Building Fact Making - Ten Hundred Words of BIM

The web comic XKCD once set out to describe a Saturn V rocket, the vessel which took men to the moon and back, using only the one thousand most common words in the English language. As it turned out, even the word "thousand" didn't make the list and thus was born the Ten Hundred Words, or Up Goer Five, approach to explaining complex concepts.

Our industry in general, and BIM in particular, is loaded with daunting, confusing and occasionally incomprehensible jargon. What happens when we try to explain BIM to the uninitiated and apply the Ten Hundred Words principle? Well, for one thing you get Building Fact Making... And perhaps a few laughs.
With that, I present: Building Fact Making.

Building Fact Making is a computer picture of what a building looks like from every direction. It also shows you what the things it is made of are like when they work. A Building Fact Making Place is a shared place for things you know about a building forming a trusted beginning for deciding what to do with a building during its whole life; from earliest idea to when the building falls down.

Every person who helps make the building uses Building Fact Making, from the people who draw it, to the people who build it, and most important the people who own and run the building.

Building Fact Making allows the people who draw the building to share what they draw from every direction with each other much more easily. This saves them from doing things like trying to put two different things in the same place, or calling them different things on different pieces of paper even though they are the same thing, so it means fewer bad things happening. When fewer bad things happen, you can save time and money.

The same thing goes for the people who build the building, because they share their plans of where the things that were drawn will actually get built, they can stay out of each other's way and do fewer bad things that have to be done again. They can also add facts about what was built to the Building Fact Making Place, like who made each piece of the building, what exactly they made, when they put it in place, how long it should work for, how much money it took to buy it, and how to fix it when it breaks.

Then, when the owner gets the Building Fact Making Place, they can make it talk to the computer thing they use to tell them when to fix things that break and have all the facts they need to fix the building over its entire life.

Revit 2017 - Five Highlights for Owners

A new release of Revit is out and ready to be played with. I liken the release of a new version of Revit to the release of a new movie. It's fun to experience and pick out the minutiae, but rarely does it actually change your world.
Many of the features of R2017 will improve the workflow of designers and builders, some subtly, a very few potentially drastically. There are lots of articles that go in depth on all the changes, this isn't one of them. Here I'm just highlighting four changes that might be of particular use or value to owners (or what might create problems or confusion).

New Text Editor - This sounds like no big deal on the surface, but people have been demanding it for so long, I think many of us are still in shock that it finally happened. Even moreso that it appears to be pretty darn good so far (not unlike the Deadpool movie, though with far less cussing). As a designer, I'm thrilled about this addition.
As an owner, I'm slightly wary. Text gets overused and abused by many a designer, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. I'm a little concerned at how much additional misuse might result with a better tool. We'll see what happens.

MEP Duplicate Marks - No more automatic Mark numbering for Cable Trays, Cable Tray Fittings, Conduits, Conduit Fittings, Ducts, Duct Fittings, Duct Placeholders, Duct Insulations, Duct Linings, Flex Ducts, Flex Pipes, Pipes, Pipe Fittings, Pipe Placeholders, Pipe Insulations, and Wires! We typically wait nine months before recommending an upgrade to the new version of Revit for our consultants, but this feature alone may accelerate that timetable.
What this means is that in the past Revit assigned Mark values that had to be unique to things like Wires. The problem is that when you have multiple people in a model, Revit doesn't always do a good job of keeping those values unique, so it would create Warnings and Errors that needed cleanup, a common point of contention with consultants since the problem was clearly not their fault. This is particularly ridiculous since things like Wires rarely make sense to number in a Revit environment. Autodesk listened and did away with the auto-numbering. And there was much rejoicing.

Global Parameters - This feature was in 2016 R2, but it's not one I've seen anyone take advantage of as of yet. It allows a user to set a Global Parameter and apply it to a number of places. The best example I have seen is setting a corridor width, set the GP to your width, then apply it to the dimension of any corridor. Then you can change the value universally, say changing all corridors from a 5'-6" width to 6'-0".
Honestly, I'm not convinced we'll see a lot of use of this tool outside of power users, and as an owner, I'm not seeing a lot of value, but as an owner, any time I see a new way to control or manipulate parameter values, it catches my attention.

