Revit Architecture: Aligning Model Fill Patterns

Upon seeing Revit Elevations for the first time, a lot of people make the comment "yes, but the brick courses don't line up!" They are usually looking at something like this….

 

As a designer, you would normally expect the red lines to be level (ie the bed course to match the top of the window opening) and the two green lines to be aligned (ie the perpend joint to line up with the edge of the window opening).

The brick coursing that we are seeing is simply a Revit Model Fill Pattern and is a visual property of the outer-leaf material of the wall. A really useful property of Revit Model Fill Patterns is that their position can be adjusted using the Align tool. So lets go ahead and align this brick model fill pattern with the window opening. First of all select the Align tool, which can be found on the Modify menu….

 

If you've used the Align tool before you'll know that you need to select the reference that you're aligning to, first. Then you select the reference that is to be moved. So in our example I'll click in the order….

 

Which results in the brick model fill pattern aligning to the edge of the window opening like so…..

 

You can see that the brick pattern is now correctly aligned. You will also see that we have the option to lock this relationship so that the model fill pattern always remains aligned to the window opening, even if the window element is moved.

All we need to do now is use the align tool again on the bed course. The final result is shown below….

 

And now we have a perfectly-aligned brick pattern. The same technique (using the Align tool on model fill patterns) can be used for floor finishes, suspended ceiling grids, timber cladding, etc.