Structural elements - On levels or offset ?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm new to Revit and have a dilemma that I would appreciate other people's opinions about.

After having recently started using Revit with a bit of basic training and some over the shoulder guidance from an experienced user, we have been asked by an Architect to change the way we model our structural elements.
Currently, we set up our structural models using various "levels" for our foundations, framing, floor slabs etc. and place structural elements on these levels. An Architect that we work with (who is also new to Revit) has told us that when he loads our model into Navisworks for clash detection, it causes him problems if we have too many levels in our model. The Architect wants us to only use the levels he has set up in his model (eg....finished floor levels) and then "offset" all our structure relative to the finished floor levels.

This doesn't seem to me to be the most efficient way of working but as a new Revit user I'm not sure that my view is the right one.

So, which do you think is the right way of working....
Place structure on specific levels (eg. foundation top of concrete level, 1st floor top of steel level, ground floor structural slab level, etc. etc.) ?
or
Place structural members offset from Architect's levels ?

Thanks for any input.

[L.Maas]

It is common before the start of a project to determine the grids and levels (and the location). We often determine this at the start of the project so that everybody is working with the same one (helps with linking and modelling).

And in Revit Levels are in general...Levels. In some situations we decide on in between levels (for example for split levels)

Depending on the situation we use offsets from levels or we use reference planes to host elements. We than can offset the reference plane in relation to the level.

As soon as everbody use the same grids and levels it is easy to monitor if a change has to be made, and you can easily adapt your part of the project to the change.

Nothing is really fixed, some projects are better of with a different approach. Communication between parties is key.

[Anonymous]

Definitely the major grid and level elements are set very early in the process and with the copy/monitor set up correctly we find it a pretty smooth process to monitor afterward. We primarily follow the Architect's levels and offset but have many of our own structural levels and reference planes used for our own modelling purposes. Levels and reference planes are key to correctly parameterizing BIM models to allow changes to be easily absorbed later in the project. This level/grid/ref plane hierarchy can be controlled through parameters and filters. We find it a very powerful and flexible process. If an Architect insisted on only using their levels I would push for extra compensation since changes would become cumbersome to put through on our end. I would be very hesitant to follow the Architect's request without first educating the them fully on the consequences of forcing their own inexperience with the program on others' profit margins and internal best practices.  

edit: spelling

[twebb4CYQY]

Regardless of how many levels you have I would think that the architects shouldn't be showing your levels and their levels in their plotted sheet views, just in views for coordination in the first place.  It shouldn't be an issue. 

Anyways, we went to a workflow of named reference planes in addition to the levels the architect has set.  All framing by level is hosted to each level's named reference plane.  

However, if your company standards call for Levels to be shown, ie Top of Footing, Top of Steel etc.  Put these levels on a separate workset and then the architect can turn off / close that workset entirely using Manage Worksets.

[Basam.Yousif]

Apologies for responding to an almost 3-year-old post. I'm curious now what was your experience with that project, and what method do you follow now. Did you go with the offsets option?

From my experience, levels in structural models always differ from other disciplines' levels. For the Arch and MEP models, levels are usually set at the FFL while structural levels are set at the top of slab or top of steel, depending on the structural design and type of materials (Steel\concrete).  An experienced Revit user can strategize how the levels to be used in the model(s) and how to coordinate them with the other consultants. I would make a little document on this setup, or include it in the BXP of the project.

When copy\monitoring levels (and that depends on who OWNS the levels in the project) when Arch and Str levels do not match, there is an offset parameter you can use in this case.

[Anonymous]

In response to byousif..... It's not very often we do projects with the Architect in question (I think I've only worked on one with them since my original post) and what we did was give structural members an offset from floor levels (Level 0, Level 1, etc) as they requested.

This still seems wrong to me (inefficient) and on every other project I have worked on since I have created whatever levels I think would be useful to me in order to build my structural model as efficiently as possible (Eg. Rails 200, Rails 2400, TOS 3600, etc.)

This seems to work fine to me but then again, almost all of the projects we work on do not involve sharing models because most Architects we work with are still using CAD.