Revit Geek

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Revit and the National CADD Standard

Many Architectural & Engineering firms have spent years if not decades creating and maintaining the office CAD standards. Many firms have adpoted the National CADD Standards and invested time and money into training.

Now here comes Revit. Take all that time and money and throw it into the trash. Just completely forget all of it, Right? During the past 3 1/2 years of using Revit not one person I have met has discussed what to do with managing Revit. Shall I as a CAD manager just turn a blind eye and let our users manage there own naming of their views, families and sheets?

I was ask to assist some of our staff with a Revit project for a day and was shocked at the missuses of the view names. They just made it up as they went.

"partialfloorplanonthenorthsideofbuilding" or some weird name.

If you are the only person working on a project go ahead and name your views any way you want. But when you start working in larger office with many people on a project and that team keeps on changing then you need consistency throughout the office.

Lets start with some examples based on the NCS:
Floor Plan = A-FPxxxxxx
Site Plan = A-SPxxxxxx
Demolition Plan = A-DPxxxxxx
Elevation = A-ELxxxxxx
Section = A-SCxxxxxx
Details = A-DTxxxxxxx
xxxxxx = User Defined

After you start naming your views you need change the way your browser sorts the view names. I suggest sort by view name (first 4 characters).

Give this a try you will find that your staff will enjoy the familiarity of how they did it in CAD.

Setting Correct Expectations

Before anybody starts down the road “Office Revit Migration” there are a few rules to follow with reguards to management.

1. Print out sample Revit drawings and compare them to current in-house drawings. Make sure management sees the differences (i.e. Lineweight, Fonts, Tags….). They need to know upfront what to excpect and what not to expect. So many times I have had PM’s ask for something to be done without realizing or caring what a challenge this will be. Lets not give them a shock when it too late.
2. You must have a Project Manager (PM) involved from the beginning. Pick a project or pick a Project Manager that is not know for fire drills. NO FIRE DRILLS on your first project. Again, PM’s will ask for the impossible at 4:55pm Friday. If they understand Revit’s strengths & weaknesses maybe they will think twice.
3. Pick Project Architects that believes that the glass is half full. Some PA’s are just looking for failure. Stay far away from them. I don’t care how good they are at using ADT, AutoCad. A pessimist will bring any good project down. I would put they at the bottom of my migration list.
4. Show the PM’s what Revit drawings look like at Skematic Design Level, Design Development Level then Construction Document Level. What a project looks like changes during the different stages (SD,DD,CD). This will look different than what they might be used to using the other software.
5. Team tasks will change from Autocad to Revit. No longer will teams be broken up based on drawing files. Now we biuld teams with a focus on the model. Some will work on "Shell & Core" and others on "Interior Floor Plans" and other on "Detail & Drafting Views".
6. Which Software is the right one. As our team migrates to Revit there is no need to switch everyone at once. Our designers are still using SketchUP & VIZ for pre-design. Some drafters are assisting for a short time using AutoCAD for drafting assignments.
   

This is only a start. This list will contiue to grow.

Todd Behning

President Revit User Group of Nebraska

todd@therevitgroup.com