Best practices - giving Revit models to consultants?

[DanielleAnderson]

A new structural consultant was recently brought on board for my main Revit project. I discovered to my utter glee, that the firm uses Revit. I've never worked with a consultant on Revit before so I'm not exactly sure how to handle the pass-off of information.

1) Do I make a copy of the model and get rid of all the superfluous views and sheets?

2) If he's the structural consult, does that mean I should get rid of all columns and slabs in my model and just link his information in?

I've only ever seen one demo of Revit Structure and that was quite a while ago...
Right now the building is just a shell and core - 160' above ground, 70' below ground. The model itself (and right now it is just one file, no worksets applied yet) is about 50 megs.

Thanks!
Danielle

[robert.manna]

I would get your re-seller (or their re-seller, or both) in someone's house quick to give you all the low down on best practices etc. We actually just had that today with our Re-seller and Autodesk, we had Ed Deir (I might be killing his last name) on webex giving a full demo of structural etc. In our case its a little different though as are introducing the engineers to Revit, and their stuff has already gone out to bid, but arch is still on-going. We are hoping they can "play" with Revit structure as we progress as a means to getting to know the software etc.

-R

[brussell]

In my limited but growing experience, it is best to sit with the consultant and see what exactly they need from you. Remember, this is a collaborative effort. It would help to read up on the copy/monitor features in Revit Building if you are not already familiar them. Our structure consultants will have us put columns/grids/floors where we think they should be, then modify them to work for them through the process. We then use copy/ monitor to track the changes directly. No need to duplicate the model, nor to delete anything. The consultant can choose what they want to bring in, and control visibility accordingly. Likewise, you can do the same with their model. The only real advice I have for you is this: Communicate. Best to have you both in the same office (if possible) for the initial model transfer/linkup, but be sure to stay in communication through the process.

[Kevin Janik]

Here is a PDF of the copy monitor process from a structural engineer's side presented at our Revit User Group Meeting a few months ago.

Kevin

[pdavis]

I agree with brussell, communication is they key. Autodesk has some white papers out on collaboration that you should definately go over with the structural consultant.

I can't stress enough that you need to communicate. We just had a situation where we had a consultant made a software upgrade several days before a deadline and we could no longer read his data. It has caused huge problems.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

HI Danielle,

there are a number of other issues we've come up against as more of the 'total building model' starts happening.
Check out this thread as it may affect how you model your structure vs how structural might want it modeled.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=43762&highlight=structure+column+level

As some have mentioned here, it's best to meet with the other consultant to see what might be the best approach. There's no sense in duplicating effort if possible and if they already have a workflow set up that suits them then they are the best resource.
Good luck.