I recently came across a thread on our discussion forums that was asking about customizing the Rise/Drop symbols that are shown when a Pipe or Duct has a vertical segment relative to the plane of the view in Revit, see below.
We currently provide the user the ability to choose from a number of different symbols that display these situations. These symbols came from some generally accepted methods for displaying these situations.
We do this for a reason, and it had to do with Revit MEP being a design tool and not a drafting tool. So, I set off to write a post explaining this point. When I was done, I realized that I had gone into a lot more depth on the purpose of the product (big surprise knowing me), and that it might be useful for you in my blog audience.
So I've decided to add some snippets from the thread below.
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Post from User:
Hi there Kyle.
I would like to get some control over symbols -
some of them are OK, but others need some customization to meet my
company's standards. Piping symbols are mostly OK.
On the other
hand, I would like to assign different symbols to ducts. Round ducts,
no matter what system type, would always get the filled yin yang (seems
I can't do this at this moment), and rectangular ducts would get a
"section" symbol (see the attached picture).
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Response from me:
There's currently no way to customize the display of Rise/Drop symbols.
This touches on Revit MEP's intention as a design tool and not a
drafting tool. As we design features for Revit MEP, we try and ensure
that it is capable of conveying designed intent through generally
accepted methods.
The design and development task is
significantly larger when it includes providing the ability to fully
customize the way that we convey design intent, which is really a
drafting requirement.
Ultimately our goal is to get to a point
where we support the BIM process for all disciplines and stages of an
MEP project. This requires that we can do the following:
- Model the required systems for the MEP portion of the project.
- Facilitate the calculations required for the design of those systems;
either through native calculations or interface with other applications.
- Coordinate the MEP systems with other disciplines on the project.
- Allow for other applications to leverage the data in the BIM for Upstream and Downstream purposes.
- Construction Documents that convey the designed intent of the MEP systems.
Adding
in the requirement for those construction documents to have fully
customizable graphical representations of the BIM elements is not a
requirement of the above goals, and ultimately slows our progress
towards our goal with the product.
That's not to say that we won't provide some of this functionality in the future once we reach our goal.
This
is why I asked my original question. We are glad to investigate and try
and implement functionality to allow you to convey designed intent, if
we currently do not have that ability in the application.
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I'd be interested to hear the comments from all of you on this subject, as it's an important point to understand Revit MEP's trajectory as a product.