The tool itself is really non-denominational, although it is still targeted at “complex building types” with specific emphasis on Healthcare, Education, Defense, and Airport market sectors. The further we got into the training and the more I have played around with it, the less it seems specific to only those market sectors. I think it can be applied to any Revit project requiring sophisticated Room Data management and content coordination. Annie Lehatto, a lead Healthcare designer observed: “CodeBook looks like it could be good for organizing a lot of things and easily inputting information without having to be in the model. It could be very useful for people like Project Managers who may not be so good at understanding how to draw things in Revit. Instead they can just input the information by picking it in CodeBook.” One of the advantages that CodeBook offers is the ability to populate the rooms with equipment and other components (e.g. Revit Families), rather than having to dig through libraries and locate a specific piece of equipment, for example. The disadvantage to this method is the time to set up all the components and libraries in CodeBook. Time well spent, but time that must be invested if you wish to have your customized planning and programming datasets ready to go as a corporate standard. Each CodeBook project requires a defined Equipment library. Once the library location is defined, the software provides three methods of importing components into your project, and assigning them to your Room or Space data: • Equipment (these are single families - *.rfa’s) • Unions (embedded families - *.rfa’s, in intelligent groupings) • Assemblies (entire room layouts of all required Equipment).
LET’S TALK TECH... The software is available in both 64bit and 32bit compatible versions (parallel to your Revit installation), but remains a native 32bit application. I would note that running all of this on my 32bit laptop, I was impressed at how my classmates on their 64bit HP desktops were easily steps ahead of me while my computer processed...and processed...and processed. That said, my laptop is a Revit and graphics powerhouse that blew the benchmark results in Revit 2009 out of the water just one short year ago. This is data-intensive software, and just like Revit, needs everything you can throw at it: your productivity is only as good as your processing power (and, well, only as good as your patience with any new software, too).
I mean: CodeBook demands that you, as a user, are familiar with the intimate details of your project and its program of requirements. Therefore, you cannot hand this off to an intern to fill in the data without having done some heavy lifting first to set up the parameters around your project based on the knowledge of a healthcare planner, for example. This release of CodeBook is Revit-compatible but it also supports various other BIM and CAD applications too. One of the first things a user does is to select the BIM or CAD system, as shown in Figure 1.
department
product review
Figure 1-Choosing the BIM/CAD software to work with.
Each project requires that you define two Library locations: Equipment and Room Data (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). As pictured below from the demonstrations we receive with the training materials, these include Microsoft Access databases:
Figure 2-Defining the location for Equipment Library.
While the engine running the databases you interact with and edit in CodeBook are powered by Microsoft Access, you do not need any experience with Access itself to utilize the software. A basic familiarity with digital spreadsheets is all you really need to have. Things like using Tab to go to the next field and other basic Windows interactions many of us take for granted are the only application skills you need to bring to the table. What you do need, however, is knowledge of your Program. Now, in an application’s review, that may sound odd to say. It’s a given, we’re reviewing a program, right? But, that is not what spring_2010
Figure 3-Defining the location for the Room Data library. www.AUGIaecedge.com
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