Schematics in Revit

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

This is my first post here so hopefully I won't be mocked too much. Right here goes:

Although I am not new to using Revit my current company is having only done one project so far. I have two queries that I need advice on:

1: The company is trying to push the idea of using Revit to manually draft 2D electrical/mechanical/plant schematics. Other engineers at the company and I are opposed to this move as we feel auto CAD is much better suited to the task and we have it already set up for the job. Has any one got any views on this? Can Revit be used effectively to manually draft schematics or are we better off using AutoCAD?

2: If we persist in using Revit for drafting schematics what is the best way to create 2D schematic symbols? The way I have been instructed to do this is to create groups of annotative lines and use these as a "block". These are then further grouped to create a single system "blocks" that can be moved around and connected using lines to build a schematic.  I don't think this is the most effective way of using Revit and see it becoming a problem in the future. Are there any better options or are my concerns misplaced? 

Thanks 

Jake 

[pkolarik]

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@Martin__Schmid wrote:

Hi pkolarik - have you taken a look at Revit P&ID Modeler?  This connects Revit to AutoCAD P&ID drawings, enabling you to more efficiently model in Revit, and does validation between the platforms.

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We're not using Revit 2018 yet, but after checking into your link on P&ID Modeler, that won't work for us as we don't use Plant3d to generate our PID's

[Martin__Schmid]

pkolarik-- thanks for that, understood that it may not be the right fit for you right now...  we have a number of customers that are using Plant 3D to generate their P&ID's, and modeling in Revit manually... that was one of the impetus for this functionality... to connect these data platforms intelligently.  Since Plant 3D is in the AEC Collection, we're hoping this makes it easier for folks to consider adopting tools more suited to their workflow.

Is there anything in particular that prevents you from considering using intelligent P&IDs instead of just drawing them in AutoCAD?

Thanks,

MS

[pkolarik]

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@Martin__Schmid wrote:

pkolarik-- thanks for that, understood that it may not be the right fit for you right now...  we have a number of customers that are using Plant 3D to generate their P&ID's, and modeling in Revit manually... that was one of the impetus for this functionality... to connect these data platforms intelligently.  Since Plant 3D is in the AEC Collection, we're hoping this makes it easier for folks to consider adopting tools more suited to their workflow.

Is there anything in particular that prevents you from considering using intelligent P&IDs instead of just drawing them in AutoCAD?

Thanks,

MS

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A couple years ago we sat down with our reseller to analyze what we do here and how we do it, etc., etc., to figure out which softwares were best for us in the water/wastewater department. It was mostly a toss-up to using Revit for our large-scale piping (water/wastewater plants) needs or to use something like Plant3d. In the end, Revit won out simply for the fact of ease of collaboration with our archie and structural departments, who are also on Revit (we do all disciplines in house). Due to Revit being the choice there, and the very fast processes we have in place for doing PIDs in AutoCAD (and very extensive block library), it was decided not to get up to speed on yet another new piece of software just for PID creation.

[dgorsman]

I'm more than a little jaded about cross-checking between models and P&IDs, as I've seen multiple implementations of this feature with different software vendors.  While the technical side is usually functional, they all fall short on the procedural side even when there's a common backing database (such as PDS or PDMS).

It's not uncommon for P&IDs to start out with little detail at the start of a project, and be well behind the model in the end (BOM's for purchasing and iso's for fabrication are more important than matching the schematic to the model).  Towards the end of the project budgets get tight and most times it's down to "screw the intelligence, we just need them to look right and we only have a couple of warm bodies available".

Bridles, complex piping arrangements, and high/low point vents and drains are frequently "sketched in" on the P&ID without noting every single valve, but are all present in the model, resulting in a lot of "missing component" warnings in the cross check.  The only solution is to put a lot of extra placeholders outside of the drawing border which has it's own problems.

[Anonymous]

I while back,

However, we link the CAD, as the engineers update the CAD file, which auto-updates my Revit file, job done.

Jason

[s.borello]

Revit is not great for drafting... I would much rather link in an AutoCAD dwg for a single line diagram than draw it all in Revit.