Charles,
Revit is being used by many, many Architects around the country for full
production construction drawing work, including projects of all types and
sizes. Have they had to modify workflow and rethink some parts of their
working drawings (yes). But to answer your questions:
1. Door numbering - You can schedule by door 'type' mark and not be door
'instance' mark. This allows you to have 16 different doors with the same
number. You can also do door numbering that is based upon room numbers.
There are presently two limitations (a) The room numbers should be placed
first and (b) if you switch the swing of the door, Revit presently does not
change the room based numbering.
2. Eidt Mass - In the edit mass mode, you need to finish the mass first.
This is similiar to many other functions in Revit that use what I call
sub-routines (edit roof, slab, etc). Once you get used to it, it doesn't
cause a problem.
3. Subtracted Geometry - yes the void has to remain to be useful. It is
usually see-able only when you hover over the void with your mouse. I was
able to stretch in the z direction throught the blue arrow. Again, with a
little practice it is quite do-able.
4. Worksharing/File Size/Speed - what you describe is correct. File sizes
can get up to 100mb. Save to central times are dependent on your company
network throughput (orifice size). Many firms have used a product called
Riverbed to decrease save to central times when they have offices in
mutliple locations. If you have only one office, the key issues are the
size/speed of NIC cards, switches, hubs. Some firms have had good luck
placing the Revit files on a separate server. Other factors are whether the
staff is trying to 'stream' video/audio while they are saving to central.
5. Worksharing/Updating - what you describe is not correct. When you
syncronize with the central file, Revit is only comparing the file
"database". Again, using worksharing best practices, makes the process
predictable and managable. The best practice is to borrow elements and not
worksets whenever possible. Then relinquish those borrowed elements as soon
as possible after editing.
6. Worksharing/Multiple Users - What you say is correct. If an employee
leaves (quits), your CAD/IT guy can easily log into Revit using the left
employees user name and get to the info. The bigger issue is a workflow
issue. The people in the office need to learn to relinquish their elements
and/or worksets when they save to central and when they are finished for the
day. This issue has caused many firms anxiety, but my experience is that
the firm adapts to the new workflow.
7. Revit Version - You are correct. You are allowed to keep pervious
versions on your computers.
Good training can help you when most of these issues. Hope this helps.
David Haynes, AIA
Ideate, Inc.
www.ideateinc.com
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
wrote in message news:5420454@discussion.autodesk.com...
Revit has a lot of good points, but my preliminary impression is that it is
still very much in the experimental stages. I think that at some point in
the future we will see most architectural CAD drawings produced in this
manner. I also think that it may still be too early to do it now.
I will give a few examples. You can issue a global command to place door
keys on all of the doors in the building and it will be done instantly.
However, the doors are numbered in the sequence in which they were placed
into the drawings, and that cannot be changed. Every door gets a separate
number. If there are sixteen doors with the exact same description then
there will be sixteen different numbers on the schedule. Let's say that you
have 150 doors. You have doors 45, 46 and 47 all grouped together on one
part of the plan. You add a door near door 47. The door number is 151. That
cannot be changed. Also, there is no way to provide door numbers, which have
associations with room numbers.
If you are doing 3d modeling and you are in what is called an Edit Mass mode
and you issue a "save" command, Revit will not pay any attention. If you
close your file at that point all work done while you were in Edit Mass mode
is lost. You must exit Edit Mass mode before it is possible to save the
file.
If you want to subtract 3d geometry from the model but retain the ability to
stretch the remaining vertices, you must retain the subtracted geometry and
keep that geometry "hidden" in order for it not to appear with the rest of
the model. This can get very complicated and messy in a big project. The
remaining geometry can only be stretched in the x-y coordinates of that part
of the model. No z axis stretching is allowed.
All data for a project is contained in one master file. On a large project
that file can grow to several hundred megabytes. There are reports on the
Revit newsgroups of files, which even on big broadband width networks will
require 10 minutes or more to open.
Whenever it is necessary to update even a small portion of your work with
the central master file it is necessary to upload your copy of the entire
project and then download the entire project from the central master file.
It is necessary to maintain a real time live link between the computer where
the master file is kept and every single member of the CAD production team.
If one of the members of the team has been given control of a critical part
of the building and then goes to lunch, or worse, leaves town, the rest of
the team must wait until that person returns and releases control of that
part of the model before work on that part of the model can be done by other
members of the team.
Currently Revit is in Release 9. It is not compatible with any other release
of Revit.
I will be interested in responses.
