The Cathedral of Loki the Saint-Revit Design

Over the last few years I have started traveling to various locations and everywhere I go I seem to end up in an old gothic cathedral or structure of some sort. Having visited some really impressive buildings in the last few years, I wanted to challenge myself to design a gothic inspired building in Autodesk Revit. This design is based off of something that you would see mostly in the Middle Ages. All of the photographs in this Instructable are my own that I have taken of these places.

1. While the design is my own and not entirely based on any one example, my biggest inspirations for this design were the Cathedral in Mainz, Germany and Westminster Abbey in London. I really liked the red sandstone used in Mainz so I tried to use that in my model as well.
2. I also took inspiration from some of the various abbey/castle ruins that I have visited in Ireland and Germany.
3. The intricate sidewalks in front of Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland and several other places were inspiration for my front sidewalk layout although mine is nowhere near as intricate.

I wanted to challenge myself to do something new in Revit that would require me to learn new skills. I have been teaching my own students to use Revit for residential and basic commercial design for a few years but I am no expert when it comes to Revit and I have a lot to learn especially when it comes to little details. I wanted to create a unique project to show students something different that we don't normally see in Revit.

Throughout this project I had to learn how to create new families, massing tools, components, etc. I also learned some new methods for creating different types of renderings. I learned quite a lot and even though I am done with the project for now, I hope to continue to add little details over time to turn it into my Revit masterpiece. Throughout this instructable I will share how I approached each step including tips and resources to help you learn these Revit tools as well.

The name of the cathedral is dedicated to our Saint Bernard, Loki who passed away last year. He was a gentle giant and he deserved a grand building designed in his honor.

1. Autodesk Revit
2. YouTube Tutorials for creating various new parts.
3. Inspiration from existing architecture
4. 3D Printer

The first step of this project was to just brainstorm what I wanted to do exactly. I knew I wanted to incorporate some gothic vaults into the design and utilize elements that I had seen used in the real world but I also wanted it to be my own design. So I just starting messing with layouts in Revit until I had a general idea of what I wanted to do. The main hall of my cathedral is not as tall as some existing examples but I wanted a second level full of vaults to give a unique structure. A cloister among the flying buttresses came together naturally and of course the 3 towers send the design into the sky.

I wanted to start with the vault structure because everything was based off of that. I did not know how to do this but luckily there are so many good tutorials out there for Revit.

1. I followed this youtube video to create a custom parametric generic model component.
2. Once I had this component modeled I could load it into my project and modify it by placing the four corners of it anywhere I wanted. I was also able to adjust the height of the vault structure to my liking.
3. When the model was the exact shape I wanted, I then massed the walls to fit the vault shape.
4. I laid out the main hall first. The cloister hallways and upper floor came later but following the same general process.

Next I added all of the walls around the main level. This was the easiest step as it was just adding the walls where I wanted them.

1. The main doors lead you into the nave
2. I added a rather small transept on each side. Mainly as another access point to the outside and to the cloisters.
3. The round wall finishes out the layout of the design and makes up the base of the circular tower that extends to the next level.
4. Last of course the two towers at the front for the building that make up the front façade.

Once the walls were in place I added some detailing including wall sweeps and niches to give it a more finished look as opposed to just smooth Revit walls. Much more detailing is needed to get the model closer to the level of detail used in the real thing. To model the wall niches I create a generic model component as a void extrusion that I could add to my walls.

To create the cloister wall detail, I created a new mass. By modeling a new solid mass and void forms I was able to create the desired shape and load it into the cloister walls. These walls fill the gaps created by the vault structures used in the cloisters.

Massing was also used to create the thick door surrounds on the towers and the main wall on the front of the façade.

The flying buttress was an element I knew I wanted to include. It is such a common sight in gothic architecture as it helps to support the vault structures. The flying buttress is my model is simply a wall structure. I edited the profile of the wall structure to give me a shape similar to the many examples I have seen. This could have also been made as a mass but I decided a wall was good enough for the look in the model I was making.

The upper floor was meant to show off the vault structure and provide another area to explore.

1. A grid of 20 vaults were laid out to create the main structure of the upper floor.
2. At the intersection of the vault walls I created octagonal columns to fill in the space and provide a more structurally sound appearance.

