Design Options in renovation work

[sblackburn]

I have worked thru the tutorials on Design Options, and this seems to be a great feature in Revit. Is it possible to use Design Options in renovation work, also? The tutorials and most of the threads I found deal with new work. Can you combine phasing (existing, demo, etc.) with Design Options? We do quite a bit of renovation work and up to now have just been saving many different files (models) as the different options. For instance, I am currently working on an office renovation project that will have five or more options. This includes different layouts in different parts of an existing office building - a common project. I have the major renovation changes made that will be included in every option, and I have saved and named my different "design options". I can easily add new walls to each of these options, but I also need to demo walls in each option. This demo work will be in different areas of each option depending on where the new construction is located in that option. It doesn't seem like I can do this demo work as part of the options, because when I go to "Edit Selected" in an option the existing walls (as part of the Main Model) are grayed out. Is it possible to use DO's in this way?

Steve Blackburn
MPA Architects

[aaronrumple]

Yes you can. However your demo work will be more complex. You may need to replicate parts of the existing building into the different design options to get the demolition the way you want.

You can set the phase of any object in the design option by using the properties dialog.

[sblackburn]

Thanks - I have worked thru this in my current project by replicating/changing the phases of objects. It is more complicated but still seems useful. Especially since on most renovations projects like this (with many options for the owner to look at) there is a definite possiblilty that they will come back with changes that must be incorporated into all the options. The main reason I want to set this up is so that I don't have to do that type of change in all the options. Makes design options worth the extra work involved.

S. Blackburn