What do you guys do with a messy Revit project?

[patricks]

Okay I have just started back working on probably one of our longest running projects our office has had, definitely the longest-running project in Revit and probably the most complicated Revit project we've done so far. It's been several months since I have worked on it (my boss has been doing most of the work on it lately) but now I'm back on it, and I've been assigned to create some new views and do some general clean-up to get it ready for production of construction documents (clean up dimensions, shift walls here and there to get things to line up, clean up wall joins, etc.). The project is a church with a multi-purpose gym/worship space, with a prayer tower on one corner, and then an educational wing adjacent to the MP space, separated by a double-height grand hall space.

Well, my problem is that this project has been going on for so long, and has been through soooooo many revisions that the model is just a total mess, and I'm not totally familiar with everything that has changed over the past few months. It seems like nearly every wall has an edited profile sketch associated with it, or is attached to something else, or runs up multiple stories, etc. etc. Wall sweeps are everywhere, different wall types trying to line up, roofs with differing wall conditions on one side vs. the other side and on and on and on. This thing is about to drive me up the wall because it seems like I can hardly ever get things to join or line up as they should, or it takes me forever to do so. Almost every time I shift or adjust a wall, I almost always get a "cannot keep elements joined" message, and it's usally always this one particular wall join way over on the other side of the building that has nothing to do with the wall I had just moved. I spent several hours this morning trying to fix the multiple roof elements that make up the overall roof, never could get it exactly right, and then later I had to shift an exterior wall so now I'm going to have to fiddle with it all over again.

This file is up to about 35 MB in size. I know some of you may not think that is much, but for us it's huge, as most of our projects are usually 10-20 MB in Revit.

So what do you all do when a project becomes very messy like this? I know it would be quite impractical to start the whole thing over from scratch, but dangit if I don't feel like doing that sometimes. This whole project file has become very frustrating to me, and I don't see it ending any time soon. :(

[bowlingbrad]

I think this could be one of the most interesting threads yet. I know that our first job (and current job) could be exactly the same as yours. I, too, have wondered how to clean a job of uncooperative elements. Hopefully some advice from the 'Revit Elders' will be forthcoming...

[patricks]

yeah, I think some of the "messiness" may have resulted from the fact that this project was started way back in version 6, where some of the newer tools probably weren't available, and certain workarounds had to be done, or the other people who have worked in it didn't know certain "tricks" and may have done other things to try to cheat the system.

This building has a total of 3 floors (including the youth "attic" in the educational wing), yet there are probably 15 to 20 levels set up all in between the ground floor elevation and elevator clear height elevation of about 37 feet. Some of those levels have plan views associated with them and some don't.

There are also reference planes GALORE running everywhere all over the place.

I had posted an earlier thread today about the main roof elements having different thicknesses, even though they are both the same type and have the same slope. At one point the prayer tower was higher than the main roof, but then it was lowered to the same eave height as the main roof to cut costs, which now makes a very wierd condition between the two roofs, which requires another odd-shaped roof element to serve as a "cricket". When I tried to join geometries of the roof elements, it simply would not do it. I got the roofs aligned and had to resort to line work to get rid of the line in between each element.

At one point the stairwells and elevator shaft walls were stud walls, but then were changed to masonry walls, which has been a royal pain trying to get other walls around them to align, and to shift them to get dimensions to an even number (we dimension to centerline of studs on stud walls, but to the face of masonry on masonry walls).

I've only been back on this project 2 days and I'm already hating it. :(

[Mr Spot]

I'm sure most offices end up with a project like this at some point. Typically caused by a large variety of people working on it for short periods usually doing there little bit and not worrying about how it may effect other elements in the model.

I'd begin with unjoining everything to get rid of those annoying element is joined messages. Then getting rid of all unnecessary edit profiles that could easily be creating by attaching to roofs/floors etc. Another pet hate is excess reference planes. Basically the rule in our office is if its not named, its not important and you can feel free to delete it. People who forget to name important reference planes soon learn.

When aligning walls it is always easier to drag the wall end points away from joining walls first then align and rejoin them. This will avoid other walls that you don't want to move coming for a ride.

Excess levels can be frustrating as wall placing walls you'll find it never gets the correct top level as it will always just pick the next one up. So if there is any chance get rid of these.

HTH.

[patricks]

Unjoin everything? How do you do that?

