Some Background on Backgrounds.

Managing file size in Revit must be a priority for large projects; else progress will slow to a painful pace. There are many places to manage, but for the MEP engineer, the first place to start is with the background files. The architect's files that are linked in as backgrounds are really just there for the floor plan, and model coordination. It would be fair to say that everything in the linked file is overhead for the performance of your model. So make it a minimal as possible. Delete as much out of it as you quickly can. Every byte of information you remove, saves time for each person opening the project. Delete out all of the sheets, every one of them. You're not linking to their sheets, so you're not using them. Delete them. Delete the schedules, the legends, the sections, and elevations too! If you're not linking to the view, delete it. Purge the heck out of it, till there is nothing left to purge. Obviously don't get too carried away. Make sure you don't really need something before you delete it. But the more you can delete, the better off everyone will be. The only things I usually keep in my background files are overall floor plans and RCP plans.

Don't invest too much time into this process. I have heard of people spending an hour or more deleting stuff out. Make it a quick process, where you get the most bang for your time. If you have the resources, write a script to delete stuff you know you won't use quickly. Get the process down to 5 minutes or less.  I usually get Architectural backgrounds starting around 125 megs, and can reduce it to about 54 megs.  Your mileage may vary.

Retooling the Revolution

Retooling is often a phrase we here for factories getting an upgrade to make a new model of widget, or as an upgrade to help them produce the widgets faster.  I believe the AEC industry is in the midst of retooling for the Digital Design Revolution.  Why you may ask? BIM is producing more data then we know what to do with.  We need to become better at sorting though all this data to make educated informed decisions, without drowning. We need to learn to swim though the sea of data.

The AEC industry for ages has revolved around the all mighty drawing set.  The printed (or hand drawn) set of documents that communicated to the construction trades the extents and quality expectations of their work.  This is no longer the case.  The drawing set is being replaced by digital models.  Digital models heaping with data.  We need the ability to sort though the data, gather specific bits of it to make decisions.  The authoring software usually does a pretty good job of helping us do that, when it falls short, when we need a specific task not built into it, that is when we start to drown.  This is where we need to retool.  Accessing and manipulating databases is what we don't have the skills and tools to handle. Sure many of us learned how to script for AutoCAD,  or maybe to write a macro in excel, but how many of us have learned to write a macro for Revit, or an add-in even.  How many of us have learned how perform a query on an SQL database or to link it to real objects in the Revit database? Do we need to become proficient programmers in C#, Python, Ruby on Rails, or the next hot programming language?

This is the kind of retooling I am proposing.  I don't believe we need to all become programmers before we become designers and engineers, but these are the tools of this generation.  These are the tools that will differentiate us from the competition.  Perhaps we will hire a programmer on staff, perhaps keep one on retainer like a lawyer. No matter the arrangement, programming and data management needs to be part of the tool kit for the BIM world.

Use Excel with Revit!!!

I know what you're thinking, Revit does not support importing and exporting of data with Excel. Your right, natively it does not.  So right off the bat we need to talk about add-ins.  There are several out now that you can buy to allow you to create and sync data with Excel.

Schedule Sync

BIMLink

CTC's Spreadsheet Link

Rushforth Tools

And I'm sure there are more. Each has its pros and cons.  My personal favorite is Rushforth Tools.  The cost is very reasonable, and you get so much more then just the ability to use Excel.  Personally I wouldn't use Revit without it.  

Now there are some things to know before you start manipulating data with Excel, and pushing it back into your model. For starters, every single little object in a Revit model has a unique element ID, and I mean everything. Most of the add-ins will by default create a column identifying this property. Don't mess with it, ever. There really shouldn't be a need to, but it would really confuse the software for these values to change. It is a very good property to use for keeping track of things as it does not change. 

Next, what kinds of stuff might you want to change?  The limits are almost boundless here and will likely be an entire post itself in the future. Some brief suggestions, how about shared parameters used for scheduling, or coordinating your ceiling heights with the heights of ceiling devices, or pushing CFM values from your load calculation software into the spaces, and then to the devices in those spaces. I could go on, but that's just a sampling.  What kinds of data would you like to sync with Excel?  Do you have any favorites you are already using? Leave a comment and let's discuss.

Who gets paid for coordination?

Generally speaking, the engineer is responsible for designing a system that can fit in the space provided.  Coordination is the responsibility of the General Contractor (GC).  You don't believe me? Check your contract. There will be about a 15% allotment for coordination given to the GC. Who is responsible for submitting coordination drawings to be approved? The GC. It is the engineer who is responsible to review and approve or reject them. These tables seem to have been flipped with the introduction of BIM.  On every single BIM job I have worked on, the GC has complained about not being provided a "fully" coordinated model.   Upon investigating further, the clashes were often minor and insignificant. Things I would expect to be resolved through the coordination drawing review process.  Further more, these models are much more coordinated then any of the 2D cad projects we have produced in the last 20+ years.  Why were there not the same complaints then? I believe this is an excuse for the GC to get more time and to reduce their cost of coordination.  Can or should that 15% fee be moved over to the engineer?  We are doing the work anyway.  Then would we be agreeable to taking on the increase in liability that comes with coordination? Some would say that we already are when we approve the coordination drawings. How should this contractual arrangement be revised?  There seems to be an expectation by the owner and GC that if Revit is used on a project by the design team, the model must be perfectly coordinated by the design team?