Two Buildings-Same Details

[sultarc]

I am doing tow buildings, almost twins but two sets of distinct permit sets. How do I avoid redrawing the wall sections and details for each building?

[ford347]

Draw one building, create sheet set particular to that project, file save as, re-name and change project info, create second sheet set. Make minor changes if you need to I guess, which could make things a little difficult if you were making some major changes, in which case they wouldn't be identical. Does that work? I've been doing some buildings that were similar, but the width changed considerably, so I opted to just draw another building, but that's just me. The only other thing I can think of is to copy your detail items etc., from model detail or section views into drafting views, name those accordingly, save them to a file using the save to file feature, then cut some sections in your new building with similar locations and either paste the components into those views or when creating your new sections or details, reference your newly created saved details from the original project, but then you would have to do some drawing for the model components etc. Anyway, those are my first thoughts.

Josh

[scott.neumann]

We are just finishing up a four building project. Three of the buildings are almost identical. The other one is totally different. The three "identical" building needed to share sections and all four buildings will have some of the same details. After exploring a few different options we decided to do all four building in one Revit project using Scope Boxes to separate the buildings. After we got past the initial setup it has been going pretty smooth.

There are a few things you have to be willing to live with if you choose to go this route. First, since Revit won't let you have two grids with the same tag you'll need to come up with a way to differentiate the grids for each building. Second, you'll need to do the same thing with your levels - Revit won't let you have two levels with the same name. We use a modified level head family - we provide the name and Revit provides the elevation.

We have also done a four building project (basically identical buildings) using four separate Revit projects. We found this to be extremely cumbersome and not very productive.

One key factor in deciding how to do the project was the fact that all four building were going to be issued as one set of CD's - not four separate sets. If we had needed to do four sets of CD's we probably would have went with four separate Revit projects using linking to share sections and details.

Hope this helps.

[Justin Marchiel]

just to add to the discussion but did you know that you can save a view?
file->save to library->save views...
Works great for a detail that will become a typical detail, or it you need to use it in another project without having to remodel it.

Justin

[scott.neumann]

I haven't had a chance to use that function before. Have you used this much? It seems like it's limited to 2d elements.

[Steve_Stafford]

It is intended to support saving either 2D annotation in a view or 2D drafting views. If you save a sheet that includes 2D drafting views it will pull all of the views in as well.

Imagine a project completely finished and you need the 2D detailing on sheets A801-805. File > Insert From File > Views > Browse to project with finished sheets. Check those sheets and Revit will add those sheets and all the drafting views in that project to the current one.

If you need to reuse the 2D annotation you've added to other model views you can save then import them too in separate operation.

[scott.neumann]

Thanks for the quick response.

I knew you could bring in drafting views and sheets full of drafting views but I didn realize you could transfer 2d elements from 3d view!! I'm going to be spending a little time exploring this feature! It seems like an ideal solution for our multiple building projects.

Thanks again Steve!

[erikbjur]

If the details are based on the model geometry, you can use design options to model the differences between the two buildings. That way you really only have one set of details. You can tell each detail what design option to display. It is a very powerful tool and one that I don't think gets enough press.

You can create two sets of drawings, one for each building. Each building will have a few sheets of details that pertain to both buildings. You can then add additional sheets of detail that highlight the different details for that particular building. Make sense? This has worked great in the past on similar projects.