This wasn't really a matter of lots of people working on it. We are a very small office, and only 3 people including myself have ever worked on the project. Over the past few months my boss is the only one who has worked on it, but I think it's just because so many things have been changed and revised as time went along. He may have changed some things and didn't know that other things were affected.

And now likewise I might change something to try to "fix" a problem I see, and it may affect something else that I may not know about, since I am "cold" to the project as it were.

I think my biggest sources of hatred to the project so far have been the roof behavior, and wall join behavior, especially where we will have 3 or 4 different wall types coming together (2 masonry wall types, each with different finish layers, coming together at a corner, and then another stud wall coming in and trying to align the finish face to one of the CMU walls) or where there might be a wall with an edited profile, and trying to get part of that wall to join at a corner to a wall on the lower level, and also have a different part of that wall (the edited part) to join to a corner of a different wall on an upper level.

I don't know about deleting levels. We have floors, walls, and roofs referencing every level (top or bottom constraints, heights, etc), what would happen if I were to delete some? For example, there is a level for each floor, for each roof eave height (several), for each riser in the choir loft area, and on and on.

[tamas]

To clean up messy wall joins, the most important thing is that you have no overlapping walls. Use the Tools->Review Warnings command to check for them.

Another good practice is to make sure that walls have the proper base and top heights (preferebly the same for the joining walls). I have seen pretty complex cases when a 3-5 way join contained walls that were only a few inches apart in height. The difference was usually not necessary and when the walls were reset to the same height and base, the join behaved much better.

Instead of using a complex elevation profile, you may split the wall to simpler pieces that will join better.

Pay attention to wall location lines if you change wall types. Especially if you have walls that are aligned and joined.

In general if you run into weird errors regarding any kind of elements, it is a good practice to delete the offending ones and redraw them anew. Since your project started several versions ago, Revit's policy to preserve behavior of old objects may be causing the odd problems.

Frequently when a bug is fixed or some internal computation changes between versions, it could cause unpredictable changes to old documents if the new behavior is applied. This is why we try to preserve old ways when possible. Recreating the objects refreshes them and hopefully fixes the previous issues.

Mr Spot's advice is spot on. Join Geometry command's behavior is such a case. It changed over the last few versions and unjoin-join refreshes the elements.

Roof computation has also changed recently, so you may try to recreate your roof. (It is enough to copy the sketch curves, delete the old roof, make new one and paste the curves back while editing the sketch.)

I think this is enough for one breath ;-)

Tamas

[ejburrell67787]

Use the Tools->Review Warnings command. Hi Tamas, I hadn't seen that command before - are all the warnings that it lists issues that still haven't been resolved? Could you elaborate abit about this?

(Just tried it and got a very very long list....! :shock: )

Cheers, Elrond

[Shaun v Rooyen]

Patrick. We have had one or two like these in the past. I tell you what, it was worth remodeling them. The one in particular was over 48MB. 5 Levels approx 20 000sqm + 8 months of collective rubbish. Took me 3 days to reconstruct. File down to 29MB + far more info to it. I originally fell 3 days behind, but, 2 months down the line we are definitely seeing the benefit of the re-modeled file!! Fortunately we had an understanding client, or did we just BS him?? can't remember. All that I know is my file is clean.

[patricks]

oh yeah, another problem I was having was with one masonry wall at one of the stairwells, that extended from ground floor all the way up. At one point the ground floor plan's cut plane was set to 2 feet and the wall and door were showing fine, but other things like bathroom vanities weren't showing (cut plane too low). When I moved the cut plane up to 3 feet, that masonry wall lost its cut pattern, and the opening at the door disappeared. It looked like I was looking at a short wall that was below the cut plane, even though the wall extended all the way up. Eventually I just blew the thing away and recreated it.

I may ask my boss about recreating the model. I don't know, though, since I don't totally know the ins and outs of the whole model, so it might take a little longer. He thinks we are getting close to being finished, but I'm not seeing it. I have a feeling this project is going to rely on having tons of enlarged plan details at various corner conditions, etc.

We haven't really made the change to 8 yet. I'm the only one who has loaded it so far, and the only thing I've done in it is my thesis project from when I was in school (large 15-story multi-use building with retail, apartments, parking deck, etc.), and the only thing I've done so far in that is the columns and a few walls and floors. So I might see if the boss will let me recreate this model in 8.

