitors. However, if you require custom furniture elements, curtain drapes, feature pieces, blinds or anything else, you will need to become an expert Revit family creator/modeller. In my opinion, as I have stated in various of my posts on AUGI or the Autodesk Community Forums, in a perfect world all manufacturers would be on some kind of BIM platform. Similar to a previous Revit Recess post of mine on Revit hardware requirements, my opinion is that if one wants to be competitive in the built environment, irrespective of which industry you are in, 2D CAD drawings are not enough anymore. In these days and economic climate, we work according to the “Adapt or Die” principle. If you cannot provide a 3D pre-sale service which your clients are starting to expect, chances that you will lose a deal may be very high.

So let’s get to the down and dirty of renderings for Interior Design (Which is actually quite clean using Revit). The examples we will use will focus on 6 Design Options for a living room.

Option 1: Living Room: No Window Coverings

Option 2: Living Room: Parametric Curtains Open

Option 3: Living Room: Parametric Curtains Closed

Option 4: Living Room: All Blinds Open

Option 5: Living Room: All Blinds Closed

Each of the design options will have an example of the six OOTB Sun Settings, namely Exterior-Sun Only, Exterior-Sun and Artificial, Exterior-Artificial Only, Interior-Sun Only, Interior-Sun and Artificial, and lastly Interior-Artificial Only. These examples will show how not only your sun settings, but also your project location will affect the shadows and light intensity of your scene. The time of day is 11AM at Boston, USA with Winter Solstice activated

The last 6 renderings will have the Exposure Control settings modified, to provide a better result.  

Options 1 to 5, using the OOTB render settings with sun settings as Winter Solstice (11AM)

Options 1 to 5, with exposure properties modified