Revit Model file size

[emnight87]

I am making a revit model for an entire campus with 16 buildings on it. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to organize this so that everything can be printed and scheduled from one model, but the file size can be kept to a manageable level? Would it be best to make multiple files and link into one master, or can I make each building a different workset? Any thoughts or suggestions would be helpful.

[JonTheBIMGuy]

I would probably only have 1 building per model, and then one Site model. Then you can link them all into on the site model. So you would have 17 different models. That way the file size will be small enough to work off of. It also depends on how detailed your models are going to be. Have you gotten into Level Of Detail yet?

[emnight87]

The problem I'm having with this is with some of my schedules. I've made keyed notes as Generic Annotations and I cannot schedule those from a linked model. Any way around this, or do I need to re-note everything in the master file?

[Mike L Sealander]

In general, I would place annotations in the file from which you will be printing. So, if you have some deliverables that show campus-wide information, annotate in a "campus" file that links all 16 of your building files. We created Revit files for an entire campus about the same size, and actually have three files per building: a structure, an envelope and interior. We have a campus file that loads the structure and envelope files, but not the interior files. The interior files are the files we use when we are doing renovations to buildings.

[jsteinhauer]

You can annotate your individual models, and use 'By Linked View' to show the annotation in your printing model. The problem you might have is with your view naming & sheet numbering. You might need to include a building indicator into these views.

Best of luck,
Jeff S.

[KoryCox]

The way I've been keynoting or tagging linked elements is by doing a quick mock elevation in the linked file using the same keynote text file as the main model. I then reload the link and can keynote in the main file. There is a little management with things like wall types to make sure that they are the same between files, but once you figure it out in the main model you can just copy all of those wall types (preferably with specific naming conventions) into each of your linked files and then you change all of the wall types to the correct one to match the main model (careful with wall location lines here so you don't end up accidentally shifting walls!)

Also, I would create a model for each building and link all of them into the site. Depending on the size of each building you may want to break each building into multiple linked files as suggested earlier in this thread. Try not to do too much in the way of annotating in the campus model. Try to use it just for site work. If you are trying to note things three layers deep for construction documents it will give you headaches. To avoid this do CD's in each building model and not in the campus model.

To help keep file sizes down regularly Purge Unused, and Compact Central File when SWC in each of the files. There are myriad other ways to help increase model performance which you can find throughout these forums if things start to get unmanageable.

Best of luck.