Placing crown molding at the top of cabinetry is very common in residential design and can be easy to do in Revit.  Ideally, I would like to use a sweep with a crown molding profile, but Revit utilizes sweeps only for walls when not in the family editor.  The trick to making this an easy process for the user is to create a specialty wall that has the desired sweep profile built into it.  This allows you draw the “wall” to follow the front edge of the cabinetry at the desired elevation for the crown molding.

The following image shows the resultant crown molding.

The process:

Create a New Wall Type

• Start the Wall command and choose the Generic – 4″ wall type.

• Pick the Edit Type button.

• In the Type Properties dialog box, pick the Duplicate button to create a duplicate of this wall. Rename this new wall to something indicative of the purpose of the wall.

  • I named mine Interior – Cabinet Crown Molding.

• In the Type Properties dialog box, select the Edit… button to the right of the Structure parameter.

• Change the Structure [1] layer to be 1/32″ thickness.

  • (This keeps the “wall” portion very thin so it becomes virtually invisible and more irrelevant.)

• Pick the Sweeps button at the bottom of the dialog box.

• In the Wall Sweeps dialog box, pick the Load Profile button to load the desired crown molding profile.

  • Autodesk has various options in the Finish Carpentry sub-folder of the Profiles folder of the Imperial Library.

  • I selected the Crown 5.rfa profile family.

• After loading the desired profile, pick the Add button in the Wall Sweeps dialog box.

• Change the Profile name from <Default> to the desired profile as shown below.

The Material should also be changed to be the desired material from the Material Browser.

• This will make the crown molding render correctly.

• If the profile is place from the Base and the Exterior side as shown above, then you can specify the bottom of the “wall” at the bottom of the crown molding when placing it.

• Pick the OK buttons to exit the dialog boxes and complete the creation of the new wall.

• The following image shows the properties of the wall with the preview image and aspects that I modified.

Place the Wall

• While this step is not required to place the new “wall” for the crown molding, it is good to have a plan view with the View Range set to higher than the cabinets so you can see the upper cabinets and the new crown molding “wall”. Otherwise, you will not see the molding as you draw it.

  • I set my View Range to 8′-0″ since my tallest cabinetry was +7′-6″.

• In the plan view, activate the Wall command and select the desired crown molding “wall” type.

  • I selected the new Interior – Cabinet Crown Molding wall type created above.

• Set the following parameters in the Properties palette for the wall.

  • Location Line = Finish Face Exterior

    • This is so you can trace the exterior face of the cabinets and the bottom inside edge of the crown molding will be flush against the cabinet.

  • Base Offset = 6′-11″

    • The top of most of my wall cabinets is at +7′-0″, so I set the bottom of the molding to be 1″ below the top of the cabinet.

    • Set this elevation to be what you desire for the bottom edge of the molding.

  • Top Constraint = Unconnected

  • Unconnected Height = 1-1/4″

    • This keeps the height of the “wall” portion of the profile very low so that it will not really be seen in sections or 3D views. Note that using 1″ or less for the height will prevent the wall from being placed.

Start drawing the wall around the face of the upper cabinets.

• The following images show the before and after effect of drawing the new “walls”

  1. The 2nd image shows 3 different wall chains drawn to achieve the desired results with each color being a different chain.

     • The arrows represent the direction the “walls” were drawn.

     • The solid color lines represent where the actual wall location line was placed.

For cabinets with different heights, adjust the Base Offset accordingly.

• Note that the corner cabinet in my example is 6″ taller than the other cabinets with a height of 7′-6″, so a separate wall was drawn around it that had a Base Offset of 7′-5″.

Notes:

• Multiple specialty walls can be create for various molding profiles for easy selection.

• If you create a new material for the Wall Structure layer that is specifically for molding, then you will be able to filter schedules to not include these walls.

• Corners of the crown molding will clean up nicely using when

This article was originally published on Applying Technology to Architecture’s blog and has been republished here with permission.

cover image © unsplash