Revit Adaptive Components: Practical Archetypes: The Vaulted Ceiling -Part One

Ophelia2 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]

If you had anything to do with buildings in New York, chances are that you may have encountered elaborate, arched or vaulted ceilings. Even if you weren't designing the space 'in-the-manner-of' the gilded age, more often than not, you would have documented what exists and surgically excised or implanted your work into the existing fabric. This is when you realize that these marvels of geometric complexity aren't that perfect. A fairly accurate survey of all the crowns and spring-points of the arches will tell you that all of them are off by a few inches from the ideal geometrical vision of Architecture. Unfortunately, it is a few inches that usually stands in the way of possible and impossible within which most designers have to work with. So, the challenge here is: how do you build a ceiling using Revit that sufficiently accurately mimics the geometrical anomalies of the real world? The answer surprisingly is not that simple...