Increasing Autodesk Revit Productivity for BIM Projects: A practical guide to using Revit workflows to improve productivity and efficiency in BIM projects

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Increasing Autodesk Revit Productivity for BIM Projects

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Fabio Roberti:

To my wife Lucie and my daughters Evelyn and Hellen for their unbounded support and love while I was writing the book. Thank you to my parents for the love and education. I also would like to thank Packt Publishing for the opportunity to write this book.

Decio Ferreira:

First, I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Maria Joao Pinto and to my big A (Andre) and SMALL a (Afonso) for their support, guidance, inspiration and love – this is for YOU. No less important are all my friends, colleagues, students, readers, and followers for the continuous questions, feedback, ideas, problems, and shares that helped shaping my career. A special THANK YOU to my parents for everything that I am. And I would like to express my gratitude to the entire team at Packt Publishing for this opportunity and for their support and collaboration.

Contributors

About the authors

Fabio Roberti

Fabio Roberti is a Regional Practice Technology Leader (EMEA) and Associate at HKS Architects, where he develops and implements the digital strategy to consolidate processes and workflows to enhance project deliverables.

He supports BIM processes in innovative ways to improve technology adoption with a thorough understanding of British Standards and the ISO 19650 framework and has many years of experience using Revit across all design stages.

He holds a Master's degree in Architecture, the Autodesk Revit Architecture Professional Certificate, and a BIM Level 2 Certificate from BRE Academy. Fabio has presented at multiple conferences, including Digital Construction Week and Autodesk University in London and Las Vegas.

His passions for digital technology and teaching others new skills helped him achieve his company's objectives and support many colleagues over the years. Besides BIM excellence, Fabio is interested in the rapidly advancing artificial intelligence sector, programming, and technologies that support superior construction deliverables.

LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/froberti

Twitter: @F_Roberti_

Decio Ferreira

Decio Ferreira, with over 20 years of professional experience as an Architect, is a BIM and Design Systems BIM Coordinator at Foster+Partners, where he is responsible alongside with his team for developing and implementing standards, methods, and procedures across the practice. He is a strong, committed individual who thrives when developing and researching BIM strategies, workflows, and approaches to improve what he believes to be the most important: collaboration.

He holds three BIM certifications: BIM Level 2 Fundamentals and BIM Level 2 BS1192-2 Project Information Manager and Task Information Management, both from BRE Academy, and BS EN ISO 19650-3:2020 from BSI, both in London. In terms of software, he has worked with Revit since 2000 and holds Autodesk Revit Architectural, Structural and Mechanical Professional Certificates (since version 2011), along with an AutoCAD Professional Certificate (since version 2005), and is an Autodesk Certified trainer.

He lectures at several academic institutions as a guest lecturer and actively lectures at NossoBIM on the International Master BIM Manager program and also at Polytechnic Institute ISEP (Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto), providing a high level of expertise in the BIM software training field.

Decio has presented at multiple conferences, including at Autodesk University in Las Vegas and Sao Paulo. Decio is passionate about photography, planes, and traveling, which allows him to contact, learn about, and understand new cultures and different lifestyles. For him, there is nothing more important than his family!

LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/deciosantosferreira

Twitter: @decioferreira

About the reviewer

With a strong focus on quality, Nuno Araujo Nogueira – a Portuguese architect, born in 1978 – has a keen interest in the science of building technology, including standards, workflows, and BIM strategies. A BIM manager with over 15 years' experience managing projects in Portugal, Kuwait, and Egypt ranging up to $1Bn in value, and leading multicultural teams locally and remotely.

Although his main working tool is currently Navisworks, he has been using Revit since 2007, which he uses exclusively to develop complete projects.

Currently, he is the PMC BIM manager at the largest archaeological museum in the world – the Grand Egyptian Museum. Previously, he was the Main Contractor BIM Manager of an iconic supertall building in Kuwait – the National Bank of Kuwait Headquarters.