[sbrown]

I find myself deleting portions and rebuilding often. When work is sloppy it needs to be redone. I keep coming back to pretending the revit building is the real building, if I went to a site visit and the walls were all messy, the corner conditions weren't right etc. would I tell them to just paint over it, no, Id tell them to tear it down and build it right. I'm dealing with what I term a "learning project" right now. It has been at the hands of multiple new revit users all who have done things in various ways. I shy away from rebuilding the entire thing because it just sounds crazy to do, however in the long run it may be better, if you are just heading into CD's, your detailing may go much smoother with a rebuild.

[dnilsson]

It's interesting, this problem is not unique to Revit. I used to inherit Autocad files from another source, or pull an old drawing from our archive, and I'd always feel like they were "dirty" and needed constant cleaning up and fixing. Same question usually came up, should I just redraw it or keep fooling with it.

The thing that usually kept me from starting from scratch was thinking about the amount of time it took to get to where I was. But you can always redo work faster than you did it the first time, (as learned in the Autocad days when auto save got set to 2 hours) and as Patrick mentioned, since it was started in 6.0 you may find there were some workarounds that chewed up a lot of time that you can breeze through now. I have a project that started in 5.1 and there are whole days that could have been saved if, for example, legends had been available back then.

Anyway, I think you may have hit the nail on the head in your last post. You're already rebuilding chunks of it. Starting over sounds like a lot of work, but at least you know how much work you'd be dealing with and have an idea how long it would take. If you keep tweaking the existing model, you don't know what you may run into or how long it will take to fix, or if you've found all the problems.

But that's easy for me to say. I don't have to actually do it.

[tamas]

Hi Tamas, I hadn't seen that command before - are all the warnings that it lists issues that still haven't been resolved? Could you elaborate abit about this?

(Just tried it and got a very very long list....! :shock: )

This feature was there for years now, I am surprised you missed it. Maybe we should emphasize it in the documentation.

This command lists all kinds of warnings that you ignored when they first popped up, and Revit thinks it is worth reminding you of. We keep these warnings up to date, so it is always good to look through them once in a while.

A few I remember from closer encounters:

- overlapping walls
- joined elements that no longer overlap
- various room related warnings
- wall sweep warnings about not complete behavior

Plus many more I can not think of right now. Just check your favorite project file. They may provide clues for problems you encounter.

Tamas

[Wes Macaulay]

Often when rebuilding I start with the lowermost wall, remove any sketches (if necessary) and extend it up as far as needed. As everyone has said, simpler is better. Sometimes people have copied objects on top of themselves, so you need to delete the duplicates.

One of the more pertinent things for new Revit users to learn is how to model the building's walls. How to use wall profiles, wall joins and join geometry are all requisites.

[patricks]

Here's an example of what I mean, a section through part of the building. I'm not sure if this section is going to be detailed and used in the final document set, or if this was just to see how part of the building worked in section, but anyways this is just a plain section cut, nothing has been done to it or cleaned up yet.

[Martin P]

I am talking about housing here..... so a different story for larger projects maybe? Very intersting thread to start.....

I always remodel from the design stage model - I rarely ever use the bashed about version as the base for my construction drawings. Things are done in a hurry at this stage and not done "properly" - different wall types, roofs windows etc etc to the ones I want - this is not a flaw with Revit or the users, but just the nature of the way we do things in our office at the design stage of a project. But you will find that notes, detail comps furniture lines etc are usually ok to copy and paste... I usually remodel the walls, roofs and floors by exporting out a plan and tracing it in a new file using all the correctly set up walls floors roofs etc...... This is very quick - especially now with stacked walls, I get foundation plans done. It is cetainly less hassle than trying to get the Revit model to behave while I revise just about everything!

Often at the design stage we use a generic door or window family - but now I place new ones created especially for that project, after the design stage.... I often dont have the windows and doors modelled at the early stages..... Even if it takes 2 days to do this remodelling process, it will be worth it from my point of view as using a messy model causes me at least 2 days of problems, and probably takes about days of life with stress!! I actaully quite like to do this as it seems so much tidier and I am always suprised by how quickly it happens..

I suppose you have to take a guess at how long it will take to re-model and how long the mess will hold you up for. I would also say that if it has gone through several versions of Revit there could be some potential issues with that too. If you think you can remodel within a week I'd just do it. (remeber all your families are probably made too.)