Combine Parameters - Revit calls it Combine Parameters, and it is probably intended to look like it fills the Concatenate gap. This might be the biggest feature miss for Revit 2017, the lack of concatenate in schedules has been a huge omission and Autodesk tries to address it here. Unfortunately, this tool goes only halfway. Combine only combines values in a single schedule, that value doesn't carry over anywhere else, it doesn't create a new parametric value and it doesn't work as part of a formula.
For instance, let's say an owner identifies a room based on multiple parameters, Building, Wing, and Room #. There's value in having those broken out separately, so they set a parameter for each. However, the Built in Room: Number value still has to be set. With a true Concatenate feature, Building 'A', Wing '3', Room # '2102' can easily be combined, automatically, into something like 'A-3-2102'. The Combine Parameters tool let's you show that in a single schedule, but doesn't allow you to apply it to the Room: Number value. There is still value to this tool, but it misses the primary target by a wide margin.

Licensing - I'm not going delve too far into the hopeless quagmire that is Autodesk Licensing. Just note that separate Revit discipline products (Architecture, MEP, Structure) have been done away with and all functionality is now under one roof, Revit.
Also, standalone licenses are a thing of the past, it's pretty much subscription or bust.

The First Article Owners Should Read About Revit

Luke Johnson of What Revit Wants recently reshared a post titled "The First Article You Should Read About Revit". Like most of Luke's writing it's good stuff and insightful, however it is clearly targeted at designers. But what if that's not you? What if you're a builder? Or an owner? Or what if you're a designer who finds yourself working for a particularly BIM savvy owner? The discussion changes quite a bit in those cases. Below I take the questions Luke answered and address them from the perspective of a facility owner/operator. Please feel free to share your opinions or thoughts in the comments.

When you are approaching creating a project in Revit, what sort of questions should you be asking yourself? What mindset should you be in?

Begin with the end in mind.
Do you, as the eventual owner of the facility and model understand what you are going to do with that model when construction is complete?
What information needs to be in the model for you to meet your operational needs?
What information doesn't need to be in the model, but still needs to be referenced?
Does the consultant or builder doing the design and construction understand what the owners are going to do with the model?

If the answer to any of these is No, Maybe, Kinda, I'm Not Sure or some other flavor of less than certainty, then you are probably going to have an unsatisfactory experience and result.
Think of the BIM process as a lengthy journey. If you don't know where you are trying to get to, how can you know if you are on the right path?

Revit, and BIM in general, are billed as lifecycle tools. Yet go to any presentation on those tools and the odds are low that you'll hear anything beyond the scope of the design and construction of the project and the benefits for the owner will boil down to saving time/money in project delivery. You're unlikely to hear about all of the data that can be harvested for use in operator systems. Data that can exported for GIS platforms, space management, facility maintenance, emergency preparedness, or linked with other data sources for creating operational graphics that visualize operational status, condition assessments, or scheduled maintenance.

A lot of the fault here lies with owners for not demanding more, but the subject matter experts owners hire (architects, engineers, and contractors) bear some of the burden as well for not being better informed on what the tools they are using can do for their clients. When an owner says "I want BIM", they deliver a 3D model instead of "a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle".

What mindset or thought process is counterproductive to working in Revit?

There are a number of good (bad?) answers to this question. Perhaps the most relevant is the desire among some owners to have BIM done without knowing what it means. They hear the buzzwords and acronyms, decide it's the newest thing so it must be the best, and start requiring it without being well informed on what it is and how to leverage it. This inevitably leads to a bad experience and higher costs with little to no benefit. BIM/Revit aren't some heavily codified system like LEED or an ISO certification, you don't stick a plaque on a wall pronouncing the facility as being done with BIM and call it a day. For an owner to really leverage BIM, they need to position themselves to utilize the BIM information throughout the entire life of the building before a project begins.

Perhaps the most amusing mindset I've come across was a facility owner who wanted everything to be LOD 500. 500 was the highest so that made it the best and they only wanted the best. They wanted their entire facility (which was very large) modeled to LOD 500, which would have resulted in an unusable model. That level of development would have meant modeling so much detail, the file would have been impossible to open and work with and would have been far, far more information than they would need to maintain the facility.

If you were teaching someone Revit what outline would you give them? What would you tell them to learn first, second, and so on..

I like Luke's answer to this question, but I think he misses a step or two. When someone asks me about learning Revit, the first thing I ask them is what do they think Revit can do and what do they want to do with it? If they're looking to develop a set of construction drawings, then the path outlined at What Revit Wants is a great one to take. But if they are looking to develop base facility models for a campus, create an L500 model for shop drawings, or just need to know how to review submitted models for conformance with a set of BIM standards, then a completely different approach would be appropriate. That all assumes that what the user wants to do is something that Revit is actually capable of. One facility engineer once told me he wanted to use Revit to see what equipment was running and to be able to turn it on or off remotely. That's a little bit outside of Revit's capabilities.