Table of Contents

Increasing Autodesk Revit Productivity for BIM Projects

Contributors

About the authors

About the reviewer

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the example files

Download the color images

Conventions used

Get in touch

Reviews

Section 1: Enhancing Your Productivity in Revit with Data Management and Templates

Chapter 1: Introduction to Productivity in Revit

What you should know about Revit productivity

Computer maintenance

Always use the same Revit update release

Revit's recommended settings

File size

Family creation

Model groups

In-place families

Arrays

Constraints

When using a worksharing environment

Splash screen

Choosing the right tool

What is the best workstation for Revit?

Desktop or laptop?

A fast processor

The best graphics card

Computer memory (RAM)

A fast hard drive

Overview of BIM implementation

BIM and the Revit training scheme

Assessing staff knowledge

Identifying the current training process

Determining the training obstacles

Defining the training budget

Identifying in-house experts

Establishing a process to measure progress

Identifying resources

Training customization

Summary

Chapter 2: Project Data Management

Critical data to start a BIM project

Appointment or Contract

Exchange Information Requirements (EIR)

BIM Execution Plan (BEP)

BIM Execution Plan (BEP) – Pre-contract

BIM Execution Plan (BEP) – Post-contract

Digital data to start a project

BIM documentation overview

Client documents

Project team documents

BIM standards and guidance

Project functions

Appointing Party (Client)

Task Team Manager

Task Information Manager

Information authors

Interface managers

Information Management

AEC UK BIM Protocol

Strategic – BIM Management

Management – Coordination

Production – Modeling/Authoring

Asset Management

COBie

Interview with George Stevenson, Managing Director at ActivePLAN

Establishing an Action Plan to start a BIM project

Action Plan to manage project data

Summary

Chapter 3: Revit Template and Standards

Technical requirements

How to create a Revit template

Starting a Revit template

General settings

Views and sheets

Graphic standards

Annotation standards

Model content

Summary

Section 2: Setting Up Revit Projects Efficiently and Exploring Core Functionalities

Chapter 4: Starting a Revit Project Efficiently

Technical requirements

Overview of Revit coordinate systems

Revit internal origin

Challenges of coordinate systems

Starting a Revit project and setting up the project coordinates

Setting up the Revit project and coordinates

Summary

Chapter 5: Core Revit Functionalities

Understanding schedule management

Basic Workflow

Advanced Workflow

Keynote for the project specification

Keynote types

Annotating drawings with Keynote

Design Options

Revit Phasing

Phase Filters

Phase – Graphic Overrides

Displaying multiple phases from Linked files

Using Scope Boxes

Rotating a Scope Box

Worksharing

How to create a Revit Central file

How to create a Revit Local file

Best practices for Worksharing

Drawing production

Summary

Section 3: Adding Visualizations and Dashboards to Your Data

Chapter 6: Visual Programming with Dynamo

Technical requirements

Introducing Dynamo

Working with Dynamo

Expanding Dynamo

Dynamo packages

Expanding Dynamo with Python

Automating sheet creation

How to use Dynamo Player

Best practices

Summary

Chapter 7: Dashboard Analyses with Power BI

Technical requirements

Introduction to Power BI for Revit

Installing Microsoft Power BI Desktop

Starting Microsoft Power BI

Working with Microsoft Power BI

Exporting and importing data from Revit to Power BI

Connecting Revit to Power BI: An introduction to visualizing model data

Analyzing Revit data with Power BI

Analyzing Revit data with useful workflows in Power BI

Summary

Section 4: Collaborating with Consultants and Plugins and Improving Revit Performance

Chapter 8: Collaborating with Consultants

Strategy for collaboration

Interview with Ricardo Farinha, Marzia Bolpagni, and May Winfield

Technology for collaboration using Revit

Copy/Monitor and Coordination Review

Coordination Review

Shared Views

Design coordination and clash management

Clash management

Summary

Chapter 9: Enhancing Productivity with Plugins

Managing Revit plugins

Revit Autodesk App Store

Let's learn about security!

