BIMspot

As you finish your model and step onto the next stage of producing coordinated workshop drawings from the model you start facing challenges in coordinated annotation and document control issues which can also be tricked & parametrized to allow for more of what I call Building Information Annotation (C) . The issue I want to discuss and share with you is common in Revit documenting environment. So as we all may have noticed we have a Filled Region Tool which help as annotate/hatch with patters almost in every possible view in Revit. Except one: in sheets/titleblocks. Yes you cannot hatch or create a filled region on your titleblock. You can however do it withing the family of a titleblcock. Our team came across this issue when we were trying to mark the corresponding Zones in our Key Plan which we had on a particular project titleblocks. So the first thing we did when we realized that you can't hatch a region (or Create Filled Region) we just marked a zone by manually d...

When you get busy coordinating a huge BIM development process sometimes you really forget to pay attention to some handy tools Revit has got and get carried away looking for a complicated  solution of a "problem" that wasn't even a problem at all. However, you didn't expect that there could be a dedicated solution. That's what has happened today in the morning when I suddenly was asked by one of our modellers on how to change the line weight of a pipe color fill legend. So here is the deal. We've modeled a potable water (supply & return) in Revit and our plot scale was somewhat 1:300 or 1:500. Whereas, we have pipes of 25mm DIA, and when we place a pipe color fill legend it creates a color background much wider than the pipes all along. I started breaking my head around, switching line weights on and off didn't help. I tried google-ing to see if somebody came across the same thing but nothing. It seems that only I was really somewhat blind to n...

Let's start with one of the most required families that we need when modelling a civil or infrastructure network (external MEP). It is assumed that you (readers of this article) are already familiar with the basics of Revit family creation. Manholes . Manholes, basically drive the gravity networks like storm-water and sewer, and if you will spend some time to have that perfect family it can drive all the rest of the utility network and make everything more coordinated and emission-less. Complete Manhole Family with conditional formulas already applied.  A general rule about the manholes is that they are driven by two key Variables . • Invert Level (IL) and  • Cover Level (CL) commonly referred aslo as GL (Ground Level) And as a general rule in Civil Infrastructure models or drawings your reference level is always absolute 0.00.That gives us an idea to build our family main parameters in relations to Ref.Level which is found in all family templates. It means that...

Most probably those of you who use Revit's MEP systems for modelling civil utilities came across the problem of finding the best method to create concrete encasement for duct banks running from one chamber to another. You have most probably tried the lined based family as well, which suits good if there are no slopes along the run. But when you need the encasement to follow your ducts? In my explorations to make a reliable concrete encasement family I found Revit's conceptual massing tools very useful to create an adaptive line based family. I used Metric Generic Model Adaptive as a family template. First you need to create two points along one of the ref planes like in the illustration below then connect them using spline through points option.    Then select the line and tick the Is Reference box in the instance properties: After that select the point and click Make Adaptive button on Modify tab. Next you need to create a rig which will host th...

Hello world, and here is my first blog about BIM and my fist blog post in general. Well, I thought is unfair to work in a BIM consulting firm and not to share all the challenges and experience with like minded people.  Well let's go then. So what is BIM actually? In so many beautiful and confusing ideas about perfect BIM workflows and platforms I wanna tell my own story and b uild my i nformation m odel. I would like to wonder with you in today's technological possibilities and human factor of a BIM workflow. But first of all let me brief about my background.  Well, I started drawing when I was 3 years old. Actually, and the first two things I remember drawing with a blue pen was a rectangular shaped house front with a window, a door and a pitched roof. If I'll find one of those I'll update this post one of these days . The second one, of course was a distorted vehicle. Then I started my painting classes during my early school years. After, when I was a teenager ...