Rigid rail & needle Revit instruction video

Video transcript

Hi, and thanks for taking the time to watch this video overview of the SAYFA Revit library that we at IGS BIM Solutions have created for the RAPTOR rigid rail Product range.

Just on the SAYFA home page here via the product selector, we have the OH250 Rigid rail section, which is pertaining to the content covered in this video. We’ll also touch on the OH400 Needle systems, which in some cases have the ability to interact with specific configurations of rigid rail.

Looking at the rigid rail product page, we can see that there are a wide range of components, sizes and configurations available within this range. These variances have been captured within the Revit content. And in this video we’re going to be covering how the Revit components can be placed and adjusted to document the fall protection solution specific to your project requirements.

I’ve just opened up the virtual showroom file for the RAPTOR Rigid Rail range. This is essentially a Revit project file with all relevant components pre-loaded and pre placed in a project environment. This file is a useful asset in understanding the various families that have been included in this rigid rail Revit offering.

Established model views allow us to very easily assess the quality of the geometry of all components. We also have a, in this case, specialty equipment schedule, which is pre-populated with the metadata that exists within all families. This is very useful again for assessing the quality of the content prior to bringing it across to a live project.

So just before we dive too deep into the parameters that allow us to fine tune these instances of rigid rail components, I’ll just highlight the various types of families that have been provided here. So we have a series of line based rigid rail assemblies. These are representing the configurations from OH1 through to OH8.

So the type of family here will dictate the configuration, be it floor mount, concrete ceiling mount, flush mount, suspended or purlin mount in various orientations here. We also have some stand alone curved pieces which can be placed independent of the line based rigid rail instance, as well as some support mounts, which again allow us to fine tune the placement and position of the supporting members.

So largely the series of line based components are what’s going to be used as the basis for your fall protection design. These have been built in a consistent manner, so there’s not too much variance in the controls and the available options across the various configurations. There are some more configuration specific options that we get in terms of the suspended and purlin mount configuration types, which I’ll go into in greater detail.

But just taking a look at some of the common parameters. So being line based, we’re simply able to select our desired start point, apply an angle if required, and we’re dragging the cursor to the desired end point of our straight rail length. You can, in placement mode, enter an exact value here of say, 12 metres. And what we end up with is a straight rail length with all of the associated support members automatically placed along its length.

So in terms of what’s controlling the spacings between all of the support members, we have control over that. If I come down to the Dimensions Group, we have the ability to set the desired start support inset which will control the inset from the rail end of this initial support.

You’ll notice here if I put a value of say 600, it actually defaults to the maximum allowable inset for a rail end of 400mm. So any value under 400mm it will accept. But there are rules working in the background so as to never exceed the product limitations. The distance then between this first and second support can be controlled via the desired first support spacing parameter, and all subsequent supports are then spaced using the desired support spacing parameter.

So in terms of what’s controlling the maximum spacing between any two support mounts, if I come up to the Constraints group here, you’ll notice that we have the desired uses per span parameter. So this is by default set to one which allows us a maximum span of four metres. If I were to change that to four, which is the maximum uses per span, you’ll notice that this maximum span automatically adjusts to two metres.

Now, because I elected a two and a half metre spacing back in this initial step, the actual support spacing actually automatically changes to two metres and dragging my mouse back into the view window my support mounts automatically reposition themselves and additional supports are created if need be to again, never make sure that we’re exceeding product limitations.

If I zoom in a bit here, you’ll see what we’re calling a support zone. So basically there’s a requirement for the rigid rail system to have a support placed at 500mm either side of all internal rail joins. So at every six metre length of rail where it butts up against the next length of rigid rail, there is a requirement to have a support that’s positioned essentially within 500mm of all those internal joins.

So you can see here, based on the support spacing I’ve elected, I can visually go through my instance of rail and see that we are satisfying that currently because we have a support within all these three internal support zones. If I were to adjust my desired first spacing to say a metre and we end up with a scenario here whereby we actually have internal support zones that are not being satisfied by a mount, that would then be a scenario where either we would need to revisit our support spacings. If we couldn’t change these for whatever reason, we would simply come and collect the appropriate mount type.

This can be done probably in a plan view and I can actually just position these on the rail wherever I need within those support zones and I’ll just come to a elevation or section. And what we’re going to want to do is change the height from FFL parameter. So you can see here this manufacturer height from FFL is currently set to 2700 for this line based family. This can be adjusted using the provided grip arrows if desired. So you can pull this up to the underside of a ceiling or something similar.

Alternatively, you can enter a value in the manufacturer height from FFL parameter. So we’re just going to want to select all those additional mounts and change this to be matching. And coming back to a 3D view, you can see that we now have a compliant rail.

So the support zones are turned on by default. But I suppose obviously you wouldn’t necessarily want these to be, you know, shown in your final documentation. There are a few ways to turn this off, either coming down to the visibility settings, we can turn off the show rail, join support zones. Alternatively, we have the ability to access the visibility graphics and under the specialty equipment category, the required Space subcategory has been established and we can turn those off on a view by view basis across all instances in that specific view.

For all vertical oriented rails, as is the case here, so where all of the the rails are facing down rather than across in the case of these metal deck or floor mount types, we do also have the additional option to specify if there is a curve at either, both or no ends. So I can elect to show an end one curve, show end two curve, and that’s going to essentially activate the visibility of a nested curve piece at either or both ends.

We can start to manipulate these curve pieces. We can change the direction, so if perhaps I want this end one curve to be an external corner, I would simply select the end one curve internal tick box and deselect that and that’s going to control the direction that that curve is in. So in terms of the curve pieces, there’s actually two sort of specific types.

