Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Dept. of Unfair - Revit MEP - Interference/Insulation

Justin wrote to me via a comment earlier today in another post so the inspiration for this post goes to him, thanks!

He wrote:

I've run into a little quirk and would like to pose the question. I'm trying to do multiple discipline coordination and ran into this problem. When we have a duct (Revit MEP) and use the insulation parameter to add onto it, "interference check" doesn't recognize a clash with only the insulation. Is this normal? Is there a workaround? As soon as the wall/beam collides with the duct itself, the "interference check" recognizes the clash. Any insight into this is appreciated. Thanks!

I replied. "Yes, that has been my observation as well, sorry!"

This one is insulation "being interfered with":


This one is the insulation and now the duct too:


I recommended that they contact Revit support to file a support request so that they either get another or get one if by chance they haven't already encountered the issue.

Yes, methinks it is "unfair"! Insulation deserves the same credibility that ducts get in Interference Check. Even better Interference Check ought to be "smart" enough to distinguish between a "hard" conflict and a "soft" conflict. My two tarnished pennies!

2 comments:

GeoffB said...

Clearly the Interference Check needs more intelligence.

As a workaround could not the family be modified to include a clearance zone? I’ve heard of people doing this with plumbing fixtures to ensure code compliance. I have not (yet) tried it myself.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately the duct family is a system family, therefore you are unable to edit the family. For now we'll probably just make the duct large enough to include the insulation so that "interference check" catches it. We may add a parameter to calculate the actual duct size (- the insulation).
JB