Revit Bootcamp

Yesterday you made datums and walls. Today you close the building. This is the longest day of the bootcamp and the one that builds the most intuition, because almost everything here is sketch-based — and sketch mode is where beginners get stuck.

Sketch mode: the pattern behind half of Revit

Floors, ceilings, roofs, ramps, shafts, floor openings, and family extrusions all work the same way. You enter a special editing mode, draw a closed loop of boundary lines, and click the green checkmark (Finish Edit Mode).

The rules are always the same:

The loop must be closed. No gaps, no overlaps, no lines crossing.
Only one outer loop per element (nested loops become holes).
Pick Walls is usually better than Line. It creates a boundary that references the wall, so the floor follows if the wall moves. Set the offset and pick which face.
If Finish fails, Revit tells you why and offers to show you the problem lines. Read the message; it's specific.

When you can't finish a sketch, it's a gap or an overlap 95% of the time. Zoom in on corners.

Floors

Architecture → Floor. In sketch mode, use Pick Walls on the exterior walls, then Finish.

Two things that always come up:

"Would you like walls that go up to this floor's level to attach to its bottom?" — Usually yes. It trims the walls to the underside of the slab so you don't get walls poking through floors.
Floors are hosted by a level and offset from it. Check Height Offset From Level. A floor whose top is at Level 2 usually needs a negative offset equal to its thickness, or it sits a slab thickness too high — depending on your template's convention. Look at it in a section.

A floor's type defines its layer structure — finish, core, structural deck. Same Category → Family → Type logic as walls.

Roofs

Two ways, and knowing which to use is the point:

Roof by Footprint — sketch the outline in plan, set slope per edge with the "Defines Slope" checkbox. This handles the overwhelming majority of real roofs: flat, hipped, gabled. Set Base Level and Base Offset correctly or your roof lands at the wrong height.
Roof by Extrusion — draw the profile in an elevation or section, and Revit extrudes it along the perpendicular. Use this for curved or unusual profiles that can't be described by sloped edges.

For the practice building: flat roof by footprint at the Roof level, with a parapet. Model the parapet as a wall from Roof to T.O. Parapet.

Attach, don't stretch

Select the top-storey walls → Modify | Walls → Attach Top/Base → pick the roof. The walls now follow the roof's underside, including its slope, and they update if the roof changes. Manually setting Unconnected Height to fake it looks identical today and breaks the moment anything moves.

Stairs and the hole they need

Architecture → Stair. Modern Revit stairs are component-based: you set the base level, top level, desired number of risers, and actual tread depth, then sketch runs and landings. The type controls tread/riser construction and the railing.

The thing nobody tells beginners: the stair does not cut the floor above it. You must make the opening yourself, either by:

Architecture → Opening → Shaft — sketch a vertical shaft across a level range. Best choice; it cuts every floor and roof it passes through and is easy to adjust.
Editing the Level 2 floor's boundary to sketch a hole in it.

Use a shaft. Set its base and top constraints one level beyond what you think you need, then pull it back.

Railings are their own element hosted by the stair. If a railing looks wrong, select it and check Pick New Host.

Doors and windows: hosted elements

DR and WN. Place them in a wall — they can only exist in a host. They cut their own opening automatically, because the family contains a void that cuts the host. This is why you never manually cut a hole for a door.

Delete the wall and the doors and windows go with it. That's hosting.
Space while placing flips the hand; the flip arrows after placement flip hand and swing.
Window sill height is an instance parameter (Sill Height) — each window can sit at its own height. Window size is a type parameter. That's the distinction from Day 1, in the wild.
To load more types: Insert → Load Family, or Load Autodesk Family for the cloud library.

Never host across a link. Hosting a door in a wall that lives in a linked model works until the link reloads, and then it doesn't. Most firm standards forbid it outright.

Curtain walls

A curtain wall is a wall type whose "structure" is a grid instead of layers:

Curtain grid — the lines dividing it, spaced by the type's Vertical/ Horizontal Grid Pattern, or placed manually.
Mullions — the frame members on those grid lines.
Panels — what fills each cell. Default is glass; you can swap an individual panel for a different panel family, or even for a basic wall type.

Select an individual panel by hovering and pressing Tab until the status bar says "Curtain Panel". You'll need to unpin it (it comes pinned) before you can swap it.

Put a curtain wall on the south elevation of your practice building and change one panel to a solid, so you've done it once.

The site

Revit 2024 replaced the old Toposurface with the Toposolid — a true solid with thickness and material layers that can host floors and be sculpted with sub-elements. If you're on 2024 or newer, use it:

Massing & Site → Toposolid → sketch a boundary well outside the building.
Select it → Edit Surface/Add Point and give a couple of points different elevations so it isn't flat.
Use Sub Divide for a driveway or terrace region.

On Revit 2023 or older you'll use Toposurface plus a Building Pad to level the ground under the building. The concept is the same: a ground surface, and a flat region carved into it for the building to sit on.

Warnings are a to-do list, not noise

Manage → Warnings. Every one is Revit telling you the model contains something ambiguous — overlapping walls, rooms that aren't enclosed, elements with identical instances in the same place, highlighted joins that couldn't be made.

Open it today, while you have twelve warnings instead of four thousand. Read each one. Select by ID (or the Show button in the warning dialog) jumps you to the offender.

The two you'll almost certainly have:

"Highlighted walls overlap" — two walls occupy the same space. Delete one.
"Room is not in a properly enclosed region" — you don't have rooms yet, so this comes later, but expect it on Day 5.

Today's exercise

Take the walls from Day 1 to a complete building:

Level 1 floor — Pick Walls on the exterior, finish. Say yes to attaching walls.
Copy exterior walls to Level 2 — select them, Ctrl+C, then Paste → Aligned to Selected Levels → Level 2. That paste option is the one you'll use constantly; learn where it lives.
Level 2 floor — same as Level 1.
Roof — by footprint at the Roof level, flat. Then a parapet wall from Roof to T.O. Parapet, offset to the outer face.
Attach the Level 2 walls' tops to the roof.
Stair from Level 1 to Level 2, in a sensible spot against an interior wall. Then a Shaft opening cutting the Level 2 floor above it, sized to the stair plus landing.
Doors — one entry door, three interior doors. Windows — four per elevation, at a consistent sill height. Place one, then Copy/Array the rest so spacing is exact.
Curtain wall — replace one bay of the south wall with a curtain wall. Change one panel.
Toposolid — a site surface with two elevation points, extending 40' (12 m) past the building.
Open Manage → Warnings. Resolve or understand every entry.
Open the {3D} view and orbit around your building. Then View → Camera in a plan view and place a camera to get an interior perspective — your first rendering-adjacent view.

Save. You have a building.

Day 2 — The building shell, end to end