Ceilings Need a Facelift

I’ve had it up to here (about 8′ above finish floor – HA!) with ceilings.

There are a couple things in Revit that feel like they need an overhaul, and I would like to nominate ceilings and their related functions.

First off – The structure of the ceilings for ACT.  Why a hatch?  Why can the grid not be some kind of smart element.  “That’s too much modeling overhead,” I hear someone in the backrow say.  Well, here is my response to that: first, sometimes it’s just nice to see the grids in section.  Revit Structure allows floors to add metal decks (why not roofs – ahem), and that’s pretty cool.  Seems like some of that modeling love could stretch over to ceilings on the Revit Architecture side.

Second, and this is my big grief, we sometimes find ourselves needing to do a demo ceiling plan.  Don’t ask, but sometimes we need it.  So we have had to create a new ceiling type for demo ACT ceilings.  On top of that, we have had to make a new hatch style(s) with dashed lines indicating a demo’ed grid.  It has to be a model hatch, so it will be 2×2 or 2×4, so the demo lines show different at different scale.  I hate that.  My architects have to demo a ceiling AND THEN CHANGE THE CEILING TYPE, which is something we told them never to do.

My other beef with the ceilings has to do with their interactions with room objects.  So, there’s a toggle on a ceiling instance for room bounding, right?  And it controls the height of the room when you calculate volume.  But only when you calculate volume, which they tell you not to do too often.  Why can’t the room just look for the ceiling on placement?  Why does the room have no parameter showing me its height, even when I do turn on calculate volume?  It only shows UNBOUNDED HEIGHT, which is the height I originally gave it.  Our RCP tag has room number and ceiling height.  So, it’s two tags… a room tag with number and a ceiling tag with height.  That’s stupid.  My room should be able to see how tall it is based on the ceiling height and register that.

I was hoping that 2010 might address some of these concerns, but the NDA for the Revit Beta keeps me from telling you anything about it.  So, hypothetically, I couldn’t say “No, it doesn’t look like ceilings have gotten any attention at all,” or something like that.

Small beef?  Yeah.  Silly?  Maybe.  But every time I have to explain it to someone, it takes the “I” out of BIM.

The Need for Organization In Views

I love standards.  Standards let everyone in the firm hop from project to project with ease.  Hopefully this isn’t something I have to sell you on.

Something standards related that a good BIM user needs, is organization.  Back in the days of CADD, individual file management was important, but one could muddle through a directory filled with crap and find what they needed ultimately.

With Revit, we’re mainly talking view management as a replacement for file management.  Setting up an organizational structure and standards and strong guidelines for views is crucial for your team to get the job done efficiently and with fewer headaches.  Below are some tips that we have found beneficial:

• Name views that go on sheets IN ALL CAPS.  This is a quick visual cue that the view is for printing or working.
• For jobs with multiple disciplines, create a parameter in the view that you can sub-organize view by.  We called it ‘View Types’, and fill it with “Architectural Elevations” or “Structural Plans”.  Then we create a View Browser Type that filters and groups by that parameter.  The same can be easily done for projects with multiple wings or buildings, to keep those related views grouped together.
• We have also tweaked our default view type so once a view is on a sheet it no longer shows under the Views list.  We found that at some undetermined point in design development, most people on the team start referring to views by the sheet, and not the view name.

Whatever guidelines you set up, make sure that your people stick to them, so everyone can benefit.

Good Personnel BIM Article

My deployment team has been having a hard time explaining the need for change in hiring and internal personnel as we migrate from CADD to BIM.

I found this article and it does a phenomenal job at pointing out the needs on this issue.  Well worth a read for anyone in this process right now.

Boot Camp and Phases

Second day of training wrapped up.  I always get a bit panicky, looking over my notes and thinking that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that I can cover all the material.  But we always seem to make it through.

Each time I do the class, I find myself adjusting the emphasis on certain sections.  With the economy in its current state (opposite of “awesome”), our firm has a larger percentage of renovation work than we typically have in the past.  In previous classes, day 3 of training has had a 20 minute discussion of the phasing available in Revit: “Hey, look that each element has a phase.  Neat?  Neat.  And, no, that demolish button doesn’t mean delete.  DELETE means delete.”  Tomorrow I intend to spend at least an hour on it.

We have not seen much need to go beyond the standard “Existing” and “New” phases.  Mainly the way the phase filters forces us to display things pretty much exclusively based on chronology, we just weren’t able to produce the documents we had expected.  There are workarounds, but overall, I would love to see a revamp of the phase filter system.  Instead of seeing it as “now” or “prior”, I would like each phase filter to be able to control the different phases and phase states individually.  Basically, the chart would get more columns based on the phases in the project.  Then one could select on, off or some override settings for that phase and state.

Ah, to dream.

And while I’m dreaming, a root beer float would be great right about now.

Time for Teaching

Tomorrow I’m starting three days of training for some of our architects and architectural staff on Revit Architecture.  I’ll be teaching, as I’m doing once a month now.  It’s surprising how exhausted you can get of just standing/sitting and talking for the whole day.  I am pretty much wiped when 5:00 comes around at the end of teaching day.  I know, I know.  Your heart breaks for me.

We are lining folks up to get trained and will start their first project in Revit within two weeks of training.  Most of these folks are coming from CADD, some from Sketchup (ahhh… my anger toward Sketchup in a firm’s design and documentation process will be laid out in a later post).  The shift is so drastic, that we want to make sure they are trained and then POW! jump into a Revit project.  We give plenty of support as they start working, but we have absolutely found that Revit (or our other CADD platforms for that matter) is not like riding a bike.  We will have spent significant resources getting these people trained and if they don’t use the software, they forget it.  And these are smart people.  The process is just so different from what they are used to, you need to nurture the part of their brain that it gets plugged into.

I enjoy getting the feedback and the conversations and ideas from the class.  What I don’t like is halfway through the third day when their eyes are all glazing over and they don’t answer any questions.  I don’t blame them.  I would go groggy too, if I had to sit and listen to me speak for 8 hours straight.

I also enjoy seeing the light-bulb click on for some of them.  Working in a BIM production cycle is a drastic change.  I give most of the folks three weeks of using the software before the light bulb goes on and the realization that “hey, this is cool.”  A few of the folks have the switch thrown during the class.  They’ll be peering into their monitors and a smile will slowly cross their face.

“Welcome to the party,” I think.  “We’re glad to have you along.”

Keep Your Hands Dirty

I often find that folks in an IT/CADD/BIM support role often find themselves a step or two away from some of the actual issues production folks might end up with.  It’s understandable, the economics of the situation forces us to spend time in crisis mode.  However, this shell can keep us from identifying hidden issues and truly understanding the scope of problems that our end users might find and bring to us.

With Revit, I’ve decided to attempt to keep myself a little more “in the game”.  Here and there, when I can sneak it in, I have been working on modelling our firm’s headquarters.  You have to drop it anytime someone comes in, or you get a phone call, so finding a groove is tricky, but it is definitely beneficial to discovering potential pitfalls and little gems hidden in the software.

I’ll post some of the gems and issues along the way.