Revit and Advance Steel have similar capabilities and can both be used to model and detail Structural Steel structures. They do, however, approach certain steps of the modelling process quite differently. This is the case with Connection Detailing.

Connection Detailing is a very important part of Structural Steel design as, more than not, the connections are the critical design components. Modelling connections can be incredibly tedious (shout-out to the Inventor users) as they can be detail heavy with bolts, nuts, washers, chamfers, counter-sunk fasteners, and so forth. Fortunately, both Revit and Advance Steel have connection detailing functions that consist mainly of a dialogue window with a series of parameters. These parameters are usually explained well-enough too.

Revit’s approach is. . . . . of course. . . . family based. Every connection type is a family that needs to be loaded into the Project. This is fortunately quite easy. Navigating to the Steel tab, there is a Connection Settings our in the Connection section of the ribbon.

Clicking on this button opens up the Revit Connection Library from where you can select Connection Families to add to the Project. Once loaded into the Project, you simply click on the Connection function and make use of the loaded Connections.

In Advance Steel there is no need to load any Families as you simply make use of the existing Connection Vault.

From here you simply select a connection and apply it.

Modifying the Connection parameters is very similar, if not identical, for both programs. Both Revit and Advance Steel have the Propagate Joint function which copies the Connection to all of the relevant members, which greatly simplifies things.

With regards to Connection modelling and detailing, both programs’ workflows are very simple and easy to use. If you are not a fan of Families, Advance Steel is the program for you, however, having to load in Connection families unclutters your selection options in Revit.

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