Revit Genome Project

[ThinkRevit]

Welcome to the Revit Genome Project. The goal is to develop consistent Revit data for the various building product industries.

We are currently looking for volunteers to use and check the following files.

RevitKeynotes_Imperial_2004.txt
http://www.erickoehne.com/RevitGenom...erial_2004.zip

OmniClassTaxonomy.txt
http://www.erickoehne.com/RevitGenom...ssTaxonomy.zip

[kafka]

Hello,

can you give a bit more insights what is this about? Who is sponsoring? What are the purpose and goals? What kind of contribution are you looking at? What will be the actual implementation of this project and how will be used in design practice?

Best

[ThinkRevit]

Kafka,

With the advent of Add-ins for specifications and cost estimating, there is now the opportunity to add Values to Parameters for organizing literally every Family in any given Project. The problem is Revit currently ships with limited versions of this data via the two files listed.

1. OmniClassTaxonomy.txt
2. RevitKeynotes_Imperial.txt

Hence, the goal of this Project is to provide Users and Developers access to the entire database so they may reap the full benefits of Add-ins as they pertain to specifications and cost estimating.

Another missing part of the equation is Shared Parameters that tie Building Product Manufacturing industries together. Thus, we become the keepers for Shared Parameters used by the entire BPM industry. The trick here is getting everyone in the AEC industry that creates controlled content involved, each saving his or her unique Params back to the various lists.

We could eventually host these files on our own web site. Other features of the web site may include a grading portal for content that far exceeds current Seek standards. We could also provide tutorials on how to best Parameterize Families. A single source site for designers interested in pushing Revit to its Parametric limits....

This effort would be on an ongoing volunteer basis.

[ThinkRevit]

I am optimistic about the number of visitors to this thread, but discouraged by the response. All questions and comments are welcome. I need your input. If you are not an AUGI member, feel free to join as it only takes a minute. If you feel the information contained in this thread needs moved to a more public forum, speak up.

[Avatart]

ThinkRevit,

There seem to be a number of parallel projects on-going right now to "take ownership" of parameters in Revit and occassionally other BIM platforms also. The problem here is that there is no way of knowing the equirements of all Revit users, and if you did, the Shared Params file would be too massive to deal with.

Would it not be better to create a rule set that can be applied to create parameters in a consistent way, so we are always comparing apples with apples in our schedules?

I have been doing some work within my company (Arup) and with the UK based Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers (CIBSE) on this topic. I would be happy to share what we have come up with, if the rules work for us, they should be applicable to all.

One other snag that we have hit in this work is the different requirements for the evolving work stages of a project. At the early design stages parameters are required to perform different tasks than at Tender, Construction and Facilities Management stages. If anyone has any good advice on this, that would be gold dust!

Good luck in what you are attempting to do.

[Alex Page]

You probmay want to talk with the ANZRS people, they have already done a lot of work in these areas and research http://www.anzrs.org/blog/

[ThinkRevit]

I would love to see strategies for Sharing Params and any rules that may apply. My thought is that we provide links back to the various lists that are currently available for public download (see links below).

http://www.infocomm.org/cps/rde/xbcr...Parameters.txt

http://api.ning.com/files/iAZXC-iiV7...metersList.txt


Having said that members of the Genome Project, would keep a minimum list of Params extracted from these other sources as well as any that we may come up as a means of supplementing Autodesk Seek’ Master List. We could vote in new Params based on research and data collection. I wonder if Shared Params can have copyrights. If so, we may need permission to add other entities Params to the Master Supplement.

For example, here are a few that do not appear on the Master List:

PARAM___33aa7dad-8700-4068-bd75-424f2ddaddd8___Listings and Certifications___TEXT___5___1
PARAM___92d9417f-9a5c-46e5-ac92-0dfa3480de9c___Options and Accessories___TEXT___5___1
PARAM___5298a257-1b3b-4469-a9af-373e3ebaadfa___Revision Date___TEXT___1___1

[kafka]

Hey Guys,

I'm losing you honestly.
Could you give a practical example of what is causing issues and how more standardization can help?

I mean over-regulating it is not always a good thing. Having standards it is different to be able to use them. As far as ThinkRevit is concerned I guess his/her idea is more about a shared platform to link standards? If I understood correctly..hence a practical example would help me to understand it better!

It seems an interesting discussion!

[msiever.265314]

ThinkRevit,

I received your email regarding incorporating your keynotes in the ARCxl.com library of completed Revit details. It would obviously contribute towards making this particular set of Keynotes an accepted standard due to the thousands of Revit users already downloading our details and components. We could fairly easily and quickly add the Keynotes to our components and upload them for retrieval by Revit users.

However, updating our 40,000 Revit completed construction details would not be quick or easy. Just uploading all to our cloud server takes nearly a month with the modest upload speed from our office. The other concern is that the already included annotation tags have useful hyperlinks to Building Product Manufacturers that support our efforts. Keynotes do not support hyperlinks.

Another concern I have has to do with the standard used to generate the MasterFormat number and description included in the Keynotes.txt file. If they adhere to the accepted CSI MasterFormat conventions as ours do - that's great, but there will be some issues related the use of Master Spec which does not adhere exactly to the CSI standard.

I'll save other comments for another post.

[chodosh]

Real-world example:

I received a model from an associate architect. It was a Revit model, same version, same project. We were both working on the same floor. I ran a schedule of their Rooms.

Nowhere in the Room Schedule could I create a comprehensive listing of the Room Data using the same Parameters.

It was a conflict of two design firms with their own ideas about room classifications.

Which is all well and good, except the things that were tripping us up were semantics. We were both saying almost exactly the same things. Example: West Wall Finish; Wall Finish - West Wall.

And, after all, we were working for the same client, right?

So, each of us had created shared parameters to manage additional information we wished to show in our drawings and schedule.

And, neither team had used one single default parameter in Revit for the Rooms.

What this mean was:

> No comprehensive room schedule.
> No comprehensive finish schedule.
> No color plan by function, required area, exemplar room ID, etc.

If we could have each followed a standard classification system, even if we had interpreted our own values or attributes into those fields? We would have been better off.

Lesson learned.

There is a fine line between over-standardizing things and creating standardized formal languages that help us facilitate information exchange. We can do the latter if we do it the right way. Onward and upward, folks.