feature focus
Cross-Discipline Revit allows marketing efforts to be more visual than prior technologies. Let’s be honest, it takes a lot to make engineering drawings attractive. Revit allows us to export 3D images and walkthroughs to better market future projects and expand on our portfolio of projects. You will notice in these images that we have applied filters to show each discipline picked apart from the same camera view. View templates are then created using these filters and are saved to the project template file. At any given time we can create the same marketing images for all future projects in a matter of minutes.
Figure 5
We still have a lot to learn, but the transition to Revit has positive benefits to all aspects of our business. lowing suit. Before long you have 80 percent of the people on board. The other 20 percent resolve themselves in one way or another; just don’t allow them to turn the tide. This process doesn’t happen overnight and will take some time.
Marketing With each office promoting our Revit Team and its capabilities, we were able to market to a larger number and broader range of clients. By increasing our exposure to a wider area, we have allowed our Revit Team members to expand their knowledge of the program and improve on our processes. This has promoted the transition of experience to the rest of our design team and expanded our BIM resources considerably. With each project we are able to build on template files, standard details, and other practices.
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Conclusion After reading several implementation stories, as many of you have, I hope that this has shed a light on some of the other potential benefits that are beyond building design. While some are further in their implementation than others, I think everyone understands that this technology is relatively new to all involved, and some have bigger obstacles to overcome than others. We still have a lot to learn, but the transition to Revit has positive benefits to all aspects of our business. Troy DeGroot began his career in 1996 as a board drafter producing structural steel shop drawings for several fabricators across the United States. He then spent 11 years as an Engineering Technician before becoming BIM Manger at Ulteig Engineers. This write-up reflects some of the accomplishments during his next 2 years as BIM Manager at Ulteig, at which time this article was written. DeGroot recently took an exciting opportunity as a Senior Structural Designer at Ericksen Roed & Associates in St. Paul, MN. He continues to advance his knowledge by being on the steering committee of Minnesota Revit User Group (MNRUG), a member of the Minnesota AIA BIM Breakfast Club and as an advisory board member for Northwest Technical Institute. Troy can be contacted at tdegroot@ericksenroed.com.
February 2011