Using other people models in Revit can quite difficult - so many ways to control visibility, linestyles etc - it can really hold you up.

[patricks]

I would re-create the model now if I could. Getting the boss to agree is the biggest issue. Also we have already started detailing and stuff (wall sections, etc.) in this project, well the boss has done most of the detailing so far.... I guess that would just be a matter of copying and pasting the detail components into new sections in the new model.

[MikeJarosz]

This is an important topic, logistically and philosophically ....

I'm sure there will be many suggestions about fixing the data from this community, but this is a good opportunity to discuss some of the philosophy of 3d modeling and BIM.

Typically in 2d, drafters can make an unholy mess of the CAD file and get away with it, because the chaos is invisible on the plots, which are the real product. And face it, you only have to draw a part of the building anyway. You draw the third floor plan, then you draw the fourth floor plan. What comes in between? That's not shown. So awkward connections and transitions aren't found until later in the process, if at all.

In 3d it's different. You draw the plans and everything in between. The 3d model is the product, not the plots. Drawing and resolving everything correctly from the beginning is the key, crucial difference that BIM introduces to the task. This has been called "front loading" the project and it goes against everything we have been taught as architects. The days of projective geometry are over.

In the Freedom Tower we have concrete shear walls of 48", 39" (east west) joining shear walls of 20", 24" and 36" (north south). Each wall transitions to a thinner section as it rises. And not all are centered on the centerline. Drawing these walls in 3d I often found that a wall I had extruded up three stories was bypassing a cross wall by 6" in one place or sometimes overlapping in another, and always at places that did not appear in any of the floor plans. Working these conflicts out required much more time than conventional architectural drafting practice. And the solution didn't show in any of the plans. It is Revit's amazing ability to create sections on the fly, anywhere in the building, that enabled them to be found at all. But I am a senior architect and I was full time on this project. Many a junior architect will skip resolving these issues because they don't show in the drawings. But because the model is incorrect, this data is useless in the larger BIM picture. Will the concrete volume computations be correct? No. And the extra work necessary to reach this point is not fully recognized as yet by many architects. But if this data is to be of any use to the contractor (a fundamental premise of BIM) then it needs to be done now.

The BIM process requires that the architect form a complete mental image of their building from the very beginning. The inescapable conclusion is that one architect must build the model personally, not hand a bunch of red lines to several summer interns to draft it up.

Welcome to the revolution.

[patricks]

The BIM process requires that the architect form a complete mental image of their building from the very beginning. The inescapable conclusion is that one architect must build the model personally, not hand a bunch of red lines to several summer interns to draft it up.


Very, very good point. I have been thinking this ever since I first started using Revit almost exactly one year ago when I came on board at this office. It's also why I'm having the trouble that I'm having, at least part of the reason, since I haven't worked on this project in several months, so I don't have that "mental image" of everything that I usually get when I work on a project model in Revit for awhile. After awhile I will once again form that mental image of this building, but right now I don't have it, or at least not all of it.

I have run across some of those CAD issues as I started trying to model my thesis project from school in Revit (merely as an excercise in Revit, but also because I want to study my thesis project some more, and I think Revit can help). I produced the drawings for that project in AutoCAD, and now as I have the CAD files open and switch back and forth trying to model everything in Revit, I see lots of places where things don't line up, and I'm trying to think back to why I did what I did. I also didn't denote anything in the CAD drawings about the walls except overall wall thicknesses, and so now I'm also trying to think back to what I was thinking when I drew this or that.

[Kroke]

So what do you all do when a project becomes very messy like this? I know it would be quite impractical to start the whole thing over from scratch, but dangit if I don't feel like doing that sometimes. This whole project file has become very frustrating to me, and I don't see it ending any time soon. :(

I hear you man. I have just a home I feel like this about. The guy I did the plan for, it was orginally completed, through CD's and everything, THEN he changes it (I'm talking engineered and already submitted for permits) UGH! Then he changed it DRASTICALLY! I managed to make the changes and update everything, it was somewhat a pain. Then I get called on the jobsite by the framer, seems he's left the foundation the same but changed the entire upper level floor and all the roofs, not to mention ALL of the structural roof elements.

