Site Tools

[narlee]

Any particular reason why roofs instead of floors?

'Cause I'm not too observant. I'm used to working with sloped roofs, not sloped floors, so I hadn't even noticed!

Geof Narlee.

[essdubbya]

From all the comments on site tools it seems that many of us are not designing large buildings where the emphasis is on the structure. For us the whole site is our brief. Strict demarcation of professions does not happen at this level and maintaining whole suites of software and the expertise to use it is practically impossible.

From a personal perspective I certainly appreciate many of the recent improvements to the building design tools but am a little concerned that the Factory view of the industry appears to be a little skewed towards the large commercial sector and tends to ignore the many little guys who may well make up the bulk of Reviteers (just a guess - please correct me if I'm wrong).

Maybe some comment on the future direction of Revit software development would help me for one understand where we are headed.

Site tool improvements have been needed since I started with Revit with release 4.5 so it would be good to know someone is listening and intends to do something about it.

dazza1639 is spot on with comments on wished ability to upload coordinates for setting out. This would save a lot of time and add a lot of value to the whole process.

What does everyone else think?

[k.armstrong]

Its not just little guys who want site tools improved.

I do small houses up to 1000's m2 shopping centres on greenfield sites.

When i'm modelling the building - i want it to touch the ground - and say on a house you wont have a civil engineer and have to calc the levels etc yourself.

then on a shopping centre you will have a civil engineer, but they wont show any dimension setout- thats for the architect - so i still have to draw the whole carpark and the kerbs, pathways, landscape beds etc and dimension them in a horizontal plane.

But then in the earlier stages i want to draw this stuff and have it show correctly in 3D - we try to elevate our shopping centres if we can to give them a better presence - so if i'm on a sloping site - with the building elevated then there's some trickery going on in the carpark and landscape to get back to the natural levels at the property boundary!! - i haven't tried yet but imagine by the sound of it, it can get frustrating.

The ability to draw "level lines" ie top of bank, bottom of bank so you can draw in a plan view where you want banks to stop and start is a must - particulary to have the 3d representation correct.

The other point is referring to chad's point about carparks - they are set up to project horizontal and thus float above sloping topo and slabs? but in real world - the exterior carpark surface is NEVER horizontal - it always has some fall to drain away the water!!

My $2 worth

[Chad Smith]

Do you guys find "building pads" useful? Really?

Somewhat useful. I don't know what US definition of a pad is, but here it is a level field of dirt. Not a level field of dirt with a 'slab' on it.

I would prefer the pad tool to just level the topo, So that I can place a slab (floor object) on it.

[BillyGrey]

Here in the US, a pad is most definitely a prepared level plane of dirt to build upon.
At least it is so in most of the physical building construction I have been associated with.

Often times a sandfill or crushed stone base/vapor barrier is used as the final layers between the pad and the initial concrete pour.

[rmejia]

Yes, once more, please add more Site Tools.

Revit is an architecture program, and perhaps most site design is done by civil engineers, but there is still the architectural site plan which has to be done and it would be fantastic if this could be done in the same program we use for all the other architecture stuff ... Revit Architecture.

[knurrebusk]

I know my attitude is a bit over the top sometimes, but after some hours with Vector works 12.5 I´m getting worse.

My anger towards Revit´s development progress in the site/model tools department is getting understandable.

PERIOD.

[prospero]

I agree, there's got to be some enhancements made with the site tools and to make the existing one's better at what they do.

[knurrebusk]

I tested the site(DTM)/road/pad tools in VW 12.5 and it works.

The sad part is that Revit could have been so much more!
faster/clean/easy.

Will never happen, only in Revit 2011 Civil.

[TroyGates]

I tested the site(DTM)/road/pad tools in VW 12.5 and it works.

The sad part is that Revit could have been so much more!
faster/clean/easy.

Will never happen, only in Revit 2011 Civil.

Do you realize that VectorWorks has been around 10 years longer than Revit? and Autodesk has only been in control of Revit development for about 5 years? So your assumption of 2011 is not all that unreasonable in my opinion. That will put Revit at 11 years old. Not bad when compared to many other CAD programs that are around 20 years old now.

Its so easy for users to say I want a perfect program now. I want everything I need now. This has never happened in any software program, ever. If you can name one piece of software that was perfect on its first release, never had another release, and is still used by many people, I will stop replying to these threads....