Tracking Model Changes

[gschramm]

What are the different ways to track changes in models in Revit, Autocad, and/or Navisworks? When receiving RFIs/ASIs it can be difficult to determine where and what changes have been made in the models unless you, yourself, are doing the modeling. I am sure this is a common issue and any information would be great.

[RobertB]

If you are receiving RFI/ASIs then you ought to have documentation along with the model change. Revision clouds at the very least.

[Craig_L]

You can have revit output to an excel spreadsheet which will show changes by element ID number.

[gschramm]

Thanks. These are worth looking into. We just need some way to prove that the changes have been applied to the model. This should work or at least get us going in the right direction.

Thanks again

[Craig_L]

You will know they are done as when you do the next co-ordination review you will see that the list is reduced. What we have done in the past is to re-do the excel output after doing our co-ordination check with the 2 linked models and updating changes. You will see that all of the items which are now correct have been removed from your list, and only those outstanding items remain. It's wise to have architect (or sub consultant you are working with) tag their elements or any elements they may require to move with a description "Architect to review" or something similar. This can then be applied to a filter and you can clearly see those items which have moved when you isolate them.

[intocad]

Constructware by Autodesk has a way to export the collisions from Navisworks and then have them assigned to the responsible party to fix the conflict etc. This was shared via a server that all members could access to see what they changes they had and if others have made their changes etc.
Another way I have seen it done is by saving out the model to a dated nwd, that way there would be a comparison point of reference. But like someone else mentioned is that you should also start to see your collision count to drop each time you have a meeting. Navis has a way to create a pretty decent clash report, but that was where they stopped and left it up to us to manage those changes as far who is supposed to do them and determine if they were done or not. On large projects it can quickly become overwhelming. Its not fun when you run your clash detection and your hits start racking up into the 400+ results!!! ha ha.
Hope that helps.

[m20roxxers]

Append 2 nwc's from each reach revision and use the compare tool. Design review compare tool also works well as long as two conditions are met.

The model doesn't move, the views don't move. Hence why I normally export views rather then sheets.
As said before the compare API tool works well, unless the models are quite large then the exports are generally alot more then systems are designed for. ie. excell, html.