Issues with groups

[damon.sidel]

We are using groups (yes, we know they are problematic, but they really help, especially on high rise residential projects). The most problematic use is for the unit types. We create our unit layouts, group them and name them by the unit type name.

1. The first issue is with corrupt wall join data errors. We often get this error when a wall in a group (call it Wall G) is joining with a wall outside of that group (Wall O). Wall O seems always to have a profile and is the one that gets corrupted.

2. The second issue is with worksets. Person A edits Wall O, thus borrowing it from the workset. Person B edits a group with walls that join with Wall O. When Person B clicks Finish Group they get an error that they can't finish until Person A relinquishes Wall O. But they can't they finish, so they're stuck in a loop. They end up having to cancel the group, lose their work, reload, and redo their work in the group.

Has anybody encountered either of these problems? If so, have you found a solution by which people don't lose their work?

[cr_gixxer]

not sure about your workset issue, but wall joins in groups seems to be the most problematic in general.

What I have found is that walls should not be joining outside the group or even to levels. You want to have the height unconnected with a specified height. This will help when copying groups to other levels.

I know it sucks for readability, but yes sometimes we disallow joins for groups to work properly. (You could always callout the join and sketch over the detail to properly show the construction.)

When I use groups for a unit type, it's just the interior walls and counters, shelves, furniture, etc... The shell of the building is separate, and is almost always never a group, so my wall joins here are usually ok, and haven't caused too much of an issue.

I've had to take over a model where the exterior walls were built and grouped by floor, and it was a disaster to work with. I ended up having to blow those groups apart, and rebuild the shell with walls that didn't span only one floor.

doesn't really answer your question though.....

[MikeJarosz]

I've had to take over a model where the exterior walls were built and grouped by floor, and it was a disaster to work with. I ended up having to blow those groups apart, and rebuild the shell with walls that didn't span only one floor.

doesn't really answer your question though.....

Interestingly, in a lecture at the NYC Revit User Group a while back, Scott Wood, director of virtual construction at Tishman Construction, complained about receiving models from architects that had multi-story components. He claimed that they don't build them that way and the first thing he does is break them apart. Once components represent actual construction parts, he assigns them their critical path event number. He ran a fantastic video that uses the CPM timeline to make building components appear on screen according to their event time. The building built itself in real time on the screen as we watched.

[Overconstrained]

Interestingly, in a lecture at the NYC Revit User Group a while back, Scott Wood, director of virtual construction at Tishman Construction, complained about receiving models from architects that had multi-story components. He claimed that they don't build them that way and the first thing he does is break them apart. Once components represent actual construction parts, he assigns them their critical path event number. He ran a fantastic video that uses the CPM timeline to make building components appear on screen according to their event time. The building built itself in real time on the screen as we watched.

It's risky to build a multi-storey model like that (from a drafting viewpoint) though as you could have misalignments all over the place if you're not careful? Easy for the construction guy to do that as he's only interested in programming (by the looks of it), and doesn't necessarily need the model accuracy to be 100%.