Trying to change it when it's this far is very frustrating, it's taken me a week and a half to catch up on his "in the field changes". As I got about 1/2 way through I thought to myself "I should have just trashed this plan and started from scratch" It would, in my case, have saved me a lot of time.

Oh when will this guy learn to quit changing things when it goes into CDs, let alone after engineering, and above all, NEVER out in the field for such drastic changes...

[sbrown]

I believe this is why there is a new position in the building industry emerging. This is a cut from the latest AEC-ST conference. They need the model built like a building, not like a set of drawings. We as architects need to take the lead on being able to model a building as it would be built or this guy may take some of our business.

There is a new professional title percolating up through the ranks in construction--the "construction modeler." This new breed of construction professional is creating 3D models--with or without input from the architect--specifically for construction purposes. Come explore how these new professionals are using 3D models for constructability analysis, better estimates, sequencing and procurement optimization, and increased data flow to fabrication.

[FK]

So CDs will become CMs, Construction Models... catchy.

[Wes Macaulay]

Drawing these walls in 3d I often found that a wall I had extruded up three stories was bypassing a cross wall by 6" in one place or sometimes overlapping in another, and always at places that did not appear in any of the floor plans. . . Many a junior architect will skip resolving these issues because they don't show in the drawings. But because the model is incorrect, this data is useless in the larger BIM picture. Will the concrete volume computations be correct? No. And the extra work necessary to reach this point is not fully recognized as yet by many architects. But if this data is to be of any use to the contractor (a fundamental premise of BIM) then it needs to be done now.And the challenge then is how you represent these forms on drawings or in some way that builders will know that these pieces are there. Ergo the 3D plot on a sheet or 3D DWF, I guess...

[Scott D Davis]

Well Construction Doucments usually consists of Drawings and Specs. So we would have the Construction Model, and the Specs would still be a separate 'document'. Although we are getting closer with software like E-specs which will allow the model to produce the specs....

It would be nice to have the Architect produce the Model, an exact representation of the building (as Toyota models an exact representation of a car before building). That Model is the Construction Documentation. The contractor takes the model, runs his own schedules, take offs, etc. from it, and even produces a set of specifications based upon the model.

The construction model must contain ALL of the information somehow....

[PeterJ]

This is a fascinating thread. I have a background in small and medium sized projects recently, but am currently working on something, which is not modelled in Revit, that has scope and complexity similar if not greater than Freedom Tower.

In my small work it has never been a problem to abandon a working sketch project to redraw accurately. The beauty of Revit has been that I could switch things in and out in the presence of my clients and work up quick and dirty illustrations of their requirements. However, rather than follow this route I have tended to have a real model and a scratch model - just a duplicate of the real model taken right before a meeting or call for revisions so that I could rough it up as I needed to and then look at what I was left with and bring those options we had agreed on into the main model. This is I suppose an experience not too far from Martin's and similar to Scott Brown's - redrawing broken bits or working with a model one could afford to break and then taking the tiny little bit of extra time required to model correctly.

On the project I am currently working on we have teams of Engineers working on several different rail systems, each with it's own codes and standards, some tunneled some cut and cover. The railways all interface with the campus of buildings in one way or another and we have the building issues to consider, with basements as deep as 25 metres and superstructures about the same height but with floor plates of up to around 12,000 m2 (130,000 square feet). To control this complex group of buildings we are working almost exclusively in 3D and because we used AutoCAD based systems there is some lag in the release of someones finished 3D model to the public domain but it does give us a degree of control that many of the people on the project have never experienced before and, yes, people know where the shear walls are at any point in space as a result the client is achieving very high levels of cost surety and this really proves the value of the three dimensional approach, in whatever software package, but I really saw it's value today.

I had a meeting with some colleagues responsible for a shaft providing ventilation and means of escape to two of the rail systems, the headhouse to the shaft is close to and takes a bearing from a tunnel linking the building I am responsible for to another building and so we have to bring our models together. It turns out that the 2D drawings they have published to us are not based on views of a 3D entity but are 2D drawings and when we got close to the thing it is clear that they have huge co-ordination problems and will not meet their programme targets and from that their cost targets, mainly because they failed to get into 3D and now don't have enough of an understanding of how their structures go together. We sat there rather smugly explaining that we (me the architect, two engineers and the contractor) were all looking at the same 3D model and knew where everything in it was. In essence we are getting close to the construction document model that Scott describes as the engineers and I share a model and will pass it to the contractor to carve up and produce his own drawings, incorporating rebar and pour phasing and the drawings that the engineers and my colleagues are producing will not actually get used on site they simply exist to move us towards the point where the contractor takes control of the model and churns out his own views.

