Figure 2
Figure 3
Initial BIM Coordination We had a BIM kickoff meeting with Revit users to discuss all aspects of BIM regarding this specific project. Kickoff sounds like a one-time meeting and you are done but we later discovered that it would be better to meet regularly to make sure everyone followed procedures correctly. We explained how worksets were set up and the reason they were set up that way. We also went over the main benefits of partially opening a model:
Default Workset Opening We also thought to ourselves, “well, if they don’t Open Specify, we can set up the model to Open with the Specify option as a default.” To accomplish this we re-created the central file (of course using the same file name and location) and selected “Specify...” under the File Save Options (Figure 4). Now they were prompted automatically with the Worksets dialog box after clicking the open button. Little by little, as people got more familiar with worksets and open specify, they seemed to embrace it. We kept progressing on the models and even though the models got larger in size, people got used to only loading the necessary worksets and the models were still running at considerable speed.
• Improved modeling speed. • Improved saving and synchronizing time. • Partially opening Worksets will only affect your local file and not the central file.
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Open Specify As the models got larger in file size, some people complained about how slow the Revit models were. The first thing we would ask was “Did you open specify?”. “No” is what most people replied. “Well, it’s only a matter of clicking the pull down button right beside the Open button and selecting “Specify...”. This brings the Workset dialog so you can specify which worksets you want to open, instead of using the default opening option. We made a picture to show them that if you are only working on the 3rd level, then you don’t need to load Level one, two, four and five. Plus you don’t need to load all the linked Revit models (see Figure 3). Some people just refused to open specify. In our position sometimes we have to be a little of a psychologist to deal with people’s personalities and attitudes. We think they didn’t want to open specify because they got a sense that they wouldn’t see everything they needed. That is a true statement IF you did not model in the correct workset, which is why we always stress so much the need to place the objects in the correct workset. They were also worried about how open specify would affect the central file. It doesn’t. If you open specify, partially loading worksets only affects your local file. It was very hard convincing them of the open specify tool but we killed negativity with creativity when we actually took a stop watch and timed how long it took to open the whole model versus open specifying only the area they were directly working on.
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Figure 4
Modeling in the correct workset In order for all this to work properly, it is critical that objects are placed in the correct workset. It seems obvious, but a lot of times users just don’t realize what workset they are working on, thus creating objects in the wrong workset. Revit 2011 has helped a
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