Course Description
Introduction to Revit Architecture and Lab develops architectural design and drafting using Autodesk Revit, working in Building Information Modelling (BIM) rather than in drawn lines. Students build walls, floors, roofs, stairs, and openings as real building components inside a single project model, and generate plans, elevations, sections, schedules, and sheets from it.
Within the SCNS taxonomy, ETD is the Engineering Technology: Drafting prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, prerequisite ETD2320C, offered in fall. The C suffix marks a combined lecture-and-laboratory format; at the ETD family's usual 2 lecture plus 2 laboratory hours weekly, that is approximately 60 contact hours.
The shift this course teaches is conceptual before it is procedural. In AutoCAD you draw a wall; in Revit you place a wall, which knows its own type, thickness, material, and fire rating, appears correctly in every view at once, counts itself in a schedule, and updates everywhere when it moves. Students who understand that difference in the first two weeks find the rest straightforward; students who try to use Revit as a drawing program struggle for the whole term.
⚠ Suffix and family: check the number, not the title
This repository also carries ETD2390 — the same number without the C suffix, published at 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours as "3D AutoCAD / Revit." The suffix is part of the course number: the C form is a combined lecture-and-lab course with additional required contact hours, and the two are not interchangeable for transfer purposes even though the subject overlaps. This is Florida's most persistent numbering hazard and it is documented across this repository.
The Revit and BIM material is spread across several ETD numbers statewide, with different scope at each:
- ETD1390C — Autodesk Revit: Introduction to BIM and Architectural Modelling (3 cr)
- ETD2390C — this course, Introduction to Revit Architecture (3 cr)
- ETD2392C — Advanced Architectural Revit (3 cr)
- ETD2397C — Building Information Management I (4 cr)
Note that Valencia carries no ETD2390C at all — its ETD sequence runs through ETD1103C, ETD1340C, ETD2355C, and ETD2731C with no Revit-specific number. Verify what your institution actually offers rather than reasoning from the family.
Learning Outcomes
Required Outcomes
- Describe Building Information Modelling and how it differs from computer-aided drafting.
- Navigate the Revit interface, project browser, properties palette, and view controls.
- Set up a project using an appropriate template, units, and levels.
- Create and manage levels and grids as the project's organizing framework.
- Place and modify walls, selecting and editing wall types and their assemblies.
- Place doors, windows, and openings, and control their parameters.
- Create floors, ceilings, and roofs, including sloped and complex roof forms.
- Create stairs, ramps, and railings to code-relevant dimensions.
- Place and configure curtain walls and systems.
- Load, place, and modify component families.
- Create and manage views: plans, elevations, sections, callouts, and 3D views.
- Control view properties: scale, detail level, visibility, graphics overrides, and view range.
- Apply dimensions, text, tags, and annotation to construction-document standards.
- Create and edit schedules that report quantities from the model.
- Compose sheets with title blocks and place views on them.
- Print and export drawings, including export to DWG and PDF.
- Describe worksharing and linked models at an introductory level.
- Produce a coordinated small-building document set from a single model.
Optional Outcomes
- Create simple in-place and loadable families with parameters.
- Model site elements: toposurfaces, building pads, and site components.
- Produce renderings and walkthroughs from the model.
- Perform interference and clash checking against linked models.
- Apply phasing and design options.
- Describe Revit's role in an integrated design and construction workflow.
- Prepare for Autodesk Certified User or Professional certification.
Major Topics
Required Topics
- BIM concepts versus CAD drafting
- Revit interface, browser, and view management
- Project setup, templates, units, levels, and grids
- Walls: types, assemblies, and editing
- Doors, windows, and openings
- Floors, ceilings, and roofs
- Stairs, ramps, and railings
- Curtain walls and systems
- Families: loading, placing, and modifying
- Views: plans, elevations, sections, callouts, 3D
- View properties, visibility, and graphic overrides
- Dimensions, text, tags, and annotation standards
- Schedules and quantity extraction
- Sheets, title blocks, and document sets
- Printing and export
- Introduction to worksharing and linked models
Optional Topics
- Family creation and parameters
- Site and toposurface modelling
- Rendering and walkthroughs
- Clash detection and coordination
- Phasing and design options
- Integrated project workflows
- Autodesk certification preparation
Resources & Tools
- Autodesk Revit — free for students and educators through the Autodesk Education plan, renewable while you remain eligible. Install it on your own machine; the lab is not enough practice time.
- Autodesk Revit Architecture: No Experience Required or the Mastering Autodesk Revit series (Sybex) — the standard teaching texts.
- Autodesk Knowledge Network and the official Revit help — free, authoritative, and the correct first stop for a specific command.
- Autodesk Design Academy — free structured tutorials and curriculum.
- RevitCity, BIMobject, and manufacturer sites — free family content; manufacturer families in particular are how real projects get accurate components.
- The National BIM Standard-United States and the AIA BIM documents — for the contractual and standards side.
- The Florida Building Code (floridabuilding.org) — free to view online, and the authority on what your model actually has to comply with.
- Autodesk Certified User / Certified Professional in Revit — a recognized credential; many colleges are testing centres and offer student pricing.
- A machine that can run it — Revit is demanding on RAM and graphics; check the published system requirements before buying a laptop for this programme.
Career Pathways
- Architectural drafter or BIM technician — architecture firms and design-build contractors; the direct destination.
- BIM modeller and BIM coordinator — a distinct and better-paid role coordinating models across disciplines on larger projects.
- BIM manager — standards, templates, content libraries, and training; the senior technical track.
- MEP and structural drafting — Revit MEP and Revit Structure are the same platform, and the skills transfer directly.