Removing Revit plugins

Creating Revit plugins

Revit plugins

Productivity plugins

Visualization plugins

Summary

Chapter 10: Improving Performance

Revit modeling best practices

CAD import best practices

Views and sheet management

Modeling

Revit content management

Third-party families

Overmodeling families

CAD formats imported into families

Avoiding complex shape modeling

Defining element visibility settings

Flexing families

Optimizing Revit's performance

Keyboard shortcuts

Warnings

Compacting a Revit file

Auditing a Revit file

Disabling plugins in Revit

BIM 360 best practices

Summary

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Preface

Revit enables architects, designers, engineers, modelers, Building Information Modeling (BIM) coordinators, and BIM managers to create BIM models and analyze intelligent data to improve design and construction. BIM has promoted a transformation in the engineering and construction industries where information is at the core of a methodology that improves productivity, providing several benefits in comparison to the traditional 2D CAD process. This book takes a hands-on approach to implement this new methodology effectively.

Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, this Revit book begins by explaining the principle of productivity in Revit and data management for BIM projects. You'll then understand the primary BIM documentation to start a BIM project, including the contract, Exchange Information Requirements (EIR), and the BIM Execution Plan (BEP/BXP). Later, you'll learn how to create a Revit template, start a Revit project, and explore the core functionalities of Revit to increase productivity. Once you've built the foundation, you'll learn about Revit plugins and use Dynamo for visual programming and Power BI for analyzing BIM information.

By the end of this book, you'll have a solid understanding of how to increase productivity in Revit and will be able to apply multiple workflows in your project to manage BIM efficiently.

Who this book is for

This book is for architects, designers, engineers, modelers, BIM coordinators, and BIM managers interested in learning Revit best practices. Increasing Autodesk Revit productivity for BIM projects will help you to explore a methodology that combines information management and research for quality inputs when working in Revit.

This book is also designed for individuals who want to optimize their daily work in Revit to produce more in less time. The hands-on approach to improve your efficiency comes with useful explanations, which will step-change your productivity.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to Productivity in Revit, explains how to combine information management principles and the best Revit practices to improve productivity. It also provides the Revit recommended settings and an overview of BIM implementation.

Chapter 2, Project Data Management, covers the critical data when starting a BIM project and gives an overview of the appointment, BIM documentation, project functions, asset management, and establishing an action plan to start a BIM project.

Chapter 3, Revit Templates and Standards, explains how to create a Revit template and manage graphic standards.

Chapter 4, Starting a Revit Project Efficiently, provides an overview of Revit coordinate systems and explains how to start a Revit project and set up the project coordinates.

Chapter 5, Core Revit Functionalities, explains how to improve productivity in Revit with schedule management, using keynotes for specification, design options, Revit phasing, scope boxes, work sharing, and drawing production best practices.

Chapter 6, Visual Programming with Dynamo, provides a basic knowledge of Dynamo and demonstrates the importance of mastering this application to increase efficiency in Revit.

Chapter 7, Dashboard Analyses with Power BI, explains the process of exporting and importing data from Revit to Power BI and analyzing data with Power BI.

Chapter 8, Collaborating With Consultants, explores strategies for collaborating with consultants and provides information about the Revit tools to enhance Revit collaboration, such as Copy/Monitor, Coordination Review, and Shared Views.

Chapter 9, Enhancing Productivity with Plugins, teaches how to manage Revit plugins and discover the most used Revit plugins to increase productivity in your projects.

Chapter 10, Improving Performance, explores additional information for improving performance in Revit, including the modeling best practices, content management, optimizing Revit performance, and BIM 360 best practices.

To get the most out of this book

You will need to have access to Revit 2021 or later versions of this software for most of the chapters. The information provided in this book can be applied to any future Revit version because the explanations cover many principles of productivity not based on a specific Revit version.

Some chapters will also require you to have access to the following software: AutoCAD, Dynamo BIM, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Power BI.

