Efficient use of Project Modeling in Revit heavily relies are a strong foundation of standards and content. There isn't much that can be done out of the box with Revit. It can take several months to a year of content development in order to get all the components developed and working right. By that time, there may have been improvements in the equipment selections by the manufacturers, thereby making some of that content outdated. Some design firms may be moving to very simplistic representations of equipment; whether that Revit Family is a cube or a generic presentation of the model element. The problem there is in the 3D representation of an element intended to represent the spatial requirements of actual equipment selections.
The manufacturer may provide the family, but then it probably doesn't function with a Company standard other than to give the 3D geometry. A company can choose to organize all its content internally to where the files work beautifully together, but are worthless when using any externally sourced material. That can lead to an isolation effect where content updates are difficult to maintain. You’d think that relying on externally sourced content would mean giving up any hope of achieving model elements that can communicate throughout a model. To do so would mean there has to be some form of universal standard that is not meant to represent any one firm, manufacturer or method of modeling. The MASTER SHARED PARAMETER
LIBRARY and LABELING CONVENTION are designed to do just that. Providing a broad standard where internal content can work side-by-side with externally sourced content.
So, what kinds of model content are being referred to here? Revit Families, Live Schedules and Tags by Category that extract information from the Model Elements. What’s a ‘Live’ Schedule? That is a term for a Schedule in Revit that is populated by Model Elements in the Project Model that is performance data driven by conditions in the systems of that model. The Revit Families built around the Master Library are developed to work in conjunction with the Live Schedules to drive the data and information throughout the model. The Tags by Category Annotations are designed to extract that information based on what is tagged and provide it in plan views for ease of documentation. Properly formatted Tag Families require very little custom formatting.
Revit Families can be preloaded in a Template or organized in the Library Folder. It is easy to know where one is saved, if you are the user that saved it. Finding a family, and not being the person who developed it can be the true test of folder organization. Another hindrance to using File Folders for families is not having a good thumbnail preview of the family. If you don’t know the name of the file, it can be hard to find the right one without opening up multiple families.
Having a visual method of searching for content, organized in groups by category also helps locate the desired content. A Library Model is a Revit Project File set up for Worksharing, that contains all of the company and department content loaded into it and is visually searchable. Instances of model elements are placed in Views and Details can be organized in Drafting Views. Model Elements and Schedules can be tested in the Library Model for function and standard aesthetics. To get a family from the Library Model into a Project model, either 'Edit Family' and 'Load Into Project' or simply use the Operating System Clipboard (Ctrl C, Ctrl V). Drafting Views and Schedules can be transferred using 'Insert View From File'. More efficiently, Sheets can be developed with common content for quicker and clean transfer of content. Pulling Sheets using 'Insert View From File' will carry across all Drafting Views and Schedules assigned to the sheet.
To keep the Project Template file size down, most content that is exclusive to one discipline or not used every project can be organized in the Library Models and transferred as needed. Utilizing a Library Model will also provide a means for many personnel to provide content into the model for Standards development and control of those Standards. Apologies for not having many photos or screenshots. Please accept this cute baby bunny rabbit instead.
-Craig
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