COPY/MONITOR

[epowersCSZQB]

Hello,

I am a technician for a Structural Engineering firm. I know i checked back in 2017 or so with people on whether or not to copy/monitor walls in from architectural drawings. At the time, it was a huge pain in  the butt so i dismissed it and only monitored grids and levels. My question is, has anyone found a better solution in later versions of Revit? (2021,2022,2023)

The architect on a new project is asking us to copy/monitor the walls and as of now my answer will be no, unless someone gives me a reason to give it another go.

Thanks for any insight!

[timlove]

As far as I am aware, there is no 'easy' way to copy monitor walls.  I am not sure what benefit that it would even have to do it.  Did the architect give a reason for why?

Easiest way is to transfer all the wall types from the architectural model, then copy monitor every wall.  So far easy, now the not easy: Change each one to the right type, this will also require going through and changing it any time the architect changes a wall type.

I have looked at this option every couple years for being able to host families internally on our own walls (still cannot even copy ceilings).  This gets even worse as any wall mounted objects become surface mounted when copy/monitored. 

[ToanDN]

An architect can only suggest you to Copy/Monitor, but cannot ask you to do it.   Either way, it's the shared responsibility to coordinate between architectural and structural walls.

Copy/Monitor may work well if:

- Original wall assemblies are configured properly

- Original walls are classified as Structural or Non-structural properly

- Applicable wall types are transferred from the Architectural Model to yours via Transfer Project Standards

- You can edit those wall types directly, or create 'sister' wall types, based on the originals, but only have the structural (core) layers

- Map original types to new types properly and set Wall Location line to Align = Core (Centerline or Faces) under Copy/Monitor Options > Walls 

[apjones]

I would add to the above: 

The architectural team needs to understand that they should edit existing walls rather than delete and redraw them.  This was one of the biggest reasons we stopped using copy/monitor with consultants.  

[Thomas.S.Teichmann]

The idea of copy/monitor sounds enticing but from my experience it is not a feasible option in any version of Revit.

The models that we get from architects (especially in the DD phase) are usually a huge collection of warnings like overlapping walls or walls missing their target.

But even if the arch models are good there remains the big issue that Revit "sucks" when it comes to copying wall openings, i.e. openings have the wrong dimensions, are not in the right place, etc.. That means a lot of manual work is required to fix these issues.

At this point the purpose of copy/monitor becomes moot.

Our approach is to copy the arch model into ours either by "bind link" or Dynamo script. Depending on how "bad" the arch models are we have to fix them before this process.

Then we replace the opening families (doors/windows) with simplified families like doors that consist only of an opening cut. For our bigger clients we have these families saved and just load them after copying. 

Revit 2022 brought the option to hide non-core layers of walls in plans (though this feature still has a number of bugs) and that makes it a lot easier to use architect walls, provided the architect defined the wall structure correctly (but most are pretty good).

To keep track of architectural changes in bigger buildings we use Navisworks which comes as part of the AEC suite that most of us have as subscription nowadays (voluntarily or not).

If an architect requested copy/monitor I would politely ask them to deliver a model that has zero warnings and does not produce any during copying (very unlikely unless it is a simple box).