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Fold down ladder Revit instruction video

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Download fold down ladder revit files

Video transcript

The growing SAYFA Rivet library, developed by IGS BIM Solutions also includes the range of VISTA Fold Down Ladders. On the SAYFA website here coming down to the LD460 Fold Down Ladders page. We have three different models within the VISTA range, so these are the Commercial Ladders, Compact and Maxi Fold Down Ladder. We also have the LD465, and LD466 Suspension Kit.

So these are used with the Commercial and Maxi Fold Down Ladders in the event that we are wanting to extend the ladder through the ceiling space and up to the roof. So this is shown in this animation here on the side of the screen where the floor to ceiling ladder goes up to the ceiling, and then we have the additional componentry that gets us up to the underside of the roof above.

Jumping in to Revit, I have a extracted view from the SAYFA virtual showroom file. This is a very useful file as it has all of the SAYFA components laid out side by side and it’s very easy to assess the geometry and see what’s available for downloading and bringing into your project. So as far as how the VISTA Fold Down Ladders are structured in the Revit environment, under the specialty equipment category, we have five families in total, a Commercial, Compact and Maxi floor to ceiling ladder.

So those are the ladders that we’re seeing here on the left of screen where we simply come up from the floor to the underside of a ceiling. We then have these two families which include the suspension kit option, and that, as mentioned, only applies for the Commercial, and Maxi models. Those can be seen over to the right of screen where we have the additional suspension kit geometry as well as cages if we need them and that additional ceiling space ladder. In terms of parametric control and placement of these objects, it is very easy to use as we’re using a non hosted element. So we’re selecting a level from our project. From here we can, if we’d like to apply a height from FFL, essentially that will be zero by default. But if we wanted to offset this vertically, I can do so by entering a value into that parameter there.

Otherwise we just have the control over the overall height. So the desired floor to ceiling height. Now the difference between the Commercial, Compact and Maxi ladders comes down to the opening size as well as the maximum and minimum overall ladder heights. So the Maxi can achieve greater lengths of ladder. And what we have happening in the background is if I were to say, make this Commercial Ladder 8 metres, this greyed out calculated parameter here, actual floor to ceiling height is going to validate to the maximum ladder height achievable, which is 3.2 metres.

Similarly, if I were to put 1 metre, it’s going to drop down to the minimum of 2.4 metres. So as long as we’re entering something within those minimum and maximum tolerances, we can actually just put any number in here and the geometry is going to adapt to suit. With these floor to ceiling ladders there is just one single type.

So these are very flexible in the sense that we can have a whole bunch of instances of this one type and we can feed these different heights without having any effect at all on any other instance within the project. Once we’ve placed and oriented our ladder how we would like, the next thing to do is to associate a ceiling.

Now the value for the actual floor to ceiling height, we want to match up with the height offset from level. You’ll notice here I have a actual offset from the floor to the ceiling being 2 1/2 metres. Changing my ceiling height here is going to get that positioned correctly with relation to the ladder. The next thing we’re going to want to do, obviously we have an interaction between the geometry of the ladder itself and the ceiling.

So coming to the modify tab, we can use the cut geometry tool and I can simply select the ceiling first and then the ladder and that’s going to essentially cut out a void in the ceiling geometry to satisfy the opening size of the ladder selected. So the last thing we’re going to want to do with these floor to ceiling ladders is if I were to just take a section through, we do have a additional parameter here for ceiling thickness.

What we’re going to want to do is to ensure that the value in that ceiling thickness parameter matches the structural thickness of our ceiling element. So 52 is this compound ceilings thickness. So I would want to change my ceiling thickness to 52. Now, it might be hard to see what’s happening here, but by doing that, we’re ensuring that we get consistency across various thicknesses of ceiling where the flashing will extend up above the top of the ceiling by a consistent value so long as we’re entering that ceiling thickness accurately. Jumping into the suspension kit combination families which have the same functionality as what we just saw with the floor to ceiling however, we do have the additional geometry. So I’ll just pull this one across here and I just want to check that I have a floor to ceiling height of 2.7, so I’m going to bring up my ceiling to 2.7 in this case.

Now, I can again use the cut tool in a similar fashion to select the ceiling, then select the ladder to get that penetration model through the ceiling element. We are going to ultimately have a roof that that suspension kit is extending up to. Now in a similar fashion to the ceiling heights, the height of the roof, we can tell from the ladder is going to be 4.7 metres at this overall height.

So if I were to change this, to have an offset from level of 4.7 metres, that should give us a clean system that’s extending up directly to the underside of that roof. So immediately we can see that there is interaction with the cage and the roof itself. So what we would need to do here is to actually get a SKYDORE component which can be seen over here in these working examples and these are standalone elements. The beauty of that is we can situate it how we want. We have greater flexibility, but we also have the ability to schedule and make changes around mounting types, flashing types and that sort of thing. So that’s actually covered in the user guide but also in another separate SKYDORE video, we go through the options around these components in particular.

Similarly, I can use the cut to select the roof this time and then the SKYDORE and what I actually want to do is change the roof thickness to 400, which that on there is a 400 thick roof and that is going to push through the entirety of the roof. Last thing I want to touch on are some visibility parameters.

So we do have the ability to tick a ladder closed parameter here and that’s going to show the ladder in the folded position so that’s the closed position. That does also apply for the combined ladder and suspension kit families. So ladder closed. It’s obviously not going to change anything up in the ceiling space, but that floor to ceiling ladder will fold up.

The other thing to mention are the required space zones that we’re seeing here, so these are shown in 3D and 2D views to give us greater context and to mitigate any clashes on site during this design phase. They are able to be turned off though. We can untick this required space parameter. That’s obviously changed that particular instance but another way to do this is if I go into the visibility graphics and under specialty equipment, we have the required space subcategory which can be deactivated to turn off the required spaces of all instances within this view.

So hopefully this video was able to provide some context on the range of VISTA Revit components for SAYFA. We do, as always, have the PDF User Guide and please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback on anything in this video or the greater SAYFA Revit Library in general.