As I am practicing structural engineering for over 8 years now, I am always looking for new ways to improve my productivity, work efficiency, save my time and reach good quality on time in project schedule.
I started to work with 3D software few years ago, but even now, when I am advanced user and I can tell, that everything that has form can be modeled in plain Autodesk® Revit®, I still want more efficiency in it.
You can hear a lot about Revit possibilities in webinars, seminars and see project examples over the internet and you can be sure you’ll model your building with all its elements. But there is always question about the effort you required for your project completion.
As you start your work on building where you have lots of columns, beams, walls, stairs, that has to be detailed on separate drawings with all the notes and dimensions and you try to use Revit assemblies, you’ll start wondering – is this the way it should be done? Structural engineers and other building designers spend a lot of time simply creating views, placing thousands of dimension lines and placing hundreds of views on the sheets. Is this the most interesting part of engineering?
I would rather spend my time thinking about best solutions, verifications, instead of making simple mouse clicking all day, week or month.
Sure – you can always count on Revit only and go on pretty well, but if you need some additional functionality, some increase in efficiency of your daily operations, probably you’ll search for some additional tools to make it happen.
If you work a lot with assemblies, or you plan to work with assemblies in your next project, I suggest you to try
Smart Assemblies – BIM solution for Revit that will definitely increase yours or your team’s productivity. With this add-on you can quickly create assemblies, set up automatic dimensioning rules for general dimensions, hosted elements, rebars and openings’ dimensions, schedule tables, view templates and placement on sheets. It also inserts gravity point for the elements, which is also great for those who work with precast elements.
Few years ago, I was working with precast elements a lot and I first saw Assembly function in Revit 2012 – the idea looked very promising, but possibilities – very disappointing. I wish I knew about
Smart Assemblies back then – it would have saved me so much time and stress I had to overcome with my project using plain Revit.
Next time, I’ll provide you with an example project and run briefly through the drawings’ preparation using time saving
Smart Assemblies features that highly increase Revit users’ productivity. To be continued…
Related post:
Assemblies in Revit®: How to Use Them Smart. Part 2
