Site work for Revit

[pfschuyler]

Greetings,

Overall my Revit experience has been excellent. However when dealing with sites, editing points is so tedious and time consuming that I'm overwhelmed with frustration. Overall Revit productivity is severely hampered when some basic site work is needed for the project. I make great progress with the building model, but then I lose lots of time; days actually...when it comes to doing pretty rudimentary site work. The overall affect is; this just isn't working on a business schedule.

My gripe is that when editing a site Revit takes its time regenerating the entire site model every time you move, add, or delete a single point. If you move, edit, or delete 50 points, that takes the same amount of time to regenerate the model as a editing a single point. To do any precision site editing, you must move a point (or a few)...wait, move a point...wait. That's necesary to carve out basic site features. So I move points individually or in small groups to achieve that precision, and that consumes hours of time. Even on my very capable machine the end result is that you lose countless hours watching the computer regenerate the site model.

Why you can't you simply move and specify multiple point locations in one editing sessions, and then WHEN FINISHED, regenerate the entire site? I think this is very simple to achieve in programming and it would be an important hot fix until Revit gets some reasonable site tools. Right now its a very substantial problem that puts a giant black mark on an otherwise excellent BIM experience.

Does anyone have any other workarounds?

Paul Schuyler

[davidcobi]

Close all windows except 1 when editing topo models. It should be much faster. For very large topo models with small structures spread about, you could split surface... edit the area around your individual buildings... then merge the surfaces back together. But don't edit points along the split line between two toposurfaces if you intend to merge them later.

[pfschuyler]

David,

Thanks for the reply. I agree that closing other (open) windows helps a lot, also turning off any linked models seems to help, too. Splitting the surfaces would make the editing go faster, but the site I'm working on now is complicated enough that it would get messy merging things back together. Fine ideas, but I think a fundamental fix (or minor improvement) to the program is what is really needed.

Paul Schuyler

[comhasse]

David,

Thanks for the reply. I agree that closing other (open) windows helps a lot, also turning off any linked models seems to help, too. Splitting the surfaces would make the editing go faster, but the site I'm working on now is complicated enough that it would get messy merging things back together. Fine ideas, but I think a fundamental fix (or minor improvement) to the program is what is really needed.

Paul Schuyler
Unfortunately my experience is the same: you can fly with the building model but if the site is anything but flat, you're going to lose a lot of time previously gained.

To be fair, I've attempted to do the site work in Sketchup and import the site as a mass in Revit and found that Sketchup isn't any better to do accurate site modeling than Revit. (I didn't go very far with that so I may be wrong). I've done site work in FormZ before (a long time ago) and it took a lot of time as well. My general experience is, it's just a very complex task to achieve. I've never worked with civil software, so i don't know if the technology in that field is more advanced. In the end I've reverted back to sketching contour lines by eyeballing (just as we did back in 2d-times), then recreating the site from scratch.

That being said some basic functionality is severely missing from Revit Topography, notably boolean operations and a curb tool. Feel free to vote for my wish list poll (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=62104&highlight=make+topos+act+masses) and check out a search for "topo" in the wishlist forum. (http://forums.augi.com/search.php?searchid=955916)

[sbrown]

I don't even suggest you try to use the site tools for much more than siting your building and studying the existing grade. They know how to fix it, we must place more support requests showing the need is there.

[pfschuyler]

On a lighter note Revit is excellent all around for most other things, so I don't mean to rip on Revit too harshly. I have tried to use Sketchup as well, and I have also dabbled in other programs, and for site work Revits tools are not terrible by comparison.

But its a shame to see such a dramatic setback to productivity that could be remedied with a simple fix to the program. The losses for me anyway are so significant time-wise that its like 2 steps forward, 1 step backward for the project as a whole.

I'm just hoping that Autodesk is really listening and will push these site tools (or at least a basic site tool improvement) way, way up on list of features to consider implementing. I've seen several releases go by without it being recognized.

Paul Schuyler

[steve.70285]

So...is there a simple software out there someone is using to make parametric modifications to site models? I don't care so much that the site model is a Revit topography or just a dwg/dxf import.

Or...do I have to keep smiling as I grit my teeth when it comes to Revit site tools? :x

[mark.98140]

Rather point less sourcing it out to another program when one of the biggest issues with site tools is the inability to interact the site with the model itself. It is amazing how tolerant Revit users are when our maain rival software has this nutted and we have a request list item going back years on this point. But then again, it is one of a long list of request items... though arguably one of the more important being ignored.