For Better Taste: Follow the Units of Measurement

A Common argument for keeping a Revit project model simple is to have everything be text and common numbers.  A 1st Grade Math teacher is crying somewhere because students missed adding units to their answers.  Revit could be used with just text and common numbers, but there are also dozens of units of measurement that are provided in Revit and just begging to be used.

Let’s suppose that Susan is now working on the crust for Grandma Jane’s Perfect Apple Pie and ran out of flour.  She needs 4 cups of All-purpose flour and sent Eddie back to the store.  The only bags that Eddie found are for 1, 2 or 5 pound bags.  How is he supposed to know which one to get?  There is a way to convert the values to determine which bag is most ideal to purchase.  Those conversions could be done on sticky notes, loose paper or even a spreadsheet.  Wouldn't it be cool if those values could be included in a Revit Schedule and the conversion be done automatically as part of the Schedule’s formatting?  Unfortunately, Revit was not developed to model apple pie recipes, so that specific problem will probably need to be figured out on your own.

Let’s imagine a more common scenario where equipment selections for a construction project are being provided in Metric, while the project model is in Imperial.  Using Project Units in Inches and keeping the dimensions in Millimeters in the Revit Family is not an issue.  When that family is loaded into the Project Model, the Project assigned to Imperial settings will automatically convert the millimeters into inches.  More importantly, units such as Flow and Temperature will do the same thing.  Liters per second flow will convert to cubic feet per minute.  Celsius Temperatures will convert to Fahrenheit.  These are all subjective to the Project Model’s Project Units settings.  The cool twist is that even a schedule can display the data in a third standard completely independent from the family or the project model settings.  This would allow for the dimensions and performance data to be shown in Imperial while working in the model, but the same information is documented in Metric on the Equipment Schedule based on how it will be purchased.  Hopefully, there is a 1st Grade Math Teacher smiling now.

So, which bag should Eddie purchase?

-Craig

www.ModelingDynamics.net

DISCLAIMER: All names appearing in this post are still fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.