The round top doors and pointed arch windows were pretty straightforward. I found a door and parametric arch window that I liked on RevitCity. The files I used are linked here: Window and Door. RevitCity is a great site for finding components and families for Revit but the site can be very slow for some reason.

The window file in particular is great because it was parametric and I was able to use it for several different sized windows.

The front door and round stained glass window required some extra work however as they are custom made.

1. To make the front door, I did not model a true door family. I created another custom mass to resemble a large wooden door in the front façade.
2. The circular stained glass window is a custom Revit family that I created.
3. To create the stained glass pattern I used the AI image generator within Canva. It create circular stained glass pattern quickly that I used as the image for a custom material in Revit to create the pattern. Although I want to keep learning about rendering to improve the way it looks.

There are approximately 207 stairs to get from the ground floor to the observation deck level of my cathedral tower. It is 120 feet to the top.

1. There are 3 stopping points. 1 at the second level to admire the intricate vault work. the second at the upper level where the bells would be kept. The last is at the top level where a covered exit grants you access to the observation level.
2. Windows allow climbers to admire the view at several points on their ascent.
3. A set of curved stairs form the 2nd level follows the curvature of the wall and grants visitors access to the upper level of the round tower where they can admire the view or think about life.

The roofing of the building is pretty simple sloped roofing.

The round tower of course has a more unique roof shape. The octagon base leads to the steep peak with a 24"/12" slope.

I played around with some spire shapes with very steep slopes on the tower but I did not like the final appearance.

The site includes a cloister garden and grand entry plaza.

1. Using sub regions on the site topography I was able to create the walkway pattern of different colored cobblestones.
2. I wanted a unique geometric pattern for the walkway which I created by using basic squares and triangles repeated over the length of the walkway.
3. Again I took inspiration from the walkways in front of Hallgrimskirkja in Iceland and St. Stephen's Church in Karlsruhe Germany.
4. The garden pathways and lawns are also created with sub regions. The transept and cloister pathways open to the garden.
5. I included two fountains with angels atop them both of which were found on Revit City linked here: Angel and Fountain

The next step of this process for me was to create a 3D printed model of the design. 3D printing form Revit does not always produce a great result but these are the steps I took to get a good printed version of the design

1. Make a copy of the main 3D view of the Revit model
2. Hide all components that will not print well when scaled down.
3. Isolate all components that are meant to be printed together. I printed this in several sections to make the printing easier and to have more control over support and other settings
4. Export STLs.
5. Slice and 3D print

To give the windows a glass appearance, I took a thin sheet of clear acrylic, cut it to size and glued in on the backside of the walls. Looking at the model form the outside, you cannot see the extra acrylic. I also used a heat gun to bend the acrylic for the round tower windows. Overall it gives it a more finished look.

The final step of this process was to create a video presentation of the cathedral. to do this I used Canva. By creating walkthrough animations in Revit I was able to export video snippets showcasing my design into Canva where the snippets were assembled into the final video.

1. There is a video tutorial from Revit linked to this step and there are plenty of others online to show you how to create walkthroughs.
2. I created quite a few walkthroughs to finish the final video.
3. My computer is not the best, so the quality of the video is not exactly "rendered" quality.
4. I used 60 frames per second on my Revit walkthroughs and the results turned out pretty good. You can only upload files up to 1,024 MB to Canva at a time so it may take some experimenting to get the video quality and file size to work out.

Here is the Canva Link to the Video

Once again my computer is not set up for doing perfect renderings. Luckily, Autodesk's cloud rendering allows for some really interesting renders including panorama renderings. I really like the way the panorama rendering turn out.

Here are a few examples.

Exterior

1. Side Panorama
2. Front Panorama
3. Garden Panorama
4. Aerial Panorama

Interior

1. Upper Floor Panorama
2. Main Hall Panorama

To do this:

You will need a Free Autodesk account to do this.

1. Create a camera view as the "center" point for your panorama. Click on View>3D view>Camera. Then place the camera where you want it. You can change the height offset to make the camera much higher or lower as well.
2. Click on View>Render In Cloud
3. Change the output type to Panorama
4. Click Start Rendering
5. Open the online rendering platform. (Click on your Autodesk username in the top right corner of the Revit window, then click on View Completed Renderings. Or click on View>3D View>Render Gallery)
6. All of your cloud renderings should show up there.