poohkabot144452
2008-04-24, 02:07 PM
It seems that the maintaining an accurate material library in Revit is the key to getting useful takeoff quantities, and thus estimates, from a model. The two biggest hurdles in using a building model for estimating are 1) not properly assigning materials to objects, and 2) not having useful information within the materials.
As it ships, Revit has a good starting library of materials to use but managing and reformatting them is a full-time job in itself. Our estimators have a complete database of cost information organized per CSI format that they use in generating their estimates but can't use our output because it doesn't align with their database.
Does anyone have a clear strategy for organizing and managing a Revit material library? Ideally, we would have a material library that is based on CSI format, so when we do export schedules and material takeoffs from a model and give them to estimators there would be minimal interruption in work flow.
Oh, and the other hard part is actually getting Architects to use this library when building the model.
As it ships, Revit has a good starting library of materials to use but managing and reformatting them is a full-time job in itself. Our estimators have a complete database of cost information organized per CSI format that they use in generating their estimates but can't use our output because it doesn't align with their database.
Does anyone have a clear strategy for organizing and managing a Revit material library? Ideally, we would have a material library that is based on CSI format, so when we do export schedules and material takeoffs from a model and give them to estimators there would be minimal interruption in work flow.
Oh, and the other hard part is actually getting Architects to use this library when building the model.