Course description

Revit is building information modelling software from Autodesk. Instead of drawing lines, you model walls, doors, floors and roofs that carry information, and Revit gives you plans, elevations, sections, schedules and sheets from that one model. This course takes you from opening Revit for the first time to a finished two-storey practice house with an A3 sheet set saved as a PDF, one clear step at a time.

You learn what BIM means on UK projects, find your way round the screen, start a project from a template in millimetres, and set out levels and grids. You model walls with your own types, place doors and windows, and add floors, a gabled roof, ceilings, a stair and railings. Then you place rooms, set up plans, elevations, a section and 3D views, add dimensions and tags, make door, window and room schedules, lay out sheets and export them to PDF, with linking, worksharing and IFC export explained in outline.

There are 10 sections and 50 written lessons, each with a worked example, common slips, questions people often ask and a short exercise to try, and each section ends with a short quiz. You follow Nimmi, a site administrator at a small Leicester builder, as she learns Revit over the spring and summer, with help from her uncle's neighbour Sigurd, a retired architectural technologist. Every section has a practice pack with a worksheet, an answer key and a cheat sheet, plus reference cards, a shortcut card, checklists, briefs, answer drawings and schedules made for the course.

What you'll learn

• BIM and getting started with Revit: what BIM and Revit are, the UK BIM Framework and the ISO 19650 series in outline, Revit and Revit LT, getting the software safely, the screen, moving around and shortcuts.
• Starting a project: how a project is organised, starting from a template, millimetre units and snaps, saving and naming files, and project information.
• Levels and grids: what levels do, adding and naming levels, placing and naming grids, temporary dimensions, moving and aligning, and checking datums.
• Walls: wall types and layers, location lines, making your own wall types, partitions, joins and checking walls on two floors.
• Doors and windows: door and window families and types, placing and positioning openings, sill heights, new sizes and marks.
• Floors, roofs, ceilings, stairs and railings: floors with a stair opening, a gabled roof by footprint, attaching walls, ceilings, a stair with a landing, and railings.
• Rooms, views and visibility: rooms and room tags, plans and elevations, the view range, sections, callouts and 3D views, visibility tools, view templates and the Project Browser.
• Annotation, dimensions and schedules: temporary and permanent dimensions, aligned dimension strings, text and tags, door and window schedules, and room schedules with area checks.
• Families, sheets and sharing your work: system, loadable and in-place families, type and instance parameters, sheets and title blocks, PDF export, linking, worksharing and IFC in outline.
• Final project: a two-storey house: rebuilding the house from a brief, then views, dimensions, a door schedule and an A3 sheet set exported as one PDF.

Who it's for

Architectural technicians starting out, construction staff who need to read and update models, and career changers moving into BIM work in the UK. You don't need any drawing, CAD or BIM experience. You need Revit or Revit LT on a computer that meets Autodesk's requirements for your version, and a mouse with a scroll wheel. If you also need 2D drafting, AutoCAD for Beginners: 2D Drawings, Plans and Layouts Step by Step pairs well with this course.

What this course is, and isn't

This course teaches basic modelling and documentation in Revit, and it isn't made or endorsed by Autodesk. Tab, panel, tool and dialogue box names were checked against Autodesk's Revit 2027 help, and shortcuts against Autodesk's default list for Revit LT 2026; Revit is updated regularly, so the lessons show you how to check a name in the help for your version. UK BIM standards are described in outline only. The house is a practice model with made-up sizes, not a design to build from. The practice packs have no Revit files: you build everything yourself from the steps. Nimmi, Sigurd and every other person in the course are fictional.

What will I learn?

• Explain what BIM is and how the UK BIM Framework and the ISO 19650 series shape information on UK projects, in outline
• Find your way round the Revit ribbon, Properties palette, Project Browser and View Control Bar, and move round plans and 3D views
• Start a project from a template with millimetre units, then set out levels and grids from a brief
• Model walls with your own wall types, location lines and clean joins on two floors
• Place and size doors and windows by duplicating types, set sill heights and give every opening a mark
• Add floors with a stair opening, a gabled roof by footprint, ceilings, a stair with a landing, and railings
• Place and tag rooms, and set up plans, elevations, a section, a callout and 3D views with visibility controls and view templates
• Dimension and tag plans, and make door, window and room schedules that update with the model
• Work with system, loadable and in-place families and change type and instance parameters safely
• Lay out views on A3 sheets, export a combined PDF, and understand linking, worksharing and IFC export in outline

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