Large Revit Project set-up - Current best practice and any innovative thoughts

[chidave]

Hi

Bit of an eclectic arrangement of my thoughts on a project but here it goes…

I am due to be working on a large steel diagrid structure project comprising of a 120m tower and lower connected buildings approximately 50m tall. Before jumping straight into it and start modelling I was hoping to get advice on planning the project. I have mostly worked on small-medium size buildings in the past and I was hoping to get a better understanding of the problems that could be incurred on a larger project. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Some topics I have been thinking about are;

• Best practice for splitting up models for optimising speed of working. i.e. size of model
• Would you produce the sheets in each of the separated models or keep them in one central location. Pros and cons for each.
• Other useful tips gained from large building modelling in Revit. Links to info would be nice.

The planned workflow for the Revit element generation is also new to me. The geometry is generated in Rhino exported to Robot for analysis and element sizing and then the robot model is then linked to Revit to produce the deliverables. I am not yet fully aware of the full workflow details and the intricacies of how it works especially the rhino robot link.

My portion of the works will be tidying up the model elements once linked in from Robot to produce the deliverables. I can see various problems with this in terms of elements not joining as intended and problems if the scheme changes etc... Please feel free to highlight any other problems you can think of.     

Other information;

The project will be fully coordinated with the Architect and MEP via a live model.   

I am wanting to automate as much of my work as possible so was looking at some add-ins for connection design such a SDS/2 I am also aware the Robot can generate connection but I don’t know how it copes with large bespoke connections.

Was thinking of creating an adaptive component that could possibly snap to the node point and subsequent incoming members to clean up the join and possibly provide the connection. Maybe even manipulating this using Dynamo?

I am all for innovation and doing things in a more efficient way so any input would be great. If you need any further advice let me know.

Thanks in advance

Dave

[bearsley]

The level of support you are requesting exceeds any resonable or responsible reply in any online forum. based on the nature of your questions i recommend you aquire an experienced BIM manager (on-staff or sub-consultant) and/or contract with a training/consulting firm. i have used Imaginit for years & their technical capability exploded when they bought avatech years ago. (choose someone comfortable with the scale & demands of your project.)

considering this post is a couple months old, maybe you have already taken advantage of one of these options.

whoever ends up helping you with this project will need to know your specific & complete project scope, level of responsibility, LOD expected, deliverable(s), workstation(s)/server enviornment specs as well as 3rd party software collaboration expectations, some of which you have already outlined.

hope that helps.

Brian Earsley

708.336.7083