Large Project Setup

[sfraney]

Hi Folks,

I'm getting ready to set up a rather large, semi-redundant townhome project and wanted to get some feedback from everyone to help me set it up correctly.

The project consists of approx. 50-60 townhomes on an urban city block. These homes will be attached by party walls. Each unit will be approx 1500 -2000 s.f. I plan to have about 4-8 different units arranged in different combinations.

I have alot of experience setting up projects for 2 or 3 townhomes connected to each other but beyond this I'm thinking I may require a different approach. I have some ideas in my head on how to handle this project but I'd like to first hear from some people who do these kind of projects on a regular basis.

I've been an avit Revit user for about 5 years now so I am open to advanced concepts.

Any help or guidance would be great.

[ehw]

I'm working on a project with 15 townhomes. It's about the limit that my computer can comfortably handle. I guess my best suggestion would be to find ways to split them up in groups of 5-10 and possibly do seperate projects. I created one, then copied mine down the grid and made changes and setbacks where it called for it.

[sfraney]

Thanks for the post.

I'm thinking several linked revit files are going to be neccessary for this. The client wants to see what the entire street elevation, from corner to corner, will look like. I can't think of any shortcuts other than created jpeg "paper dolls" to insert as place holder elevations rather than showing the actual Revit model elevations. I'd rather show the real deal and not go with the paper doll jpegs.

One good thing is that I do not need worksets due to the fact that I will be doing all the work myself. I just need to come up with a way to handle the following:



1. Need to minimize time spent, I need to develop an approach where I can effectively work on each of the 4-8 units indivdually and have every instance constantly update itself on the city block. My thought here is to work on these 4-8 townhomes in separate Revit files than link them to the main project file which would have all 50-60 units. This file would then have all my elevation sheets and overall cluster drawings.

2. Inserting link revited files, is there a trick? I've never needed to do this before, anyone have some tips and/or tricks on this one? I know the mechanics with linking the actaul revit files but haven't done anything regardiing proper insert placement.

Anyone have additional thoughts on this?

[Chris DiSunno]

How about making a "Big Momma" File which would have the building exterior and party-wall etc. in it. Then linking in all the interior info for each unit on an as needed basis (i.e. only one of each type). You could then create a dummy volume for each unit type to keep the main file small by exchanging the interior info.

Chris

[jeff.95551]

I'm in the middle of a 'large' apartment project that seems to be similar to what you've described. I'm doing the work on a fast workstation laptop, and I've left everything in one file (which is creeping up on 80mb). I toyed with linking everything in, but since I started the project in R8.1, the fact that things wouldn't schedule was a killer. I've set up groups for each unit type (there are 23, 210 total units), which include only interior walls, doors, fixtures, etc. It seems to work well for mirroring & rotating, as well. I've also experimented with creating families to help schedule all of this, but the default R9 Room works as well as the beginner families I started with. I definitely concur with the advice to keep the exterior walls in one file- working this way on the elevation has been a real time-saver. I like not having to switch to another file to perform edits, and then refresh the links.
I don't have much experience with linking, but at this point I'm completely happy with the performance of my one huge file...

[paul.114746]

I am working on a housing estate with 200 homes using 9 different floor plans (types).

I have approached the project this way:

1. Each home "type" I document in it's own Revit file. I do complete documentation for that home within the file.
2. Each home is then linked into a total site plan and arranged on each land parcel.
3. From the site plan, I cut street elevations, shadow diagrams etc.

I have found that using this approach in Revit 9 it is important to setup each of the house types Revit plan using the following:

1. I have a "site profile plan" in each house type. This is basically a grey toned filled region locked to the outside perimeter of the house plan. In this view I turn off all 3D information, and show just the filled region.
2. Back in the site plan Revit file I set the view properties for each of my linked house plans to be controlled by "linked view" which is my "site profile plan".

The reason for this is that Revit becomes very slow when using 3D information from linked files. By using the linked view from each building that has very simple 2D information, I can place each building type very quickly, without Revit having to calculate the 3D information too.

If possible, BEFORE placing your house plans on the site plan, cut the elevation views that you may need. This will save you a lot of waiting. If you cut them when the linked files are in place, you will be waiting for Revit to calculate the 3D part of each house type instance....

Once you have the simple "outline" site plan setup, you can then create a plan view that shows the linked building's floor plans etc...

Hope this helps!

Paul

[ejburrell67787]

Hi Paul,

Your method of bringing in the links files sounds very productive.

Can you share one of your street elevations with us? (and 3d views?) I'm curious to see how house junctions come together in your site file and party walls too.

Cheers, Elrond

[paul.114746]

I have attached some PDF views of this site. It is still a work in progress.

I do not have many attached buildings, so at this stage I have not examined this impact where it does occur in terms of modelling. However, I believe that I will re-model these buildings that are attached so that only one of the buildings holds the party wall. The roof shell can then be modelled for each building so that the roof planes will abut each other. I will keep you up to date if you are interested.

One further point, it is really important to upgrade to the Version 9 of revit that fixed the slow file linking. I have been struggling with this for the past 2 days, and have installed the latest build. The linked files are now very fast to work with!
Thanks

Paul

[ejburrell67787]

Thanks Paul, yes be good to see how you go later on in the project. Probably not such as issue with party walls in your situation - over here in the UK there are very few detached houses as you show!! More space in OZ! ;)

[aries215]

Wow!! This thread is right up my alley. I think that the way that you have your projrct set up so far will be very effective. Since most of the project replicates everything should work efficently. Still here is what I am doing on my project. We may be able to help each other.

I am also at the beginning of a large project with mulitple buiding. My project consists of 16 story condo with adjacent activity/ visitor buildings. For the first phase of the project I have sort of decided to make four separate projects (tower, small addition, maintenece, and site). All of these models are intended to be link into the tower project which is the largest to generate sheets. Since this is a shared project I will be utilizing a central file.

Correct me if I am wrong but I have been told by mulitple sources that 9 has developed the abiity to import sheets from exterior projects. Has anyone been successful in getting this to work? I am still in toubleshooting mode. But I am running out of time. Any suggestions.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[paul.114746]

Importing sheets.... no

Importing VIEWS from linked files.... Yes!
Then you can put your linked view (which I guess you have on a sheet in the linked file) onto your main sheet drawing.

Best of luck

Paul