Autodesk University 2005, Revit and ADT

[phyllisr]

Desperately seeking?!? Other CAD Managers who either have completed a migration from ADT to Revit, are considering it for the future or (like me) are in the midst of pilots and evaluation... Our firm is about 140 people with a long AutoCAD history - we have been using ADT since 3.0, currently using ADT 2005. ADT 2006 is sitting in the box for the moment. We are testing Revit 8.1. Please let me know if anyone else is interested in getting together and sharing thoughts. Larger or smaller firms.

Here are a few from my long list once we get through CA for one of our pilots. Not necessarily looking for an answer at this point but am very interested in meeting others thinking about the same things.

Have you established policies about how much AutoCAD you allow your Revit teams to use as a "cheat," specifically detail libraries? How do you enforce it?

How do you manage projects to insure that individual teams use network Shared Parameters rather than creating their own? Specifically to avoid conflicts between teams, particularly when linking projects.

Has anyone linked a project with a consultant using the Revit structural product? Successes and failures to share? This is on our list and we have two firms who are interested in partnering on a project.

Anyone move from ADT or AutoCAD to Revit using style-based plotting? Tips or suggestions welcome. I am testing a few things and may have a less-than-perfect solution but it would be nice to know if someone has a better way.

How did you address naming conventions for families, views, etc.? I re-organized the templates a little and it seems to work but without a long history, I am reluctant to rollout something with problems I cannot anticipate.

Like that...

Thanks to all in advance,
PBR

[Wes Macaulay]

Have you established policies about how much AutoCAD you allow your Revit teams to use as a "cheat," specifically detail libraries? How do you enforce it?I wouldn't call the use of AutoCAD details cheating -- but we often take a DWG into a detail component template and explode it and tweak it. We do this on an as-needed basis.



Has anyone linked a project with a consultant using the Revit structural product? Successes and failures to share? This is on our list and we have two firms who are interested in partnering on a project.
Structural engineers have just got Revit Structure -- the pilot projects are just beginning. We'll post those results as they come in -- nothing to report as yet since these projects are in the earliest stages.



How did you address naming conventions for families, views, etc.? I re-organized the templates a little and it seems to work but without a long history, I am reluctant to rollout something with problems I cannot anticipate.
Family names aren't the problem; it's that you need people who can create them. You will probably have only a handful of people who will delve into making families, and they should agree on a Share Params file and some of the parameters they will be using. The idea with Shared Parameters is that people editing families in project will have to guess less as to what a parameter of a certain name does -- names of parameters will be somewhat standardized across projects.

Store the Revit content from the CD in its own folder; create a duplicate set of folders in parallel for family objects your office creates.

[James.Lupton]

Has anyone linked a project with a consultant using the Revit structural product? Successes and failures to share? This is on our list and we have two firms who are interested in partnering on a project.


We are structural engineers who have been using Revit since V2.5 We have participated in the beta version which looks promising however, when working within an integrated team you need to define what you need from the structural engineers model when incorporated into your own.

If you go Revit Structural it will be a linked model and therefore you have no option to adjust the structure (some people may prefer this)

Autodesk currently do not allow the Revit Structural tools to be added to the Revit building tools and therefore you can't adjust parts of the the Revit Structural model within Revit Building.

We have carried out cross team collaboration with Architects by defining the structure within Revit Building and it works well. The great thing for both the Architect and us is that we only need to model our own bits. Someone has to take the lead and this would usually be the architect which means they collate the models into one overall model.

The major benefit we have found is that we achieve a well coordinated model which we have each checked against each others long before we start producing drawings.

We keep an ongoing log of issues we find as does the Architect and we then carry out a model review where these issues are resolved (generally by telephone conference).

The issues are usually easy to find and quick to resolve.

Revit is a great collaboration tool however we would prefer to see it as one product where we have all the tools loaded if we need to use both Structural and Architectural features.

Try to find a Structural Engineer who has experience in Revit Building

[Rols]

As for cheating, I allow whatever they need to get their first project done. I feel it's more important to keep the project manager's comfort level in check rather than force the issue. They soon realize that drafting in Revit is easier than drafting in ADT. Also, as they import ADT details into Revit, their project becomes littered with legacy ADT styles, layers (categories), etc..

As for the shared parameters, not many users have gotten to that level yet. There are just a few of us creating families, so it's not a big issue yet. I would say that the best defense is a strong offense. Get that company-wide shared parameter file on the server and publish it's where-abouts openly. If you lay out a well-beaten path to it, they will use it.

Hope to see you at AU!