- Construction technology roles — general contractors employ modellers for coordination, sequencing, and quantity take-off.
- Facilities and asset management — owners increasingly require a model at handover and staff people to maintain it.
- Interior design and space planning.
- Bridge to a baccalaureate — Florida institutions offer B.S. degrees in construction management and engineering technology that build on this work.
- Florida's construction sector is large and cyclical; SOC codes 17-3011 Architectural and Civil Drafters and 17-3012 Electrical and Electronics Drafters, with BIM coordination often classified under 11-9021 Construction Managers.
Special Information
⚠ Stop drawing and start modelling — the habit transfer from AutoCAD is the main obstacle
The thing that decides whether this course goes well, and it is a mindset rather than a skill.
Students arriving from ETD2320C have spent a term becoming fluent in a program where a wall is two parallel lines and every view is drawn separately. Revit inverts that: you model the building once, and the drawings are reports generated from it. The consequences are pervasive:
- You do not draw a section; you cut one. Sections, elevations, and callouts are views into the model, and they update automatically because they are not drawings.
- Changing a wall changes every view at once, which is the entire value proposition and also the reason a careless edit propagates instantly.
- Never fake geometry with detail lines to make a view look right. It works once, looks correct, and then fails silently the moment anything moves or a schedule is run. Detail lines have legitimate uses in 2D detailing; substituting for modelled elements is not one of them.
- Use the right tool for the element. Modelling a roof with walls, or a floor with a slab-shaped mass, produces a model that looks acceptable and schedules wrongly.
- Get the levels right first. Levels are the spine of the project, and elements are hosted to them; fixing levels late is genuinely painful.
The diagnostic worth applying to your own work: if your schedules are wrong, your model is wrong. Schedules read the model directly, so they are the fastest audit of whether you modelled the building or drew a picture of one.
⚠ Standards and templates are the professional part of this skill
Underrated by students and closely watched by employers.
Anyone can learn where the wall button is. What distinguishes a hireable Revit user is producing a model somebody else can work in, and that is a matter of discipline rather than software knowledge:
- Naming conventions for views, sheets, families, and types. A project browser with forty views named "Copy of Level 1 Copy 2" is unusable, and interviewers look at exactly this.
- Templates carry the office's standards — line weights, text styles, dimension styles, view templates, title blocks — and starting from the right template is most of the work of conforming to them.
- View templates enforce consistent graphics across a set instead of adjusting each view by hand.
- Model only to the level of development the deliverable requires. Over-modelling wastes time and slows the file; under-modelling produces incomplete documents. Knowing the difference is judgement.
- Purge, audit, and keep the file healthy. Revit files bloat, and a slow model costs a team real hours.
Practical portfolio advice: a small building modelled cleanly, with a coordinated sheet set and correct schedules, is worth more in an interview than a large model that only looks impressive in 3D. Employers open the project browser.
⚠ BIM is a contractual and legal object, not just a file
Worth knowing early, because it changes what accuracy means.
On real projects the model is increasingly a deliverable with contractual status, governed by a BIM execution plan that specifies who models what, to what level of development, and who is responsible for coordination. That has consequences a student should absorb before the first job:
- Level of Development (LOD) is a defined term — it states how much a model element can be relied upon at a given stage, and relying on an element beyond its stated LOD is precisely the mistake the framework exists to prevent.
- Quantities extracted from a model are used for estimating and procurement. A modelling error is therefore a money error, and schedules are not a classroom exercise.
- Clash detection prevents field conflicts that are expensive to resolve on site — this is where BIM demonstrably pays for itself, and it only works if disciplines model accurately in shared coordinates.
- Drafters do not stamp drawings. Architects and engineers hold the licence and the professional liability; a drafter or BIM technician works under their direction. Knowing where that line sits is part of the job.
Florida-specific note: the Florida Building Code governs what is buildable here, and it is unusually demanding on wind loading and coastal construction for obvious reasons. Modelling something that cannot be permitted is a real error even when the model is technically clean. Rule 11 applies — the code is revised on a cycle; verify the current edition.
⚠ The software is free for students — take the licence and practise off the clock
Concrete and consequential. Autodesk provides Revit at no cost to students and educators through its education plan, renewable while you remain eligible. Two hours a week in a campus lab is not enough repetition to build fluency in a program this large, and the students who become genuinely fast are the ones with it installed at home.
Two practical cautions. Educational licences produce watermarked output and are not for commercial use — using one for paid work is a licence violation, and firms are audited. And Revit is hardware-hungry: check the published system requirements before committing to a laptop, because an underpowered machine makes the coursework genuinely painful.
The credential worth collecting on the way out: Autodesk Certified User or Certified Professional in Revit. Many colleges are authorized testing centres with student pricing, and it is a concrete line on a résumé that a hiring manager recognizes immediately.
Course format and transfer
ETD2390C is 3 credits with an estimated 60 contact hours, the C suffix denoting combined lecture and laboratory instruction — expect roughly two hours of instruction and two hours of lab weekly. Assessment is overwhelmingly performance-based: modelling exercises, a documented project, and a final sheet set. Grading generally weights model correctness and drawing standards, not just visual appearance, which is the right emphasis and worth knowing in advance.
How Florida course levels affect transfer
The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.
Two transfer notes. The C suffix matters — ETD2390 and ETD2390C are different numbers with different contact hours, and equivalency does not cross them. And A.S. degrees in drafting are applied degrees, so they do not carry the A.A.'s guaranteed junior-status transfer; students planning a baccalaureate should confirm articulation with the receiving programme early, since Florida's B.S. programmes in construction management and engineering technology publish specific accepted pathways.