I was recently readying Kyle.Bernhardts blog over Here about a well trodden subject of analysis vs. presentation within Revit MEP. The subject dealt with a request for more customization with the presentation of Revit data on sheets, and then Kyles response that such "standards" customization is not the current priority of the development of this product.
Now to a large extent I agree with this response, we shouldn't be reinventing the wheel here. AutoCAD is an awesome tool that does its job quite well. However, we do not want to un-invent the wheel either.
I view Revit as an all inclusive design tool that lets us input data from multiple places, stores it in a central location and then makes that data available for analysis by multiple people. Then after that analysis is complete, the data can be linked to drawings with little or no coordination.
The problem I am seeing a lot is that I am having a hard time getting the latter part done there, and I will explain why.
For our pilot project we did all of our schedules in CAD rather then Revit. Electrically, the panel schedules were (are) useless and they could not be put on sheets. Because of this, we had a massive coordination issue between dynamic circuit organizing of Revit and the manual circuit drafting of AutoCAD. On our regular schedules we found that we could not properly express dynamic data from the BIM model into schedules because of formatting issues with the data, therefore again everything had to be transfered and coordinated with CAD. I hate to use this example of schedules again as I have beaten it to death in other threads, but it is the best example of where presentation shortfalls directly impact work load and undermines the advantages of Revit. I guess this is my point here, that when the presentation issues are too much of an issue, it will force people to retreat back to other programs which in turn totally defeats the purpose of what Revit is supposed to be.
Anyway, in conclusion, yeah I agree that the development team should not be beating their selves over the head to make fully customizable duct and riser symbols, but at the same time the customizable presentation of BIM data is an important part of the needed functions of this product for its users. We need to be able to show the data we want, how we want it and I think this is being pooled in a lot with the stupid nitpicky stuff which, although would be nice to have, isn't really needed.
Sorry if this is a bit rantish/makes no sense. Its the end of a Monday after a long weekend and I may be a little coherent. (anyone who spent the day/night at McCarren knows what I am talking about)