Ive been doing all of mine out of Roofs for some time now, and i would never go back.

HOWEVER, enhancements in the Packages in Dynamo mean that if you HAVE a Civil file with real AEC Contours, you can go: Civil CAD File > Revit Topp > Revit Floros or Roofs through Dynamo, and get the best of all worlds.

The attachments arent as large as a Master Plan, and they LOOK flat, but none of them are. Every strip of pavers is properly sloped for drainage, per the landscape design. All done of a single sloping control surface.

With Dynamo, the control surface can be either topo or another floor or roof. So i used a control Floor, where i emulated the Landscape Designers Contract documents. Down at the ground, i used a topo built off the civil CAD file, and formed my Roofs/Floors to that.

Aaron, awesome project. Is it a hockey rink?
What's up with revit's topo?

I'll ask the surveyor about the contours. Seems like it they may be actual, the cad file's about 1600' above sea level. The roof idea sounds pretty good. I'll have to check in with dynamo...

Thank youl

Its Hockey/Basketball/Rodeo.

Revit's topo sucks for a number of reasons:

1. Its not a real solid. For me this is a deal breaker. The BS method if makes you assign a base for ALL topo in elevation and section views, is garbage. I work on a lot of projects that have landscape above basements, or buildings dug in to the ground. Having to fight with a building pad to make the basement work, then fight with something else for the covering over the basement, is ridiculous.

2. It cant have a real sketched shape. Outermost points form a perimeter, and thats it. If you want to make an L piece of topo, you have to lake the top, then split the topo, then delete a section. Thats insane. If you need to see an example of this bullshit, download Site Designer from Autodesk, and try to make a real parking lot that has grass in the parking lot islands. If you make an island thats at each end of a row, with the island continuous in the middle, youll see exactly what i mean. Trainwreck ensues.

3. You cant give it real "vertical edges" at retaining walls. To be fair, Floors and Rofs dont do this perfectly either, but since i can put a floor on each side of a retaining wall so much easier, i dont even care. With Topo, it sort of "mudslides" through your retaining wall, unless the civil person meticulously placed a billion points right along both sides of the wall.

In short... Topo (in my opinion) needs to (literally) be deleting from the program. The ONLY thing it does better than Floors/Roofs, is ease-of-editing through points (which Dynamo is almost taking care of) and visual style (since it makes topo softer, and shape edited floors and roofs are harsh. Youll want to turn off interior edges in the floor or roof subcat, in your view template), and the auto-creator from import, using civil cad files. Aside from that, Topo in Revit is a complete waste of space.

Aaron, how do you do develop your building pads now? Do you cut holes &/or use multiple family types with different thicknesses and join geometry?

Cut holes, and grade around.

Are you using floor/roof for non-hardscape areas as well or just for hardscape?


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Does that mean you have a floor as building pad to show cut earth underneath in building sections?
How do you deal with steep slopes in floors and revit's warnings?
I have a new project coming online but it has steep slopes to waterfront. I'd love to see this work, TIA.

Aaron, do you create a floor/roof with a very thick variable layer, &/or both depending on situation?

Sometimes varying, sometimes not. Depends what is happening with the site and materials.