Interior Design - Best Practices

[Richard Lopez]

I would like to know if there is a better way of doing Interior design in Revit. I have been approaching tile and stone design in the following way. If there is a tile wall I would draw my stud wall as a interior wall 3 5/8" stud with a layer or gyp on both sides. Then I would draw a wall that is a 1/4" thick this would represent my tile design. Then I would use the split region to indicate the different tile options. With this I would create different layers with the different tile materials that I would assign the layers to. So I would like to know what are the different techniques out there to achieve this.

Thanks
Richard Lopez

[twiceroadsfool]

There are several ways of completing such a task, but which method will suit you best also depends on the different needs you might have.

For instance:

Do you want the interior finishes to not show on the construction documents?
Do the Architectural staff and interior staff work in the same office / same environment?
Are you scheduling/doign quantity take offs of the interior finishes? Are there a lot of intense finishes?

The method youre usnig can work well, or (depending on the answers to some of the above) you could just add the finishes in to the wall types, and split face/paint the different tiles (obviously this only works if there arent a lot of different finishes, or youll have a ton of wall types). If you dont want to see them in certain documents, you can use a filter, or a workset not visible by default in each view, or a linked model, which again might depend on some answers to the other questions...

[Richard Lopez]

Aaron,

Thank your input yes. I do want the Interior finishes to show up in the documents . Our staff does work in the same office and same environment and yes I do want to schedule and do quantity take offs. This confirm my approach to mentor my staff and continue to have them draw the two walls.

Thanks you

[sbrown]

It all comes down to trust and compentancy(sp?). If your arch team trusts your ID team to modify the Arch wall types to add in finish layers, sweeps, etc. Then that is the "right" way. However this is in my opinion not practical for many reasons. 1 architects and ID work on 2 sep schedules usually, ID trailing behind. This causes problems if you as the Architect need to count on the ID having the right walls in at the right time. Visibility issues are a problem due to not beingable to turn off things embeded into wall types. So I like your approach of separate walls. I would take it one step further and make sure ALL interiors information is in a sep workset so the Arch team doesn't see it unless they want to. I would also have some identifier in your wall types so you can use filters to grey the arch walls on your id finish plans, and Arch can show your ID info as dashed where needed.

[Rick Houle]

Our ID team is instructed to not modify anything that belongs to the arch. team.
They "skin" the materials as their own components (like you described Richard)
and they have their own workset.

The benefits of this method:
- ID folks are not to blame for anything that gets mucked up in the architecture.
- They work with multi-studios and it keeps the guesswork out of what they are trying to accomplish... (they dont know where else in the project a certain wall exists when they are just working on the lobby skins)
- Their schedule and objective is often on a different course than the arch. team.
- And, again, they don't get blamed for messing up ANY arch. work..!

(I hate to say, they also use old fashioned linework rather heavily. If they are not going to render it they are likely not going to model it. They have other means of scheduling in this approach... I'm slowly trying to break them of the habit.)

[kreed]

Rick,
The approach you describe is exactly what we are trying to implement in our office. Unfortunately, we're also still having to have people draft in ACAD and import into Revit drafting views. I'll admit, it's more efficient for people still very new to Revit but I'm pretty sure that is what made our central file so large on one of our pilot projects.

Does anyone go to the extent of having ID work in a linked file with the arch model as their background? Proper workset management seems to be as hard to convince people to use as proper layer management was in the old days.

[Scott Womack]

Rick,
The approach you describe is exactly what we are trying to implement in our office. Unfortunately, we're also still trying to break some people of the draft in ACAD and import into Revit drafting views. I'll admit, it's more efficient for people still very new to Revit but I'm pretty sure that is what made our central file so large on one of our pilot projects.

Does anyone go to the extent of having ID work in a linked file with the arch model as their background? Proper workset management seems to be as hard to convince people to use as proper layer management was in the old days.

Our firm does alot of collaboration work with other Architectural firms on large college projects. Linking in an Interiors file (or Shell and Core) has a unique set of issues with it. You can make the interior elevations, and finish plans etc appear as the ID has drawn them, except for one significant issue. None of the Interior elevation symbols, detail marks, callouts, etc. will appear. What I mean is that any reference that created a view, or references a view will not appear from the linked file. Those have to be "recreated" in the File that the Interiors is linked into. So you'd have to create the interiors views again in the file they are linked into in order to get their modifications to come through.:roll:

[Rick Houle]

Unfortunately, we're also still trying to break some people of the draft in ACAD and import into Revit drafting views.

I know what you mean. My ID folks "draft" a lot also, but forutnately they do much of this drafting within Revit -- lines, lines, note blocks and lines... It is a cad-like way of using Revit, one i hope wears off as their BIM experience grows.