Prefab housing

[daniel.hurtubise70031]

Anybody into prefab housing that uses Revit ? If so, what's impression ?

[DoTheBIM]

Daniel,

We are going through the motions now to see if we can make it work for us. The technology is great, but it is a bit behind when it comes to specialized design such as prefab. What kind of prefab do you do? Depending on how much other departments rely on electronic data coming from Revit it may work for you. For us I see better solutions for creating shop/detail drawings. (I say that with reserve and only mean it to encompass OOTB functionality) And Bills of Materials is a something lacking in Revit...(This is a big one for us.)... but that's not one of Revit's goals I believe. Once we would learn the program and it's inner workings, I can see the benefits maybe coming in balance with the other programs that offer better solutions "currently"... but I won't know that until we get going. The wheels kind of turn slow around here and it takes a long time to make decisions. Ask me in another 6 months to another year... and I'll probably know a great deal more.

[lev.lipkin]

If Revit Schedules or ODBC Export are not there for your needs in 8.0, please consider use of 8.0 API which allows full access to model elements, their properties, and geometry.

It will be important for Factory to know the desired changes to Schedules.
Thanks.

[DoTheBIM]

We have every intention of using the API if we go forward with this... but it seems that it will be a bit painful for myself to learn... as I have now programming education (just what I've learned with AutoLISP and Microstation BASIC, I have no experience with 'objects' in the sense of programming, but our IT guy does. So I think we can get some things accomplished with the API through that channel. But as life has shown me, it is quicker to get something done if I do it myself even if I need to learn something new. It will be slow to get where we'd like to go, I'm afraid. See my post on wall shedules for the steps involved in making Revit fit what we do as a panelized home builder... http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?p=141902#post141902

For schedules to work with a BOM output we "currently" need. The nested items need to be shown as seperate line items instead of extra columns with that capability to total all items of the same type shown at the end of the line item along with other parameters such as an item number, description, units, ship phase, and a section code to name a few. I know we can add these parameters to the families but last I checked we were unable to show them in a schedule for the nested items.

Edited: add link back to wall schedule example.

[lev.lipkin]

Are you using 8.0? Nested families can be scheduled on separate rows starting in 8.0 by using the new “shared family” functionality.

[DoTheBIM]

Really? I haven't tried it in 8.0...I'd like to evaluate this functionality, but my 8.0 demo has run out. Anybody have a shared parameter family that is nested? I'd like to see one that has different types of families in it so I can see how things are scheduled and what not.