Author: Cesar Escalante Revit

Halloween provided us inspiration to put our Revit family skills to work. Find the process of creating a fully parametric pumpkin using a single point adaptive component and a divided path. This tutorial was presented at the November 14 Redwood Empire Revit User Group.

 

You can create a parametric pumpkin by nesting a repetitive single point adaptive component into a tiny circular divided path.


 It’s always been in the back of my mind every Halloween day. How to create a fully parametric pumpkin? The concept was very simple. Create a single ‘wedge’ component and array it. The challenge was that you can’t create polar arrays as we know it in the Mass environment because the command ‘Array’ simply does not exist here. The other challenge is with partial elliptical profiles. Unlike Arcs and Splines, partial ellipses are rigid to control intuitively because the start and end ‘nodes’ will not reshape the ellipse size after placement. So I had to drive the ellipse size via parameters.

 

Dragging the ends of a partial ellipse will not change the ellipse size.


I created a polar arrays of components using a divided path on a circle with visible nodes, and nesting a single point adaptive components as a repetitive component, and viola!

Find the explanation along with the video tutorial Here.

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     Cesar Escalante
Cesar Escalante, AIA, LEED AP, CCCA
AEC Solutions Application Specialist

Cesar has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Central America in El Salvador, a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas, and is a CCCA (Certified Construction Contract Administrator). His experience includes roles as Project Manager and Project Captain at architecture firms in Oakland, California. As a member of the Ideate Tech Expert team, Cesar teaches Revit Architecture Fundamentals and provides client support and consulting. Cesar’s interest in the built environment includes his work as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.