Design Options in Revit 2013

GENERATING MULTIPLE DESIGN OPTIONS

The Design Options tool in Revit Architecture provides you with the flexibility of choosing several alternatives for your design. As a designer, you need to come up with multiple design ideas, so that you can select the best option that suits the functional, aesthetical, and economical requirement of your project.

Therefore, you need to develop and evaluate several design options and then execute the best possible design option for your project. The Design Options tool helps you speed up your project by providing you the options to create and develop several alternatives of a single model.

For example, you can use the Design Options tool to develop three options of a Kitchen for a residential layout, featuring different materials and space utilization. In such as case, you can create individual details and documentations like drawings, schedules, cost summaries based on the quantity of materials, and so on for these three design options that you have created for the existing kitchen project.

These drawings and documentations help you select the best option that meets your project requirement.

To use the Design Options tool, first you need to create an option set and then the option in the basic building model. The option set refers to a set of alternatives devised for creating a particular design or subject. For example, if you have three design options for building a kitchen on the first floor of a residential project, then they will form one option set with three different options. You can name the option set as Kitchen_FF and its design options as Island_Kitchen, Closed_L_Shaped Kitchen, and Closed_U_Shaped Kitchen. One of the design options can be made the primary design option in the specifi ed option set. You can have a number of design options in a single design option set. The purpose of using design options is to enable you to develop and study multiple design alternatives for a single model and pick the best one for the final layout. You can delete or archive the rejected design options once you have picked up the right one.

Generating Design Options for a Project

The Design Options tool is used to generate design options for a project. To invoke this tool, choose the Manage tab from the ribbon and then choose Design Options > Design Options; the Design Options dialog box will be displayed. To generate a new design option set, choose

the New button in the Option Set section of the Design Options dialog box; a new option set will be added to the left pane. Next, to add a new option in this option set, choose the New button from the Option section. You can also rename an option set by using the Rename button in the Option Set section. Similarly, you can rename the options for each option set.

After creating the design option sets and options, you can add building components for each option. To do so, select the design option in the Design Options dialog box and then choose the Edit Selected button from the Edit area. Next, choose the Close button to close the Design Options dialog box; any element introduced in the building model will be added to the selected option. You can also cut and paste components from the main model to a design option. After editing the building model and completing the design option, you can again choose the Design Options tool to view the design. The Now Editing text box in the Design Options dialog box displays the name of the option to be edited. The Finish Editing button is used to complete the editing of a design option. After creating multiple design option sets, you can assign the desired option set as the primary option set by selecting it and choosing the Accept Primary button in the Design Options dialog box.

Presenting Design Options

After creating the design options, you can compare and present them to clients. To do so, create multiple copies of the view of a design option, and set the visibility setting for each view. You can use the Visibility/Graphics tool to control the visibility of a design option in each view. Select the view from the Project browser and right-click. Next, choose the Duplicate View option from the shortcut menu; the copy of the view will be created. You may create a number of copies of the view based on the number of design options generated. Use the shortcut menu to rename each view based on the design option it represents.

Next, choose the Manage tab and then use the Active Design Option drop-down list in the Design Options panel to select a desired design option. After selecting the desired option from the Active Design Option drop-down list, the design option will be displayed in the view. This process needs to be repeated for each view in which you want to show a different option. You can then add the appropriate views to the sheet and present the design options to the client. You can also use the Pick to Edit button in the Design Options panel to select the design option that requires editing.