Worth 1,000,000 Words

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words....I guess that means that a model must be worth 1,000,000 when we're talking about Revit.

A while back, after I became the Product Manager for Revit MEP, I set out to build a MEP Model to facilitate a number of end goals:

• Becoming more skilled on the Revit Platform, because I am relatively new to Revit in general.
• Becoming more skilled with Revit MEP as a tool, because I need have a strong understanding of the application.
• Identify areas for improvement.  I wanted to see what opportunities I uncovered as part of the modeling and design process.
• Develop a model to showcase some of the features of Revit MEP.

Well, after countless hours of work, I figured I'd release the model out into the "wild" for you all to investigate.  This will be my holiday gift to everyone.

Download it here -> Urban House MEP

Nothing's perfect in the model, but it does contain pretty much all major building services, outside of lighting, as I haven't added that yet. 

A couple of things to check out:

• Use of View Templates and View Filters - I spent a huge amount of time setting up all of these, but once I did it's very easy to create a new view and achieve the desired appearance.  Using the Transfer Project Settings functionality I can move these to other projects, or better yet I could have done this work in my Project Template before I even started the Project.
• Schedules - I added a few different schedules that use our Embedded Schedule and Conditional Formatting functionality.  I haven't populated enough Parameters to produce Production Level schedules, but you might find some of the grouping and calculations I've used interesting.
• Analytical Model - I've set up the model for Heating & Cooling Load Calculations, including defining the Energy Analysis Parameters.
• Use of Modeling Views - In order to maintain the correct appearance on Sheet views, I created Modeling views, which allowed me to use the Wireframe Model Graphics Style, while still maintaining the Sheet views, which used Hidden Lines and contained all of my Tags.
• Sheets - I made some basics sheets for a few disciplines.  Nothing special here, except for maybe the Title Block....
• Sloped Piping - I'm no Public Services Engineer, so I'm sure my design violates everything holy to that trade, but nonetheless there's some sloped piping in there for my drain systems.  I had to get intimately acquainted with the Trim, Connect Into, and Align tools to successfully model those systems.  I've got a partially completed post on those tools for modeling.  Expect that in the future.

Comments

[James]

Thanks for the model. It was very helpful to go through it and see how everything is set up.

[Keith]

I was wondering if you had a chance to do any vent piping for the plumbing system? I noticed there wasn't any on this model. Am i able to copy any families out of the revit file? i could use that Fire Department Connection and some of the other plumbing outlets. Is there a place to download these families?

[MEP Administrator]

I plan to update the model for the upcoming 2009 release, I'll take a look them at the vent piping.

You are welcome to copy any of the files out of the project. Just select them, choose to "Edit Family" and then save to your hard drive.

All of this content is publicly available through our Content Extension and OOTB content for Revit MEP 2008.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Chris Wade]

Well, it doesn't help, as it doesn't provide us with the Cast Iron piping & fittings that we need, no vents, traps, etc. on Plumbing.

Doesn't meet California Building code in anyway, so no real help show how to make that work either.

[MEP Administrator]

Chris,
I guess the glass is half empty for you then.

I never intended this model to be a fully accurate model per California code (nor did I make that claim). I simply intended it to be a good example of project setup, view setup, etc.

Kyle