Mike, thanks again for loads of helpful information. I'm hoping you can elaborate a
bit on your comment about LT not being able to "custom-set the linked model views", and how that will be an issue?
When an architect or other trade sends me their model, I only open it to blow out their sheets, details, and schedules. Then I link their model into mine. I can see and host to anything in their model but I can't move their content around or futz with it and they can't mess with mine. Throughout a several month or several year project they can keep sending me new models with walls moved, ceilings adjusted, addenda taken, and I overwrite their previous model on my server with their
current one.
In general, I want my views to match the architects in terms of style and
layout. It's easier for everyone. But architects show lots of content in their drawings like floor finish hatches that I don't want muddying up my own drawing. So if I take my T-101 drawing and
point the View
Template to match the style of their A-101 drawing, I need to be able to override some of the finer details of their A-101 view settings. I turn off their notes, their hatches, their 3 different furniture concept layouts, and when my drawing looks clean and concise I copy that style over to the next ten sheets of floor plans.
Over the course of the next few months the architect will continue to
send me updated models but because I've linked their model into mine I don't have to reinvent heaven and earth each week to make my views look correct.
For
one off's this isn't always a big deal, but one project I did had 11 Revit models for my trade. $2B plasma protein manufacturing facility with each building on campus or divided by a firewall as its own model. All of the architectural,
MEP, specialty lighting, security, and food service models accounted for, our design team had over 90 Revit models cooking at once. I wrote an automated script so that every night at 1am our latest models uploaded with the rest of the consultants', and then at 2am we downloaded every other trades' updated models. That went on for 2-3 years of phased bidding and construction bulletins. Whether I touched our model 4 months ago or 4 days ago if I logged into today to respond to an
RFI I knew I was looking at an updated model. That was exactly what would happen too. A
phase would bid out, be happily on its way for 14 months and then we'd get a phone
call and have 24 hrs notice to get a CB issued.
I'm not sure how this affects the kinds of projects you work on but for me being able to keep all of the linked models shown in my sheets regulated with view
templates can be difference between taking home a lot of profit or having a constant timesuck over the course of the project and end up sitting at my
desk until 3am before a checkpoint set trying to figure out how to get something to
plot correctly.
I could get by without this feature but it really comes down to how busy you are, how much scope you have on the project, and how much your time is worth.
I've stayed on the periphery of this. I find Revit not at all suited to
theatre design. Many of the professional
theatre consultants agree.
Like any tool it can used for good, for ill, or for ignorance. I've found it excellent for performing internal sight
line studies and for better coordinating all of the trades within the
stage house and above the
reflector clouds in the ceiling. That doesn't mean that the sprinkler guys won't show up and start running their pipes however they feel but we will never have a substitute for periodic site visits.
In terms of making the conceptual design of the theater accessible to the client it's awful. I was marking up floor plans for a project recently and the architect kept saying they understood what I was saying about sight lines but each new model that arrived was plagued with the same problems. Took a scale
foam core model to their office and in about 35 minutes they concluded they would need to rework that entire end of the building. They were participating in the process and doing all of their due diligence but all of their due diligence couldn't compensate for not being able to see how their floor plan would look like in 3 dimensions.
I've lost all patience though for rigging and drapery being drawn solely in
CAD. Seems like every project everyone is in Revit except rigging and
curtains. Then of course nobody on the design team sees these drawings until bid documents are issued because either the drawings don't yet exist or because they aren't being distributed. Next thing you know there's a 12'
valance curtain where one was never shown for the last 9 months of weekly coordination meetings and everything has to be redesigned via CB. My former company right now is in the middle of a project as a contractor where the theater consultants didn't model variable
acoustics, rigging, and
curtains. It wasn't until after shop drawings were complete that the sprinkler guys realized they needed another $300K of sprinkler heads and fire protection systems. Nobody communicated to them in any form or fashion that those lines shown in some plan drawings were variable
acoustics that deployed in enough configurations that sometimes most of their sprinkler heads would be obstructed.
With exception to some remodels, we've reached the
point as a construction industry where if your scope isn't in Revit, it doesn't exist. Even my more recent remodel projects are coming in as full Revit projects where the architect deploys a team of Revit monkeys to document the existing conditions in Revit.
