Workflow speed tips&tricks for coordination meetings?

[thomas183523]

Hello all,

I find myself struggling in coordination meetings with trying to keep up with the general meeting pace. The problem is not so much the 3D navigation but rather the section view controls being too clumsy, the way the selection-sets don't store a complete 'world-state' (hide/color/transparency) and the way hide/unhide works that makes setting up good views simply take too long. Naturally speed increases with tool proficiency but there is still room for much improvement here I believe.

I'm curious how people on the forum deal with these kinds of issues? What tricks and tips can you share that helps improve workflow speed?

Thanks,
Thomas

[cmealy]

Thomas,

Do you use batch tests for setting up the different trade clashes? I know that we as a team demand that updated models are loaded to our ftp site at least one day before the coordination meeting, a pre-meeting clash test is run, saving the clashes as viewpoints so when it comes time for the meeting it is as simple as looking at the viewpoints that we established the day before.

-Chris

[art.theusch]

One thing I do is slice the building just below the floor slab so I can look at the ceiling components. I also go ahead and save these slice points as viewpoints so I can quickly switch between different floors in the model without having to remember what elevation to slice at. This is also helpful when powered with the the clash reports because it defaults to the slice I have in place.

[thomas183523]

Chris,

Yes we do. It usually takes a fair abmount of time organizing and setting these up beforhand but once in place we tend to stick with them throughout projects. The batches are typically organized by floor, zone and system-2-system and apply various filters to exclude reduntant objects and deal with different levels of detail modeled (e.g. Architectural columns vs Structural columns, etc.).

Saving viewpoints of clashes in stead of using the clash views directly is a good idea - thanks.

/Thomas

[thomas183523]

Art,
Yes, this is a good approach; we do this also. We extend this to subset views of building zones for large projects. e.g. Floorslice 2-3, Zone A.

/T

[bwiab]

1. Do you guys require that all trades involved be onsite, working in the same space? The lean big room concept. Has this provided any positive results?

2. Do you guys have owner and/or AE team reps at your review sessions?

3. How are submittals and RFI's worked into the process, but not allowed to side track the meeting?

4. Do you have a typical time frame for your meetings? I'm shooting for an hour, but recently attended one that was three hours long and seemed like a waste of time.

[thomas183523]

Biwab,

1. The Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) approach does seem to bring a log of benefit to larger and more complicated coordination jobs (labs, hospitals, etc) but a key factor is that the designers present have field experience enough to model and coordinate something that can actually be built by the team in charge.

2. On the last project I was involved in, yes, but only at key sessions where we discussed issues involving multiple trades and that affected A & E aspects of the building. Otherwise no.

3. Badly.

4. Setting up the clash batches in such a way that you get meaningful results that can be used to organize meetings seems like a good idea. Having someone with a lot of building coordination experience reiew the clashes beforehand and build a meeting agenda from the raw clash reports greatly helps meeting structure and efficiency. This isn't always practical though as it may be very time consuming and the trades tend to know their own and others systems well enough to intuitively focus on the higher priorities. On my last job I did not apply much structure other than a quick intro of found problam areas, and then let the trades decide what to discuss themselves. These meetings typically involved MEP&F and lasted 3h once a week for 8 weeks.

[bwiab]

Thanks TG very informative.

[soleyes]

Did you know that you could store the Hide, Overrides and material state of the view in a viewpoint? You just need to right-click the saved view and select Edit. Here you have two checkboxes to control this behavior. Once activated you may need to right-click again and Update the view.
You can set the default values for these options in the global options dialog.
I know it's a lot of work (if you do it by hand, via API it's another story ), but once set, you can get the views exactly as you want them.
Hope this helps.
S.