Additive Views vs. Subtractive Views

Common Problem: When I place an electrical fixture or other family category it pops up automatically in other views I would rather not see it in.

Reason: In the default Revit tempate almost every category is unnecessarily turned on in all views so the same family shows up everywhere.

Solution: Create Additive Views instead of Subtractive Views for family categories that are only used in one or two views. By that I mean, start with most family categories turned off in your new view's visibility/graphics and gradually add the categories that you want to see.

Extra Tip: If you want future new views to be additive by default, create a view template. Then, when you apply the template to a view, check the option that reads "Apply automatically to new views of the same type."

The Project That Almost Could

I feel a duty to report our failures as well as well as our successes over the course of our Revit implementation. We currently have 4 Revit projects under construction, but not all of our projects made it through the CD phase. We have one model that was started in Revit before we knew any of the limitations of Revit.

The project is an existing 30,000 square foot custom residence built in the 1920's. The task was to demolish a 1980's addition, restoring the building to it's original design, and then adding our own additions.

This project isn't as organic as Gaudi, but it did have a lot of organic characteristics. To add to the complexity, the as-built drawings we had on file were not accurate to the true construction of the existing structure because the original architect had improvised the design during construction.

Here are some of the characteristics of this project that made it quite difficult to model:

• undulating cavity walls that would often not clean up in Revit
• uniquely chamfered surrounds at windows and doors around every corner
• 3 phases with a lot of partial wall, roof, floor, and ceiling demos
• hand crafted and highly detailed vaulted ceiling designs

30,000 square feet of this added up to a project that was taking too long to model in Revit. The model is not clean enough to develop construction documents so we have passed along that task to another architect.

BIMtionary

Brandon Pike has started a new blog called BIMtionary. His posts include tiers of BIM Implementation and a Revit Implementation Checklist. I look forward to his future posts.