Repost: Beyond Design - How to resolve coordination issues with BIM 360 Glue

From Beyond Design

How to resolve coordination issues with BIM 360 Glue

Some people working with or implementing BIM 360 Glue ask us about best practice for managing clashes with BIM 360 Glue. Ultimately the goal is not to manage clashes but to resolve the issues causing these. Have this in mind when working through the process outline below, as it focuses not on individual objects clashing but about issues. For example, a single duct in the wrong location can cause 100 or more clashes. 100 clashes, but really just a single issue. And issues are what your design teams need to focus on for resolution. So here's how you do that with BIM 360 Glue.

1. Start by running your clash analysis. Use the visual heatmap to identify problematic areas in your model (here's a quick video of how this works). Did you know you can get a quick metric using the 'Overview' link of all clashes? It also lets you drill down further using the automatic grouping of clashes based on the originating models, e.g. mechanical model vs. structural. This is crucial as you cannot handle 3008 clashes this week and the grouping is the divide & conquer tool that helps you tackle it.
   
   Now you don't see single items clashing, but rather groups, e.g. a duct clashing with 3 other objects. The number in brackets tells how many objects the one you have selected is clashing with. And this also gives you the single issue to resolve.
   
   
2. Create a markup for this issue. To keep track of issues, setup folders (Open, Pending and Closed). Move this markup to the open folder. As you move through the process ultimately all markups should end up in the Resolved folder.
   
3. Notify the relevant design team of at least the clash, so they can resolve the issue. If you have some particular instruction which you didn't add in your comments it will be useful to also notify of the markup. It is crucial to notify them of the clashes as they can then use the Clash Pinpoint feature inside their design application to locate and resolve the problem.
   
4. After the design teams upload new versions of the model verify if the issue has been resolved. If true move the markup to the Closed folder, if not move to the Pending folder. You can use the Pending folder to bring up all unresolved issue for review during the next coordination meeting.
   
   
5. Rinse and repeat.

I hope you found this useful to resolve design coordination issues more rapidly and retaining an auditable trail of actions to create accountability along the way!
-Thomas

Fake Dimensions - Update

For those who have asked, Daniel Hurtubise has graciously provided a sample faux dimension. Once loaded into the project, the faux dimension is a Detail Component.

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This post started an interesting discussion with a fellow Revit user (No, it was not Daniel Hurtubise) about using fake dimensions. My friend does not work in the design community, he works for a GC that also self-performs and they use Revit. Is opinion is that you should never "fake" anything, anytime. In a perfect world, where fees reflect the amount of work that goes into creating and documenting a design, I would agree.

But we don't live in that perfect world and sometimes design team members need to be creative in order to save time (and money) without sacrificing accuracy and detail. Take the example below. A detail could be created for each option, but if conditions changed, each detail would have to be updated. Creating a detail like what is shown that utilizes a table to represent different conditions or options, is a time saver. If those values in the table need to be adjusted, they are adjust once in this single detail, rather than in a detail for each option.

































I am not suggesting that a design team use fake dimensions to override dimensions of a room, rather then changing the actual locations of objects to get the correct room dimensions. What I am suggesting that you do need the ability sometime to use a different dimension value. With Revit 2008 and prior, we did not have a built in option in Revit 2009, the development team has now provided us with the ability to override dimension text.



I would like to hear what you think (including Daniel Hurtubise).

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I just started teaching an Introduction to Revit class at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas and a student who is taking a similar class at KU in Lawrence, Kansas asked me if it was possible to either override or fake a dimension in Revit. The answer is:

Override dimensions: No. Revit does not have a method that allows you to override a dimension. The parametric nature of Revit requires that dimensions be accurate.

Fake Dimensions: This is definitely possible.

Why use a Fake Dimension?
1. For one, you may want to be able to add descriptive text when the length may or may not be important.
2. You may have a project that you need to break up to place on multiple sheets. If your plans have an overall dimension, those will not display because when you crop a view, you will lose that overall dimension. With the fake dimension family, you can add an overall dimension, even though the view has been cropped.

The downside to this is that you are using a fake dimension, which requires you to manually enter a dimension value, be it a text string, numerical value or combination of both.

I'll upload the fake dimension family as soon as I figure out how to do that.

Level of Detail and Project Performance

Today I was conducting a project review of the BIM and I came across something that was having an impact on the performance of the project that I thought I would share.

Several views in the project were set to either 3/32" or 1/16" scale with a detail level set to Fine. The problem with this is that the views in question did contain and information in elements that required a Fine level of detail. Setting the level of detail to Course made an immediate impact on loading those views. So, something you might want to look at.

You might also want to consider looking at the level of detail in your families. That can be a performance killer.

Daniel Hurtubise of RevitIt has also suggested that ou also might wanna consider seting the view to coarse or medium but overwrite the display of CERTAIN elements to be fine through Visibility/Graphics.