When working with shaped-edited Floors, it can be a bit cumbersome to work with complex shapes, since Revit will create a point at each vertex of the outline.
So for example, if you are making a sidewalk shaped like this, Revit forces a point at each vertex:
One way around this is to create a larger floor “framework” and then to cut out the shape you want using voids.
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Typically, when grading a site, an engineer or landscape architect will specify new spot elevations based on desired slopes and existing spot elevations. Grading is mainly just drawing lines across various areas and interpolating spot elevations based on slopes.
While Revit’s current hardscape and Topography tools are not ideal for grading a landscape, it does have the capability to calculate slopes and spot elevations for you. All you need is a custom family with some parameters and formulas set up the right way.
The actual Spot Elevation tool (on the Annotation ribbon), is most useful when providing spots for a Floor/ Hardscape. As mentioned in Part 1, a Generic Annotation might be better for annotating Topo, but if a Hardscape has accurate elevations, then the Spot Elevation is quicker and more effective.
Like many things in Revit, the main hurdle to using the Spot Elevation is simply getting the graphics to behave as desired. After some tweaking, this is what my Spot looks like:
One of the most versatile families in Revit is the Generic 
Annotation (this is the same as the Symbol, on the Annotation ribbon). It is commonly used to create symbol-like families, such as keynotes, north arrows, graphic scales, and stamps. But it can also be used to generically annotate a drawing/ view.
In typical Revit standards and best-practices, it is almost always preferable to use a Tag, since a Tag pulls actual information from the object. Generic Annotations are better than just “dumb” Text, but unlike Tags, they will not update if any information about the annotated object changes.
Grading plans are one of the few exceptions to using Tags. Continue reading
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