That doesn't really answer the question though. So, first, sit down with a Revit expert and get a realistic idea of what the program and affiliated tools actually can do. Second, establish realistic use cases, being sure to include any affected stakeholders and subject matter experts. Third, get appropriate, targeted, training for appropriate personnel.

What is a Revit trick, shortcut, or way of doing something would you wish someone would have told you long ago?

The power of Schedules in Revit simply cannot be overstated. Proficiency with Schedules is what really separates someone who is using Revit like it is CAD from someone who is using the tool as it is meant to be used. As an owner/operator, having a set of base schedules in our templates allows us to QAQC a huge amount of information quickly to see if the content developers are using the tools correctly and providing us with the information we need to maintain the facility.

As valuable a tool as they are, Revit schedules could be even more powerful (why can't we schedule the layers that make up a wall or floor?) and useful if Autodesk put in the necessary development time.

What is the most common mistake you see in revit models or building revit content?

Since owners don't typically generate much information within the models, this doesn't have an exact parallel for owners. That said, the most common mistakes owners make are echoes of earlier answers. Owners commonly don't know what to do with their models once the project is over, which means that at best they struggle to get useful facility information out of the model and at worst, they never even try, the model deliverables sit on a network or portable media and never get looked at again.

My personal pet peeve in Revit use is people who treat Revit/BIM like it's CAD. That covers a wide range mistakes, from using dumb (non-parametric) text instead of tags, to schedules made with detail lines and text. It wastes time, it wastes money, it introduces a huge opportunity for error and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how the platform works.

As far as content goes, the most common mistake I see is users who use downloaded content. Downloaded content is almost always bloated, over-modeled, over-constrained, and lacks the appropriate parameters to do what the owner needs it to do over the course of the building's lifecycle.

If you were passing by a student in a hallway and you could only impart 30 seconds of Revit wisdom on them, what would you say?

First, learn how a building operates, then learn how it is built, then get into the design (which will make more sense knowing the first two). If I still had time, I'd echo what Luke said, there's more earnings potential with a strong grasp of Revit and BIM than there is with a PhD in Architecture, provided you are prepared to stay on the leading edge of the technology. That earning potential is also higher with a general contractor or owner than it is with a design firm.

Where do you see the future of Revit, what is it's significance, and potential?

Dynamo is huge. Most presentations I've seen on Dynamo have emphasized it's use in manipulating and iterating geometries. Which is fun for a while until you realize that a very small segment of users will ever have call to implement it in a project. Dynamo's real power comes in filling in the gaps in functionality with Revit data and schedules and making the 'hidden' Revit data visible.

The second major aspect of Revit's future is integration with facility management platforms. There are a number of developers pushing out tools that smoothly transition the design and construction information in a Revit model into platforms that the facility owners, operators, and maintainers can more readily access and integrate with existing and emerging workflows. Autodesk surely recognizes that owners are outgrowing the 'BIM as buzzword' phase and are asking more insightfully about what's really in it for them. Is BIM as a lifecycle process a sincere reality, or is that just marketing? Personally, I think it started out as the latter, as marketing speak that lacked the means for fulfillment. However, as sophisticated owners have bought in to BIM (and Revit) they have demanded a higher level of data functionality and the necessary tools to meet those needs in a practical manner have begun to emerge.

There you have it. Revit is a powerful tool for designers and builders, but it's potentially even more valuable for owners who know how to leverage it.

The designer is dead, long live the DBA!

The other day I was in a training session for a database report generation platform called Crystal. As I was listening and trying this new (to me) piece of software I found myself drawing parallels and comparisons to Revit over and over again.
It was in this setting that I realized why so many designers (engineers, architects and others) have so much trouble with Revit. Nothing in their training or normal work processes has ever prepared them to work with databases, much less a database connected to their drawings.

My professional architectural design experience has almost always been in the context of Revit. Prior to that as a student I was, like most people, a CAD guy. Or more accurately a CAD and Sketchup guy. Unlike my classmates, who didn't know a database from a spreadsheet, I had worked with database-like structures in personal projects during undergrad and grad school. But for my classmates, there was just no call for them to use databases; they weren't studying to be software engineers or anything similar.

The design profession isn't much different. Databases are generally the forte of IT professionals, finance, marketing or admin. Not designers. Databases weren't their venue.

Then along came Revit.

Revit is essentially a database of building information that displays that information graphically and has a graphical model interface for adding new data entries.

Revit is still a great design tool, and it can be utilized for nothing beyond creating construction documents. But not taking advantage of its plethora of tools would be like using Photoshop only for cropping and sizing images.

So what is my point?

As designers, we have become caretakers of so much more information than we have been in the past. There is danger in this for the careless or inexperienced user. There is also opportunity for the wise, adaptable user.