One is the varying angles and varying radiuses. So these are available in a three, four, six metre length. So we can start to change the length of the curve piece or the type of the curve piece. So perhaps I want a varying radius at the end two. Now in terms of the controls over those curve pieces, depending on the type that we’ve elected, so in end one, we have a varying angle, which means that in my desired end one angle parameter, I can adjust this to be whatever angle I desire. So a 45 degree, but you’ll notice if I change the end one radius to say one metre, it actually doesn’t have any effect on the geometry of that curve piece. The inverse is true where we have a varying radius curve type selected the end two in this case end angle does not have any effect on geometry, but I can change the radius.

So if you’re wondering why you’re entering a value into one of these two parameters for the for any given end, you would just want to make sure that you’re you’re type selected here for your end curve or end two curve or end one curve is actually corresponding to the parameter that you’re trying to adjust. It is probably pretty important to note that the supports shown in the curve pieces are quite indicative just because there is a lot of variability in terms of where these need to be based on the angle or the radius.

So we do have the inbuilt option to turn those off via the show end curves supports parameter, at which point again, the appropriate mount type can be selected and positioned and placed to get maximum sort of customisation of the solution.

Another level of control that’s been provided across all line based rigid rail families is to do with these end brackets which are defining the termination points of our rigid rail system. So if I were to select this instance here and just turn off the show end two curve, you’ll notice that the end bracket automatically adjusts to be positioned at the end of the straight rail run.

There may be scenarios, however, that we would want that end bracket not shown at either or both ends. So if I just drag this out of the way a little bit and create similar, we may want this curve piece here to actually butt into another straight run. And I’m just before I draw this additional instance, going to turn off my show end one curve, select the center of that rail and draw this out at an arbitrary length here.

So in this particular case, what you’ll see is we have these two adjoining end brackets, which I can turn off via the end one capped or end two capped depending on the end in question, I can just deactivate a visibility of those in brackets to create a continuous run of rigid rail.

While I’m zoomed in here as well. I’ll just quickly show that the trolley type can also be adjusted via this trolley type parameter. So we have a single trolley type elected by default, but this can be adjusted through the four available options, so dual multi, dual offset, dual trolley or the default single trolley.

As mentioned earlier, there are some additional functionalities built in to these suspended systems. So for the suspended mount system, we do have control over the suspension length. So perhaps you would just want, you know, an 800 cable coming down to the top of the rail. That can be adjusted via the desired suspension length. It is worth mentioning that there is a maximum three metre suspension, cable length. So if I were to enter a five metre desired suspension, it will automatically validate here in this actual suspension length to be the maximum allowable three metres. I’ll just do that because the last thing that I want to show with the rigid rail stuff is the ceiling groove.

So if I were to come to a floorplan view and I’ll just bring this into the realm of my section and I’m just going to add a ceiling here, and if that ceiling is interacting with the rigid rail, so I’ll just use the align tool and align the bottom of my rigid rail track to be the bottom of my ceiling there that I’ve just drawn. So what we what we can actually do is in the visibility group, we can show ceiling extrusion via this tick box here, which you’ll notice brings in this additional geometry of this groove ceiling extrusion. And I can actually use the built in cut tool to select the ceiling and then the rigid rail instance, and that will actually cut out the ceiling.

It’s a bit hard to see here, but if I were to take a section through the rail itself, you can see that the ceiling is automatically being cut to go around the ceiling groove extrusion in that case. So something worth mentioning in that particular instance is if say I had a end curve elected, we are going to get the groove extrusion showing up. But because this is a nested curve type, it’s not going to have the ability to automatically cut the ceiling. So in that particular case, it would be a requirement to edit the boundary of the ceiling in either manually cut.

The alternative would be if I were to hide that, that could be a use case for the standalone curve components, which if I were to place that here, I can use the flip arrows if need be. And coming back to a section view, I can simply drag that up to the underside of my ceiling, turn off the end cap one on that to create a continuous system. And from here, because this is no longer a nested curve, it’s a stand alone curve, I can again use the cut tool to first select the ceiling and then the instance of rigid rail. And you’ll notice that actually hasn’t done anything because I haven’t yet turned on the show ceiling extrusion. So at that point we actually get a cut out of the ceiling that’s reflective of the groove extrusion within both the line based family and the standalone curve family.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the video, I do just quickly want to highlight some of the interaction between the rope access needle components and the rigid rail content. So just focusing on those needle types that have a vertical or horizontal trolley type elected as the rear mount. I’ll just bring these roughly in line with our horizontal metal deck RAPTOR Rigid Rail and our vertical metal deck rigid rail. And I’m just going to come to a plan view for this and bring them roughly in line.

Coming to a section we can use the in-built Revit align tool and we’re going to select in the horizontal instance the rail front reference and align that with the rear mount align horizontal reference within the needle. Then we’re going to select the top reference of the rigid rail and align that with the rear mount align vertical reference within the needle.

Back to a floorplan and coming into our section, I’ll just again select the top of the rigid rail instance and locate and click the rear mount align vertical. And in this case we’re going to select the center front back within that rigid rail instance. And again we’re going to align that with the rear mount align horizontal. So you can see there going to a 3D view we’ve been able to achieve an integrated system where we have a needle with an appropriate trolley type that’s integrating with the appropriate rigid rail system.

Just in closing, I do want to highlight that there is a PDF user guide that’s associated with all of the content that’s being demonstrated in this video. This will break down in greater detail the content that’s being created. It also has an overview of all of the parametric control associated with all of the objects that we’ve been looking at today.

So hopefully this video, along with the accompanying user guide document, provides a greater understanding of the files in this Revit offering and how they may be used to document and specify SAYFA RAPTOR products in your next project.

Please feel free to reach out if there are any questions or possible improvements.