Townhouse question

[bill.92885]

I was hoping someone with townhome experience could give me a little advice. My office is getting ready to start a project that would consist of at the most 4 different units with a max of 8 units per building. There are several sites and the actual units per site is going to vary. The building assembly is going to be based on unit sales.
What would be the best way to handle this? Should we treat each unit as a separate drawing and piece them together into another drawing as needed and if so how do we handle the party wall? Or do we keep all the units together in one drawing and assemble as needed, but will that slow us down because the drawing is bound to become very large.
Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks.

[aaronrumple]

I've done as many as a dozen different buildings with 2-24 units in each building all in a single file.

You can also treat each building as a single file and link them together if needed.

I build the shell with demising walls and then use groups to create the unit layouts. This will be greatly enhanced with the release of 2008...

[sbrown]

Download revit architecture 2008 it will help alot.

[kpaxton]

I'll second what Aaron has said and add a few bits of my own. I guess some of it depends on what your workflow is like and how the people you work with operate together. One of the largest factors we've found is the 'unknown factor' - that being do you know what the Mix will be. It sounds like you don't - so therefore, the factor is high.

Some like to create the individual units in separate files, then link them in, doing the roof, etc. within this new file. You couldn't do this in earlier versions, but it is/will be getting better as Aaron said. Now that you can schedule across links, door schedules, etc. can be done easily. Btw- We handled the party walls by creating a 'half wall' along a gridline and we used Join Geometry on them after they were brought in.

You certainly can do everything (all buildings) in one file as Aaron suggests, however, If not laid out properly, can cause confusion if there are multiple users trying to work on the same file. This would necessitate using Worksets, but then may limit the ability of user-A to modify Building One's exterior walls if user-B has the exterior walls checked out while he's working on Building Four. What I'm trying to say is that you need to draw up a plan first of how you want to segregate the work. Obviously you could create different worksets for each building, etc. Is this how you do this Aaron?

With the ability of Transfer Project Standards, Copy/Paste, Saving of Groups to external Files, Linking - you have a lot of options available. In this small building situation, I would prefer doing each "Building" as it's own set in it's own file, bringing in the units as needed. Once one building is done, it's easy to transfer information across to another file, or use that one as a 'master'. Many munincipalities in our area are now requiring each building to have their own set of CD's. However, the benefit of what Aaron does it that ALL the information is shared within the one file. Because he's using groups, etc., the file size can be kept at a minimum.

my 2 cents (of which the government is taking away 1-1/2)

[aaronrumple]

Obviously you could create different worksets for each building, etc. Is this how you do this Aaron?


I used to. Not any more. Workset borrowing has changed this. I'm using fewer and fewer worksets. No one in the office any longer checks out worksets. Evey thing is just borrowed.

Worksets were a good way of controlling visibility between buildings. But it did require everyone be very diligent as to the workset they used. Now I use more general worksets (Architectural Shell, Architectural Interiors, Interiors, Civil, Mechanical, etc...) Typically no more than half a dozen or so. For visibility control, you can use an older tool - scope boxes. Each view can be tied to a scope box which will automatically crop to the right size for the particular building.

Having said all that - I will be trying more linking with 2008. This seems to be the direction adsk is going. I'm not a big fan of this as it is too much like the old acad xref days. And we know all the trouble those still cause.(You didn't send the xref, you moved your 0,0, Your path is pointing to the wrong xref., You moved your xref to another folder....) There is an elegance to having the whole project in one file...

[kpaxton]

... it is too much like the old acad xref days. And we know all the trouble those still cause.(You didn't send the xref, you moved your 0,0, Your path is pointing to the wrong xref., You moved your xref to another folder....) There is an elegance to having the whole project in one file...AAAHHHHH - Migrane... Migrane.... someone give... me... caffeine! Those were some scary memories you dreged up there Aaron! Shame on you!

However, right you are! I guess it boils down to how disciplined you are (and your team). Regarding the 'in one file' route, I guess the only real difficulty I see (for me) is my approach where I link in the different models in a main site file to compose a rendering, etc. With everything in one file, I'd have quite an interesting problem if I need 4 of building one, 2 of building 4 and three of building 2... not to mention the size overhead. I guess I'd have to make a copy of the file and clean it up. For Viz, I'd have to make an export of each 3d view/building anyway. But then- that's a 'dumb' one-way link...

[HawkeyNut]

Btw- We handled the party walls by creating a 'half wall' along a gridline and we used Join Geometry on them after they were brought in.
This is exactly the way we did it at my last firm. I think it worked very well having each unit in a different file. We were also able to mirror some units using an old beta-function which (sadly) is no longer available. :(
Another thought were playing with but never implemented was to separate interiors and shells completely so that we could later do a master model file that loaded each empty shell for exterior renderings and fly-throughs of the entire neighborhood.

[bill.92885]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm not sure how we're going to proceed with this but you've given me a lo to think about.

[j_starko]

I'm having troubles with this too

someone suggested making a typical unit of the town house, the mirroring it and/or copying it to populate the drawing ..
I've got a "left " group and a "right"group built already and they fit together well , but when i try and copy those two or create an array with them, it gives me a whole bunch of errors and un groups the newly created units . i want to keep them all grouped so that if i make changes to one unit . they changes are made all through out

REvit 2008 makes this work .. sadly at home I've only got revit 9.0

any ideas on why this might be happening for me ?? i did the "half" wall idea for the party walls but i don't get to the join geometry point .. it wants to ungroup them before i get the chance .

I'm confused