Project with 3 Buildings... Consistent Settings?

[saeborne]

Hi all,

We're about to start a campus project with three buildings, totally approx. 750,000 SF. There is going to be some base building scope, but the majority of the work will be interiors oriented. My first assumption is to put each of the three buildings within its own revit file.

Here's my question... How can I maintain consistency across all three RVT files? Here are several areas of concern:

Materials - If someone updates Wood WD-1 settings in project A, project B and C need to be updated as well.
Work Notes
Legend Views
Component Families!!! - This one is a biggie... If someone updates a light fixture, for example, is there a way to maintain consistency across all three projects?


Here's a potential solution that I was considering. Would appreciate any feed back... So I have Projects A, B, and C. I could make project D called a "Standards" file. Any changes to occur in the standards first, then Transferred into Projects A, B, and C respectively.

This may work for Components / Materials, but I'm not sure this will work for legends / sheet notes.

Would greatly appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance.

Bryan

[twiceroadsfool]

For content like Walls/Families/Materials, i used Model Groups to distribute them across the linked files, similar to what youre describing with the Project D. It works, but the onus is on you to make sure you DO get the Group/Standards reloaded when someone makes a change. It gets aprticularly annying when someone does something minor like change a hatch pattern, LOL...

Work notes / Legend views... For me, this would depend on how the drawings are getting put together. Is it one set of drawings or three? If its one, i would only have the notes in the "Documentation" model. That, or you can keep Saving to File the views (not legends though... only drafting views) and then reimporting them.

If you really want to give yourself a headache for the sake of keeping drawings allighned across projects: Put the notes in a Floor Plan or callout from a previous phase, in one project. Then in the others, do the same thing (sans notes) and link the views with By Linked View, so the notes show up... Then you only have to edit/reload one file...

There isnt a good answer for keynotes, AFAIK...

[roycer]

I would create three central files of pure modeling and one central of site/schedules and documentation. Even if the project scope is mostly interiors, adding site relationships (rather than three models in space) on the front end give you a more intelligent model in the long run .

[saeborne]

Thanks for the responses. Much appreciated. A few follow up questions...

Arron, regarding this model group... let's call it the "Seed Group," for lack of a better name. So in project A, I update Wall Type 1, so that it has wider studs for example. Then I copy and paste the seed group from Project A to Project B. Do all of the Type 1 Walls in Project B update according to the changes? Or does Project B create a new wall type called Type 1(1) or something silly like that?

What if I update the material properties of the GWB? Let's say I change the surface pattern? Will the seed group over-right material properties also?

What about new types to existing families? So many questions!



Roycer, I'm concerned with breaking the project into Modeling / Annotation models. Often, the process of annotation will directly affect the model. For example, let's say I'm tagging walls, only to discover that a given wall is Type 1, when it should be Type 2. It would be an enormous PITA to have to go back to the Modeling file to change the wall and reload, for each and every minor change.

Or lets say I'm dimensioning a partition lay out. The dimensions lead me to shift walls by one or two inches. Again, I would have to go back to the original model and reload. I guarantee that my project team would kill me, if we proceeded in this manner.

That said, I genuinely appreciate your input.

Cheers,

BC

[twiceroadsfool]

Im going to answer your concerns in reverse order:

First: You cant break the project up in to a "Model" and an "annotation" model. I mean, you CAN, but understand that youll still have to tag everything in the MODEL Model, and then use By Linked View in the Annotation model. IE: There are very few types of items you can tag across Linked Files... Namely Rooms. You cant tag doors, walls, windows, etc. You can dimension, but its not as intuitive, and if anything disrupts the dimension reference at all, it will have a tendancy to delete the dimension. Also be leary of having files reverse linked, when you dimension. It seems silly, but it happened to me once:

In File A, Link in File B. Then in File B, link in File A for reference. File A has the grids, and i didnt copy monitor them. I dimensioned them in File B, then used By Linked View in File A, where the drawings were. The NESTED link of File A doesnt show, so the dims are gone. So you have to copy monitor the grids, then use by linked view of FIle B which shows the Copied grids, and shut off the grids in File A, or you get no dims, lol...

Break it up by geography, use By Linked View, and have all the Sheets in one "section" of the project (one of the models.)

Second: I wouldnt Copy and Paste the Group, although it should probably work fine. I save the group out to an independant File, then Load File as group. When i have done it, it prompts you to Overwrite what information is different.

Regarding wall definitions, material properties (fill patterns, colors, etc), it updated them, instead of making a duplicate. It worked wonderfully. So long as no one messed with the names of the types in question, etc. For reasons like this, i employ a VERY regimented naming strategy for everything.

FAMILIES- I dont recall what it did, but im fairly certain it updated them as well, but i very well may be wrong about this one. But, in hind sight it doesnt matter. If you updated the family, you should have saved it, just reload it. (But i am ALMOST sure i did it through the groups as well).

Where there WAS a flaw with this, was somewhere in the Mix with the Model Groups, the Stacked Walls, and the Basic walls, it would occasionally do something strange: You would have two walls in the project, with IDENTICAL names (it didnt append a 2 on the end or anything), but they would be different. It wasnt a reproducable problem though, although i have screen shots of it at home.

But yes, surface patterns, materials, wall types, floor types, etc, all update when you use groups to distribute content.

[saeborne]

Thanks Arron, Very insightful.

I think moving the groups around is a winner.

If our sheet notes are set up so that the comments are type based, perhaps those will be easy enough to move around.

The danger is if two people update the same note family on different projects, then they would over-write each other on the merge.




So, Thanks for clarifying the annotation on linked files. It still seems better to me to keep each of the three buildings as individual files... But it sounds like it is necessary to seperate anyway, so perhaps the issue is moot.

[twiceroadsfool]

Is this one large set of drawings or three different sets of drawings?