The chapters are divided into specific areas to improve productivity, and you can explore the book as required. Once you start to read a chapter, you will see how it is organized to make it easy for you to follow and practice the content provided.

The book was designed to give you a hands-on approach to improving your efficiency with useful explanations, which will step-change your productivity.

There are no prerequisite knowledge or skills required to follow this book. However, having a basic understanding of Revit would be helpful.

Download the example files

You can download the example files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/-Increasing-Autodesk-Revit-Productivity-for-BIM-Projects. In case there is an update, it will be placed on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781800566804_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: Type the parameter name Area Percentage.

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: In the Sorting/Grouping tab, select Sort by: Level.

Tips or important notes

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You will find QR codes to facilitate access to websites while you are reading the book. You can use the camera from your mobile device to scan the QR code and open website links or visualize images.

An example of these QR codes is as follows:

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

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Section 1: Enhancing Your Productivity in Revit with Data Management and Templates

In this section, there are the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Introduction to Productivity in Revit

Chapter 2, Project Data Management

Chapter 3, Revit Templates and Standards

In these chapters, you will learn about the basic concepts of productivity with Revit and the best practices to initiate a Revit project with the right information and a good Revit template.

The following topics will be explored:

Combining information management principles and Revit best practices

Recommended Revit settings

An overview of BIM implementation

Critical data to start a BIM project

An overview of the appointment and BIM documentation

Establishing an action plan to start a BIM project

Creating a Revit template

Managing graphic standards

Chapter 1: Introduction to Productivity in Revit

We are living in the Information Age (also known as the Digital Age), and digital transformation is changing businesses and people by encouraging them to rapidly adopt new technologies and processes.

Revit is an authoring software tool that is used for Building Information Modeling (BIM); here, the most valuable asset is the information you add to the Revit model.

Information is KING; however, managing information and knowledge is POWER!

You might already be familiar with Revit, but the combination of information management principles along with the best Revit practices can create a powerful combination to improve your productivity in BIM projects.

This chapter will provide you with knowledge of how to improve Revit productivity and also increase your performance when working with BIM projects from smaller to larger scales.

We will also explain the importance of selecting the right tool for the task that you need to perform, cover the best practices of BIM implementation, and provide a strategy of how to for creating a training scheme for your company.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

What you should know about Revit productivity

Choosing the right tool

An overview of the Revit implementation

The Revit training scheme

What you should know about Revit productivity

Productivity in business is a significant factor when it comes to the performance of a company, and increasing productivity is the process of working smarter in a predefined time frame to match your project deadline.

It is essential to define productivity and gain a better understanding of how you can measure it in your daily activities when working on multiple tasks and utilizing Autodesk Revit, too.

Productivity can be defined as a process to measure a production against efficiency and convert inputs into outputs. This process applies to a machine, factory, or a person, where the results can help companies to take operations-based and investment decisions.

There are multiple methodologies that you can use to measure productivity; the basic formula is output divided by input, which is equal to productivity:

Output ÷ Input = Productivity

The methodologies used to measure productivity depend on which sector your company is involved in, and we have listed a few examples next.

Here are some productivity methodologies:

Time management

Tasks completed by the workforce

Personal performance

The ratio to manufacture a product

We are going the explore the time management methodology to improve productivity and performance when working with Revit. You can use these principles in any task that involves digital production.

The critical factor when it comes to improving productivity is to have quality and precise inputs producing your model and sheets before you start to work in Revit.

You may be quick when it comes to completing a specific task in Revit, but without quality inputs, there is a risk that you will have to redo the work, which will reduce the overall productivity.

Our time management methodology to improve productivity in Revit is based on quality inputs for digital production. This methodology will allow you to be more efficient in Revit and become a team player who meets every single project deadline.

The first step in this methodology is to research quality inputs. These can come from your company, coworkers, multiple companies within your project, and, ultimately, the client who is the main stakeholder.

Once you have established your quality inputs, you can start working in Revit to produce your model and drawings. The following examples will help us to demonstrate this process.

Example 1: Setting up a Revit project