Demolition Plans Wish

[jcoe]

Having had a chance to work on a series of renovation projects, I have developed a few items I would like to see improved on demolition plans.

1. Wall Clean-up - I have noticed that the walls do not heal themselves when a wall is being demolished when it abuts/intersects a wall that is remaining. I find myself chasing these intersections all over the place and placing detail lines to clean it up. Graphically, I feel this would read better and better indicate the intent to the contractor.

2. Room names - I know this has been discussed a lot in the forum, but please can we get the room names in a demolition plan to reflect the existing names and numbers. Currently, we delete the tag(s) on the demolition plans in the rooms we are renovating to eliminate confusion with the contractor. The demolition plans are the first indication to the contractor of the existing layout of the building and the room names and numbers should reflect that.

3. Wall Infills - our standard is to leave the existing to remain walls white (no hatch). All the new stuff is shown with a hatch to make the contractor graphically aware of the changes. However, when we remove doors, windows...etc, the wall does not infill because the door/window was originally placed in an existing wall. To combat this, I duplicated all my wall types (some with hatch and some without). I place the duplicated "hatched" wall in place of the infill condition. Although this method works, I find myself chasing this stuff all over the place. I think the walls in Revit would be better suited if the hatch could be recognized by phase.

Thanks for the patience.
If others have some suggestions that I might have overlooked, I would welcome them.

[patricks]

I haven't had much issue with the walls not cleaning up.

Room tags and areas, these are tied automatically to the phase in which they were created. When you view a demolition plan you're looking at a plan set to your current phase, with only existing items and items demolished on the current phase being displayed. Since your walls and resulting areas have changed in the current phase, it can't show the areas from the previous phase.

As for wall infills, if I have my plan view's phase set to New Construction, with the filter on Show Previous + New then anywhere a door or window was removed shows as an infill of that surrounding wall type, but on the current phase, which means whatever cut patterns you have associated with that wall will show as new. No problems there for me.

[ron.sanpedro]

1. Wall Clean-up -
I have just taken to turning off wall cleanup on all demo'd walls. It is a little bit of effort, but you do get the continuous line of the existing wall. Some argue that you really should really see a little bit of new wall, but it isn't really new wall, just new finish, which is covered in the note or spec, where you say to "patch and repair... to match existing"

2. Room names -
Agreed. Room names in the demo plan should match existing. I willk check to be sure, but I think we are putting one set of room tags in the existing phase, and one in the new phase, and sometimes even phased rooms. I believe we actually have a situation where a bunch of rooms are being demo'd, but only in a design option, and we actually have the design option demo plan showing a bunch of demo walls and exisitng room names, and the design option new plan showing one big room and a single room name. In the non option new plan you see all the existing room names and exisitng walls. Pretty slick really, but the key is duplicate room names in different phases, which is a little annoying, but once done you can ignore them. We haven't had to manage changes between duplicate room tags because existing is static.

3. Wall Infills -
This is one of those where I have been advocating abandoning our old graphic convention. Yes, the poche helps, but the screen for existing, black for new is just as obvious once you are used to it. Our plotter shows existing a bit dark with the out of the box settings, so we may change that to get a more pronounced difference, and we also like the lineweights to match between existing and new, rather than all the existing stuff being thinner. But that can be handled without chasing things around. The poche for new can't, so we are trying mightily to just let it go. That said, I am terrified that someday soon someone is going to want an existing door to show with a straight line for a swing ;)

Best,
Gordon

[jcoe]

Here are some examples of what I am currently working on.

[ron.sanpedro]

Here are some examples of what I am currently working on.

Joe,
on the demo wall, try doing an unjoin geometry and turn off cleanup. That seems to get me what I think you want. On the bit of new wall infill at the demo'd door, do the opposite, Join Geometry. It doesn't infull with a poche, but it creates a graphic that does seem to communicate a little better.
Also, I think there may be a setting somewhere that governs default behavior, because my demo walls look right to start with, but by Joining I get the look you are seeing, and by Unjoining I am back to the seperate walls look.

Best,
Gordon

[isaac.hedberg]

I've been struggling with the same things Jason was talking about. The one others things that I would add are:

4. Demo objects should be "wireframe" so that they didn't cover up newer objects.

5. "Show All" in elevation should not have existing wall finishes going through new doors/windows.

[jcoe]

What I have started to advocate in our office is:


duplicate and existing view with detailing. select everything with a crossing window and filter out only the room tags. Now exit the dialog and type VH on the keyboard. This will hide any unwanted info.
Rename the view somehting like Existing Room Names
Now go to a demolition plan where you would like to see the existing room names/ numbers. select a room tag and type VH on the keyboard.
Place the existing view with the existing room names onto a sheet.
Place the demolition drawing (of the same area and scale) onto the same sheet. Because Revit is continually recalculating the center of you model, the center of the two drawings should snap and align.
Now you have a demolition plan with existing room names and numbers. It sounds like a lot but once you do a few, it is actually quite simple.
Issues we have encuontered:

Make sure your existing plan has all the room names and numbers on it before duplicating it. This will eliminate having to copy/ past room names later on. If you do have to copy, please,please,please make sure you do not select the rooms with the tags - what a mess.
Changing scales after you have the room names and numbers established on the Existing Room Names view will result in tediously modifying the locations of the tags.
I appologize for those of you who already know this method, but new guys - demolish away.