Revit office setup and training

[wjspence]

Our office of 5 architects just purchased 5 seats of Revit. Currently we are Microstation based, which means some Autocad use for file translation to consultants. We plan to make the transition over 6 months to a year depending.

The two areas of concern are 1: Setting up directory and standards structure and 2: Training

For numero uno it seams there should be a central network location for Library content and Templates that can be controlled as read only files, so I have copied the default library and template to the network and renamed it. What are some strategies and experiences?

Number two: The three sources of training I am aware of besides having someone come in the office are: Revit help file, Autodesk faq area online, and the scheduled online training that is under the faq area. Is there enough available in these three places or is it better to pony up the bucks and bring in trainers @ $300/day/person for basic, intermediate and/or advanced training? One other source I am aware of is the scott on scott CD rom training. Does anyone have any experience with this? Was it worth the cost? How can weget the best training value?

[Steve Jager]

I use the Scott CD for training. It is a very good overall user friendly CD
except it does not cover worksets. Otherwise it will get you up to speed quickly. You can't beat 99 bah.

[gregcashen]

I would personally recommend that you take a few months to get as much up to speed with Revit using the tutorials, faq, help, and any other inexpensive sources you can find. Once you are more or less proficient a the basics, go for broke and get the advanced training if you feel you need the extra help. I think you will find that you will learn a lot by practicing with the software and checking in here for tips and tricks. Don't spend too much time and $$ up front on formal training without first playing around with the program to get a sense of how it works.

[hand471037]

As for file organization, we've found that having two sepirate libraries; one the 'default' Revit one (that comes with Revit), and the other our own custom Office one, to work best. Both of these are put on the server, and path'ed to. We don't install either Revit library on the clients. When a new version of Revit comes out, we simply replace the network copy of the Revit base library with the new one and then update the items in our office's sepirate Library. We use the 'default' directory structure in both; and the Office library *only* contains families we've made/downloaded and *none* of the 'standard' ones that come with Revit. By keeping them sepirate, we find it's much easyer to deal. Also, within the job folder, we make two sub-directories; 'Baseplans' (for any DWG's being linked into Revit) and 'Project Specific Families' for any fams that are so special or one-time that they don't warrent being put in the Office library, but do need to be kept with the project.

As for training/adpotion, after you've had everyone go through the basic tutorials, pick *one* easy task that you want to do in Revit, like a DD/pricing set for a house, or a Data Model of your own office for Facilities Mangement, or a presentation rendering/animation. Something that's relevant to your work. Pick an easy project, no Frank G look-alikes. Pick something that doesn't have a bad deadline, to allow for time. Make someone who's the most into Revit the 'point' person who's in charge of figuring out how to do said project. By focusing on that one little project, your team will learn a lot more in the beginning than by bringing in training at this early point. Once that pilot project is done, bring in training to round everyone out and show them faster/better/new ways of doing stuff. That IMHO will help your office out more than putting everything on hold, training, then moving everyone over from MicroStation.

[JamesVan]

Can I ask what are some of the specific reasons your office is deicidng to migrate away from the Bentley suite of products?

[wjspence]

We do architecture. Revit is, IMHO, the best tool for bringing our ideas from imagination to construction drawings. We looked at at other solutions, but none of them were as good. If you are referring to TriForma, no way. One visit to their newsgroup reveals lots of unhappy customers. And in spite of what Keith Bently says about BIM, TriForma isn't. Otherwise we have been using ustation pretty much out of the box.