[MikeJarosz]

We sat there rather smugly explaining that we (me the architect, two engineers and the contractor) were all looking at the same 3D model and knew where everything in it was. In essence we are getting close to the construction document model that Scott describes as the engineers and I share a model and will pass it to the contractor to carve up and produce his own drawings, incorporating rebar and pour phasing and the drawings that the engineers and my colleagues are producing will not actually get used on site they simply exist to move us towards the point where the contractor takes control of the model and churns out his own views.

This is the "mental image" I mentioned above. And without the Revit Structural module, which is on it's way!

[hand471037]

Well Construction Doucments usually consists of Drawings and Specs. So we would have the Construction Model, and the Specs would still be a separate 'document'. Although we are getting closer with software like E-specs which will allow the model to produce the specs....

my Boss at this new gig has a very long (and somewhat visionary) history in the CAD world. We've talked about how Specs, with BIM, can be recast, and how/what would a 'prefect' spec be like with today's technology.

What we've arrived at (and this is off topic, so we'll have to start a new thread here in a moment if this continues) is that the 'spec' should really just be information attached to the parts of the Building that contain documentation and the 'work events' that have to happen to make that part a reality. When browsing the Building Model you'd be able to point at anything, call up it's full information from a website, so that you could go as deep as you wanted information-wise and that info would be up-to-date, and it would also contain little illustrations and movies on how that item is typically built/installed/assembled, as well as what other things had to be done (the whole 'work event' thing) in order to support that action (like the CMU would know that you needed a mixer for the mortar)...

Very much wild blue yonder kinda ideas, but man, it sure is cool what BIM starts to allow in the near future...

[patricks]

Yeah some things in Revit still have a ways to go before a model with EVERYTHING is possible, like site and structural tools. Until we can get those to work to produce objects and situations the way they would look in real life, we're still going to have to produce construction documents.

[PeterJ]

The BIM process requires that the architect form a complete mental image of their building from the very beginning. The inescapable conclusion is that one architect must build the model personally, not hand a bunch of red lines to several summer interns to draft it up.
Here the team is too large and the controlling structure too complex to make that work very well. There is a signature architect who has defined the building but has needed a pretty large team to produce the information that describes it. Their work was mostly done in 3D using ADT, though they have a number of seats of Revit, but these were bought long after the project was underway, indeed Revit was released after the project was underway.

The signature team have passed on their work to others, myself included to develop to a production design level. We work with the engineer and the contractors to develop the model and require our suppliers to produce information in 3D to coordinate back into the model - for example all shop drawings for staircases and ventilation systems are in various flavours of AutoCAD based 3D (XSteel, CADduct and so on).

On most large projects it would become difficult for the architect to really understand every issue in the building and so we have to coordinate other people's work but not necessarily have an image of exactly where in space it is. Also, I assume the Freedom Tower has certain similarities with this project in that we are expected to achieve fixity of certain elements of design to allow other disciplines to work at minimal risk of change, so we may not know the exact location of some following detail when the shear walls are fixed.

[patricks]

We work with the engineer and the contractors to develop the model and require our suppliers to produce information in 3D to coordinate back into the model - for example all shop drawings for staircases and ventilation systems are in various flavours of AutoCAD based 3D (XSteel, CADduct and so on).


You mean they will actually do that? I work in Mississippi, and I don't think many suppliers around this area would be willing to do that. :p

My how we have gotten off my topic of a messy Revit model. :mrgreen:

[PeterJ]

You mean they will actually do that? I work in Mississippi, and I don't think many suppliers around this area would be willing to do that. :p
It's an unusual situation I grant you but the project has a value of something in the order of billions of dollars so we have a lot of clout in asking for things like that. Also, though, they are tending to see the value for themselves in terms of clash detection etc as they know they can come on site and not find a stray element from another trade filling their duct space or what have you.

[MikeJarosz]

Here the team is too large and the controlling structure too complex to make that work very well.

