When to Use Wall Sweeps

[Nicole B.]

I'm coming back to Revit after a long absence and I have just come across wall sweeps for the first time.

A user wanted help modifying how they were cleaning up in plan, and having no experience with them, my solution was to hide them in the floorplan.

Can someone please provide an explanation of when wall sweeps should be used?

Our firm typically does HUGE institutional projects and I always have to be concerned about users over modeling things. For example, I don't necessarily want to encourage modeling of all the wall protection in a hospital....

Thanks!

[Scott Womack]

A user wanted help modifying how they were cleaning up in plan, and having no experience with them, my solution was to hide them in the floorplan. Can someone please provide an explanation of when wall sweeps should be used?

This is a bit of a "loaded" question....
As a practicing Project Manager and 6 year user in production, I can only provide my humble opinion (and I'm sure there will be plenty to disagree with me).
The answer is "What do you want to show in the end?" I use wall sweeps to show/model soldier courses of brick, stone bands in a brick wall, Stone window sills, and most other projecting or recessed items in a wall on a building. If you'll need to have the information appear correctly in more than one type of view, say elevations and sections, then model it. Sweeps and reveals are EXTREMELY useful tools. As for their appearing on floor plans, if they are low in the wall (below the cut plane) they should appear, since they really wold in the real world.

Our firm typically does HUGE institutional projects and I always have to be concerned about users over modeling things. For example, I don't necessarily want to encourage modeling of all the wall protection in a hospital....

Depending upon the individual project needs, I might have to disagree with this. IF you have any interior elevations, then you need to see these corner guards. A 3D family, if made intelligently, does not impact performance in 2D as much as model lines drawn in the plan do.

We work on very large collegiate buildings, from student unions to mid/highrise dorms, to recreation buildings and science/lab buildings and some hospital work. If you want to be able to provide a count of the items or schedule the types, or possibly even colors, then yes model them. If the Revit model will be exported to Navisworks for a Construction Manager to use, then yes model them. If it is a negoiated project with an individual contractor, then a general note might suffice. This is a project specific requirement.

[greg.mcdowell]

TA 3D family, if made intelligently, does not impact performance in 2D as much as model lines drawn in the plan do.

This is counterintuitive to me... can you explain more fully? Thanks

[Scott Womack]

This is counterintuitive to me... can you explain more fully? Thanks

A set of model lines in Revit has to store an x,y,z, value for each end of each line, its line style etc. Then for every view in the project in which it can be seen both ends of that line need to be "calculated" for how much of the line might be visible. An intelligently made 3D family, has its definition stored, then parametric changes for each type, stored only once. Then Revit stores the x,y,z, data for its insertion point is stored. Then that point, plus its bounding box are calculated for each view. The Bounding box, and the sub-object data get retrieved each time a calculation has to be performed.

I know this can run counter intuitive. It did for me originally, until it was explained to me, and then proven to me. Start a clean project, with no template, then draw a box with model lines. Then start another clean project and insert a model family of a simple cube (not a mass). Save each and look closely at file sizes.

[greg.mcdowell]

That makes sense... sort of like how a block in AutoCAD is cheaper than the same block in lines, arcs, circles.