I am electrical engineer working in Building Design Suite Revit 2013. I'm working with an architect offsite at another firm. We have three buildings that we are doing renovation work in that will be under the same contract (bid together). The architect wants to do work for each building in individual files relative to each building then insert them all together to produce one set of construction documents. Questions!!!
I'm fairly confendent in my revit experience but I have never done a project where I have multiple buildings in the same file. Please help ASAP!!! And a huge thanks to any who can help!
My first electrical question for you is: are these buildings fed from the same electrical service? If so, Revit cannot retrieve any electrical distribution data from a linked model, so I would want to have them all is the same model. I assume that they're separate, though.
And I think that the overall plan to insert the complete, separate models into a single file will accomplish very little. You cannot reference the Sheets, Panel Schedules, etc. from a Linked Model. Are the equipment schedules being combined into one master to cover all buildings, or will each building have its own separate schedules?
We are just doing light renovation work and will not be changing the electrical distribution system for any of the buildings. Just changing light fixtures out and moving some receptacles. Well I take that back, one of the buildings is new and will require a brand new electrical system. But all three of the electrical distribution systems are different. I would be bring the schedules in to but on sheets for construction documentation. In there lies my problem. I want all three of these Revit files to stay separated for records for each individual building but we need to bring them together to make all of our construction documents. Need solutions?
Even if you used Copy/Monitor to try to get an electrical panel from the link for the Panel Schedule, it would be zero load as Copy/Monitor does not carry over any of its load data. The only reasonable way you are going to be able to combine them is to link all three Architectural files into your MEP model, and do all of your work for all three buildings in that one file.
Regarding their placement, If the buildings are not associated with each other, then their exact location doesn't matter aside from coordinating with the Architect. This being the case, it's a matter of how he is locating them in his combined file.