MOVING FORWARD Structural analysis and design packages have the ability to export plans, elevations, sections, and 3D views showing the utilization of members such as framing. Traditionally, any members with a utilisation ratio greater than 1.0 would be shown red. Members with utilisations less than or equal to 1.0 would be coloured according to their actual utilisation based on a graduated color chart typically turning deeper shades of blue as the members become increasingly redundant. These colours are usually set within the program and cannot be changed. In order to promote efficiency in design, clients are beginning to request graphical confirmation of the structural utilisation of the design detailed on the construction issue drawings. Through the application of colours to the individual members (based on their level of structural usage), any areas of excessive structural redundancy in the frame will be apparent and allow clients to consider design modifications to improve efficiency of use. Through the intelligent use of schedules and filters within Revit, structural members can be highlighted using any chosen colour scheme based on their levels of utilisation stored as parameters within the families. Using an external plug-in program to manipulate data transfer between the design package and Revit, utilisation parameters in the member families can be populated at the click of a button based on the results of the structural design. Thus, construction drawings can be easily and quickly “converted” into structural efficiency drawings following each design revision, until such time as the client is satisfied and the design frozen. This method provides clients with a means of checking that they are not paying for an inefficient design, and because they are able to visualize this in a 3D environment, they can gain a better understanding compared with traditional 2D.
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an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage to tendering and value engineering.
To gain most benefit from scheduling, careful consideration needs to be given to: •
the information required and parameters added to families accordingly.
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sorting / grouping data in a logical way.
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the way your Revit model is constructed
Finally, not only are schedules useful for quantification purposes, they provide a powerful way of linking Revit to external software packages.
Glenn Jowett is the UK Revit Structure Leader for Opus International Consultants, based in Manchester, England. Glenn’s role is to facilitate the growth and development of Revit Structure and BIM in the UK, as well as the global business. Opus is a leading international multidisciplinary consultancy, with a network of offices in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA. Before returning to the UK, Glenn spent over three years working in the New Zealand business, Glenn can be contacted at Glenn.Jowett@ opusinternational.co.uk, and also authors a Revit blog: Revit ST. http:// revitst.blogspot.com
SUMMARY In summary, schedules should be considered as: • an extremely valuable and powerful feature of Revit. • a way of providing additional (quantitative) information with little extra effort. January 2012
Revit Structure
product focus
2010, 2012
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