Design Options as Alternates

[bskripac]

Does anybody have any Best Practices or things to watch for when managing a Base Bid & Alternate Scenario throughout CD's in a project? I have gone through a quick example of using Design Options to achieve this outcome and things seem to be going okay other than the design team needing to having to have a very strong understanding of the two sets of views and building elements that will need to be maintained. It looks like you can tag, dimension, and annotate just as if it were part of the regular model.

[gordonp147484]

Does anybody have any Best Practices or things to watch for when managing a Base Bid & Alternate Scenario throughout CD's in a project? I have gone through a quick example of using Design Options to achieve this outcome and things seem to be going okay other than the design team needing to having to have a very strong understanding of the two sets of views and building elements that will need to be maintained. It looks like you can tag, dimension, and annotate just as if it were part of the regular model.

To my mind the two main keys are
1: Make sure the base bid is the Primary Alternate. This way all the sheets show base bid unless you very specifically say otherwise.
2: Manage your Option Sets independently of the Bid Alternate. In other words, you might have a Bid Alternate that includes 10 doors on three levels that are glass in the Alternate. You are only getting one alternate bid, but you probably need a separate Option Set for every door, with a Base Bid primary and a Bid Alternate secondary. Trying to put all the doors in a single Option Set could cause trouble.

Best,
Gordon

[dgreen.49364]

I don't want to derail the question at hand, but I have a related question. The one time I have had to deal with Additive Alternates in Revit, I used phases. I made the Additive Alternate phase come after New Construction.

I thought about going with design options, but I chose to go with phases instead. My question is...is one method better than the other? I found the phases method to work pretty smooth. Would design options have been better?

[gordonp147484]

I don't want to derail the question at hand, but I have a related question. The one time I have had to deal with Additive Alternates in Revit, I used phases. I made the Additive Alternate phase come after New Construction.

I thought about going with design options, but I chose to go with phases instead. My question is...is one method better than the other? I found the phases method to work pretty smooth. Would design options have been better?

Some will disagree with me, but I find that abusing things in Revit can get you in trouble. So in my book, Phases are for Construction Phases, Design Options are for Design and Bid Alternates, and Filters are for funky graphic control of views (I have personally abused Phases for this and regretted it eventually ;)
And the thing I like about Design option is much of the built in functionality makes a huge amount of sense for the intended purpose (Option Sets and related Options, Primary options that show up Automatically in the set, and can be switched out, etc). Phases offers none of that, and all sorts of graphic control that makes sense relative to phases and makes absolutely no sense relative to options.

Best,
Gordon

[cphubb]

I don't want to derail the question at hand, but I have a related question. The one time I have had to deal with Additive Alternates in Revit, I used phases. I made the Additive Alternate phase come after New Construction.

I thought about going with design options, but I chose to go with phases instead. My question is...is one method better than the other? I found the phases method to work pretty smooth. Would design options have been better?

I agree that I would prefer design options for bid alternates, however phases work just as well and both need a similar amount of management from the team, as well as the same number of views. However the phases tend to be less flexible when things are joining or being replaced, that gives design opntions a slight edge.

[Teresa.Martin]

I agree that I would prefer design options for bid alternates, however phases work just as well and both need a similar amount of management from the team, as well as the same number of views. However the phases tend to be less flexible when things are joining or being replaced, that gives design opntions a slight edge.

Yes! I concur. Design Options for bid alternates is definitely the way to go. Phasing has its uses as well, but they both have to be managed.

We talk about this at length in some of our online Revit 201 classes. People are generally enthusiastic about both of these features, but they need to have a plan of attack so to speak and everyone needs to be on the same page. If one user gets into the model and is not aware of either of these features it can cause quite a bit of consternation to say the least.



Best regards,

[NDsmaug]

Hi everone!
This is my first project where I am developing Add Alternates for a project in Revit as actual model elements rather than descriptors in the specs. I'm not exactly comfortable just yet, but all the blogs and forums I have consulted point to using Design Options as the best way to go. So far, however, I have not found anyone who has elaborated on what it was like to actually produce construction documents with design options and what tips and tricks people may need to know. Or if there are any procedures to follow to get the result you need. Can anyone go into more detail of what to do to make CDs out of design options? Can anyone point me to some kind of help resource or tutorial that explains the process? How do schedules work? What about dimensions and tags?
My deadline is imminent and any help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks everyone!