Gain an understanding of how to effectively manage Revit projects through an insight into clash detection and resolution between mechanical and structural aspects. This detailed analysis will provide useful strategies on how to navigate between structural and architectural models, identify obstructions, and implement corrective actions to ensure smooth coordination of your project.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates the process of identifying and correcting a class detection issue between mechanical and structural elements in a Revit project. It highlights the importance of being able to navigate between different models within the same project, in this case, the structural and architectural models.
- In the given example, a duct intersecting with a wall and a beam is identified. The corrective action proposed involves either increasing the width of the soffit or having the Mechanical team shift the duct over.
- The article also emphasizes the use of visibility and graphic overrides to differentiate between mechanical and structural models. Utilizing different colors for different models can make it easier to identify which system the issues are occurring in, allowing for more effective project management.
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Hello, and welcome to the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for Revit Project Management. In the last class, we were in the structural model and showed an example of clash detection between mechanical and structural, and in this one, we'll put that information to good use. One good thing to note here before we dive in is we've been bouncing back and forth between the structural model and the architectural model, and it's important to note that when you have one file open, you can't open any of the linked files within it in the same Revit session.
We've had to close down and reopen our files to make that possible. The view we want to examine and create a good coordination view for is this one. You can see we've got this duct kind of bumping into the beam and also hitting our wall and maybe even the ceiling a little bit.
So I'm going to go into my first floor plan and either cut a section or make sure I have one. I think I've got one here that looks pretty good, going through that area. So let's go ahead and go to that view.
You can see here it looks like maybe it's just on the edge there, but it's pretty close. This might be too tight. You can kind of see when I select the duct, you can see how it's hitting the wall beyond, and that's not good.
We want to make sure we can identify that in some sort of a view. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and find out where that's actually taking place. So I think it may be a little bit further down the line here.
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I'll move this down a little bit. And there it is right there. You can see the duct is very much so within the wall.
So two things will have to happen. We'll have to either increase the width of our soffit here, or we'll have to have Mechanical shift the duct over. So I'm going to make sure I have my Structural model on, so I'll go to my Visibility and Graphic Overrides.
And remember this was a Work Sets setting because we turned Structural off in all the other views. So I'm going to change it from Not Visible to Show. And now I can see that Structural is looking alright here.
It's kind of hanging out a little bit. So it looks like the option that we have is we're going to need to increase the width of our soffit. So another thing I'm going to do is I'm going to change my Detail Level to Fine just so I can make sure I have the correct geometry showing here.
And so it looks like that'll be our option. We're going to want to have a good view to use to illustrate that point. And so this section is pretty good, but what I want to do is I want to increase that a little bit.
So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to create a callout. And it's just going to be this area right here. And it looks like this is taking place at grid B. And let's go ahead and take a look at it on our floor plan to find out the other intersection.
So it's at grid B close to grid 5, kind of in between 4 and 5 here. We'll use that information to label our view. So I'm going to go to the Coordination view here that I just created.
And what I can do is there's a few things I can do to make this a little bit more visible. The first thing, just like in the last view, is to change it from Coarse to Fine so that we can see everything accurately. And then what I want to do is I'm going to take some of my systems and I'm going to adjust how they look in this view.
So I'm going to go to my Visibility and Graphic Overrides. I'm going to go to my Revit Links. And Mechanical, first thing I want to do with Mechanical, you can see it's got custom settings already.
But what I want to do is I'm going to go to my Annotation Categories, switch it to Custom, and I'm going to turn those off. And then I'm going to go to my Model Categories. I'm going to switch that to Custom as well.
And then I'm going to select all of these elements within the Model Categories here. And this is for our Mechanical model. And what I want to do is I want to adjust all of my cut lines.
And I'm going to make it so that everything for the Mechanical model is going to show up as a red color. So I'm going to change it from the default to red. So anything that's being cut in the Mechanical model is going to show up red.
So I should probably do the same thing with the projection lines and make those ones red as well. I'm going to do the same thing with the Structural. But instead of red, we're going to go with a cyan.
So I'll change this to Custom. I want to turn off the Annotation Categories. And then for the Model Categories, which we'll change to Custom again, and I'll go ahead and select all of those.
And we'll do the same thing. I'm going to change the projection lines. And we'll use this cyan color right here.
And then I'll do the same thing for the cut lines. And let's see what that looks like. Now all of my Mechanical is going to show up in red here.
And my Structural. Now it's a little easier to identify which system is which. So the next thing I need to do is I need to rename this view.
If you look in your project browser, you can see it's called Callout of Section 2. So I'm going to rename it. What I'd like to do, this view is not really going to show up on a sheet, but we're going to use it to create a coordination view. So what I want to do is I'm going to just start with an X so that I know it will be at the end of the set.
Underscore. And then I'll call it Clash at B, 4-5. So it's a Clash at Grid B between 4 and 5. Now we have a record of this in our model.
And what I like to do is now that I have a view, is as the project progresses and we get more updated models, I can actually check this view later on and see if things have been corrected. And if they haven't, I can continue to send this out to the consultants to have them make the corrections. And we can actually use this view to get a better look at it in 3D as well.
If I go to my default 3D view, I can hover near the view cube at the home button, right-click it, and select 'Orient to View.' This lets us orient a 2D view in 3D. It's going to take our section box and squeeze it down to our coordination view, which is section Clash at B, 4-5. So I'm going to go ahead and select that.
And it's going to adjust our view so we can see this a little bit better. And now you can see this is our section view, but in 3D. And so I can really kind of see what's going on in that whole area.
