Gare do Oriente - Nested Revit Repeaters - part 1

In 2013 I presented a paper titled "Fractal Fun with Revit Repeaters and Adaptive Components" at three RTC events in Auckland, Vancouver and at the inaugural European Revit conference in Delft, in the Netherlands.  Part of the presentation involved a live demonstration of how to construct a parametric Revit model of the roof of the Gare do Oriente railway station in Lisbon, designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Gare do Oriente by Santiago Calatrava

Since then I have had a number of people asking me how it was done - it was of course described in step-by-step detail in the RTC handouts.  Those are not so easily accessible now, so I am posting the content here, in stages.  Part 1 involves creating a rig for one of the structural supports of the roof.

I will not show a step-by-step guide here as the process is described in a video tutorial:
here is a youtube link

As a reminder, below is a list of the steps required in the process:

• Start a new Adaptive Component
• Place a point at the origin (X,Y,Z = 0)
• Make it adaptive
• Make its 'Show reference planes' property to 'Always' visible
• Set the workplane as the horizontal reference plane of the adaptive point
• Place another point on top of the adaptive point
• Move it up in the Z direction
• Associate its 'Offset' property to a parameter 'Height' (NB. it will only have an Offset property if it is correctly hosted on the horizontal reference plane of the adaptive point)
• Draw a reference line from the top point down to the adaptive point, making sure 3D snapping is on (Options toolbar)
• Place two more points, both hosted on the reference line
• Make the upper line-hosted point always show reference planes
• Change its Measurement Type to 'Chord Length' or 'Segment Length' (NB. because the host is a straight line, in this case Segment length is the same as chord length, which just means direct distance)

Hosted point Measurement Type

• Associate its 'Chord length' to a parameter called 'Perimeter Drop'
• Change the Measurement Type of the lower hosted point to 'Chord Length' or 'Segment Length'
• Associate its 'Chord length' property to a parameter called 'Valley Drop'
• Flex the parameters to test the rig thus far;  move the adaptive point to check everything else is hosted to it

Circles to host geometry

• Set the workplane as the horizontal reference plane of the top point
• Place a reference circle centred on the point
• Make its temporary radius dimension into an actual dimension
• Associate the radius dimension to a parameter called 'Radius outside'
• Set the workplane as the reference plane of the upper hosted point
• Place a reference circle centred on the point
• Make its temporary radius dimension into an actual dimension
• Associate the radius dimension to a parameter called 'Radius inside'

• Create a formula for 'Radius outside' = Radius inside * 1.4142

Divide Path

• Select the top circle
• Click on the 'Divide Path' icon
• Set the number of points to 8
• Select the lower circle
• Click on the 'Divide Path' icon

• Set the number of points to 8

The basic rig is now complete, ready for adaptive components and repeaters to be hosted on it.  These will be covered in following tutorials.

Step 2  Putting roof panels on top of the rig . . .
Step 3  Creating the structural elements and placing on the rig
Step 4  Adding Struts to the structure

Step 5  Assembling the Array of Structural Columns