First Time keynote question

[graphite]

My first time keynoting so very basic question. If we are going to have two thickness of gypsum board used within our project will we need to create two separate revit materials in order to embed distinct keynote information into each materials identity data. ie. 1/2" Gypsum board having keynote of 09 29 00.C1 and 5/8" gypsum board having 09 29 00.D1? If we do need to create a new material for each thickness doesnt this make the material library extremely large?

If I am off track here point me in the direction that you and your firm have tackled keynoting and its workflow.

thanks.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Nope. You are on track.
Each unique material can have only one keynote value assigned to it but the same keynote can be applied to multiple materials. This is where you need to decide how granular you want/need to be with your keynoting.
You might to consider where you might be keynoting. The gypsum board may not need to be keynoted directly from the model on wall sections at 1:50 but a 1:5 detail might want that level of granularity. In this case you could assign the 'Gypsum Board' keynote to the Gypsum board material used in the wall assembly and the variation in thickness would be handled by the wall definition. Detail components used at 1:50 would need to be unique for each thickness of gypsum board anyway so maybe that is where the keynote granularity might want to reside.
No absolute rights or wrongs just different approaches with various benefits and implications to consider.

[graphite]

Thanks Dimitri, in terms of organizing our material library is that something we would need to do on the server side of things so that every time someone opens up a project the material library is already loaded with the correct materials and included keynotes? ie. multiple gypsum board width instead of the OOTB revit gyspum board? Or could we simply start a new project, organize and keynote the material library and then load this as our default material library somehow?

Also, what type of approaches have been taken in terms of organizing the material library. Should we follow a masterformat organization? I have looked around on the forums and there are not too many threads covering material library organization and their relationship to keynotes. Thanks in advance.

[pfaudler]

Masterformat is the way to go. Please see link below. And as Dimitri said material definition should not include thickness in it. Thickness is dim'ed in detail and defined by wall construciton.

http://www.revitforum.org/sharing-content-common-rfo-style-guide/821-naming-convention-materials.html

[graphite]

when you say the material definition what do you mean? I know the thickness is dimensioned in the details but when you create a new material such as gypsum board Revit provides keynotes which allow you to specify the thickness in the keynote number. hence the .C1 suffix

[gtarch]

We are just rolling into keynotes as well, finally.

One thing to keep in mind is Element Keynotes vs. Material Keynotes. You don't need an expansive material library if you rely mostly on element keynotes, which are referred from the families types, not the materials.

We are mostly using element keynotes -- most of the the time -- at this point.

[mthurnauer]

The keynote file that ships with the program are all assigned to detail components. If you look at the out of the box library, you will see in detail components>09 finishes>something about gypsum. In the component family, each type is assigned a keynote to correspond to each thickness.

[hworrell]

We went through the process about 6 months ago of cleaning up our materials in our template file and in a lot of our components (the components is a never ending job of getting cleaned up). I got tired of not understanding how Autodesk decided to name materials - so we made our own attempt at naming things in a way that newcomers would understand the system without too many instructions. We have used the thicknesses on our end...actually didn't give much thought to doing it any other way.

Yesterday we just started our first test project using keynotes, however...so now we get to test everything out!

O...and if the question comes up. We will have the OOTB materials pop in as people load families from other sources...but those materials are at the bottom of the list instead of the top...so most users will use 'our' materials first.

http://screencast.com/t/3VDOJtKj

(I was having a hard time uploading the file...so see the website above for a portion of our list)

-HeatherWorrell
RATIO Architects

[Limbatus]

Can somebody explain the difference to me between Material Keynotes and Material Tags? What are the advantages and disadvantages?