I understand your point. It applies to us as well. Nevertheless, the 19th century managerial techniques that the architectural profession around the world employs are rapidly becoming obsolete. This frightens a lot of the coachmen who want to keep their horse and buggy.

It is possible to envision a large building before drawing it. Frank Lloyd Wright did it all the time. His students recall that he never spent time working his designs out on paper. He thought about his design and then dumped it out on paper.... Once.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Revit!

[patricks]

Now we have much bigger problems with this messy project. It's gotten so bad now that I get fatal errors when I try to save to central.

Last Friday I tried to STC and got a fatal error. I was able to save my file locally, so I used my local file to make a new central file. This morning when I opened my local file and reloaded worksets, I got a fatal error again. So I opened the central file, and made a new local file. I made a change, saved to central, boom. Fatal error again.

So I opened the central file again, and again made a new local file (different file name this time), and then I had to make that same change again. I just saved to central and released everything and it seemed to work this time, hopefully it will be okay.

We're trying to get this project out the door tomorrow, I just hope the file holds up till then.

[lev.lipkin]

Please send model and list of issues (in addition to crash) to support.

[patricks]

Please send model and list of issues (in addition to crash) to support.

Do I need to go to the Autodesk website for that?

[sbrown]

go to autodesks website, then click on the subscription center, log in and there is a choice to create support request. Fill that out, then you have to view your support request and there is an add button to add a file. You must zip the file or it won't work and the site gives no indication that the file is actually uploading you just let it go. The only indication I can find is if I place my cursor over the bar at the top of the dialog box my cursor changes to an hour glass. If you aren't on subscription, they'll have to give you another way to upload.

[patricks]

My boss just spoke to someone named Rami at Autodesk support and is uploading our central file and his local file to I think the Buzzsaw site or something like that.

[mmodernc]

Start again.

[patricks]

believe me, I wish we had the time to do that. We're already a week behind getting this project out for pricing (contractor has already been chosen, subs still need to price and bid it). We absolutely must get this project out the door this week.

[patricks]

We have the problem a bit more narrowed down. It seems that local changes that are being saved to the central file work fine. It's when the program tries to download other users' changes from the Central file in order to update the local file that it crashes. For example if I open my local file and hit RW for reload worksets, it crashes. If I open the central file, make a new local file, make changes, and then STC (only updating the central file with my changes), it works fine.

How very odd.

I think we're going to have to resort to starting a blank project and putting things like door and window details and wall types and things of that nature in there, just to get this thing done. As it is, only one person can work in the project at a time. :(

[comhasse]

Unjoin everything? How do you do that?

I'd like to know that too: is there a quicker way to refresh all wall joints than right-click- unjoining each wall end one by one? That would be easily hundreds even in a simple model.

[tomnewsom]

There is a new professional title percolating up through the ranks in construction--the "construction modeler." This new breed of construction professional is creating 3D models--with or without input from the architect--specifically for construction purposes. Come explore how these new professionals are using 3D models for constructability analysis, better estimates, sequencing and procurement optimization, and increased data flow to fabrication.

That's me :)

It makes a massive difference. My immediate boss and myself do the work of a 4-man team, and better.

[clog boy]

I think we're also about to find a new annoyance in BIM's in general: cascading hidden dependencies. And depending on hidden, hard-to-understand dependencies. Most of the time we try to live with them for as long as they 'work' but try not to change anything after that.
Usually I finish a project in a 'hierarchical' way: make sure the main walls are ready before we depend upon them for all other elements.

And keep everything from becoming too complicated before everyone is absolutely sure of what it should do (or look like). I found out the hard way.

[twiceroadsfool]

Its refreshing to read this thread and realize that we are not the only people going through these pains. Im working on a 1.8 mil SF mall that is spread out over 3 models, on a 7 person team. 3 of 4 phases already have permits, and have already been bid, and they have all been completely redesigned no less than 2 times each. Its very tough to maintain the model in that setting, even moreso when 7 people dont necessarily all model the same way... Even though were trying to work on that here in the office. The more ive been able to get even to model the same, the easier these changes have been. Now i dont even flinch when they say "tear half the model down and start again..."

Patrick, we are also having the exaclt same deliema with saving to central. Its only happening on our weaker workstations, so were trying to discern if the computers are running out of memory, or what.

Im going to file a support reqest currently... But im afraid other issues with the model are going to be the scapegoat for this one. :(