Revit Equipment in Action

Just a little unsolicited plug for a friend's work in Revit. Who says Revit equipment families can't be "sexy"? :) Nice work Taylor!

Dept. of Workarounds - Revit MEP for Interiors?

I got an email from a past student this morning asking if there was some way to get the Copy/Monitor feature to work for Rooms. As an interiors firm they do most of their work in a separate model and this is a bit inconvenient when it comes to creating equipment schedules and report the location (room) information. Once upon a time Revit MEP had a Copy/Monitor that included Rooms. They replaced that with Spaces and HVAC Zones. These spaces are aware of rooms in a linked project.

See where I'm headed?? I can't copy/monitor rooms but Revit MEP can keep spaces in sync with rooms...soooo...uncomfortable workaround ahead:

What if "your" firm uses Revit MEP instead? You'd be able to link the architecture model in, places spaces where their rooms are.

 Once you've got Spaces where their Rooms are you can use the Space Naming Utility to keep the names and numbers in sync.

This tool is available from Autodesk Subscription though I can't imagine why it isn't just part of the software yet.

Equipment schedules can report Space Name and Number instead of Room Name and Number - though we'd keep them in sync and nobody but "us" would be the wiser?

What's the penalty to do the work in Revit MEP? No site or structural tools and a different interface layout than a user with RAC experience is used to. The lack of beams or columns might be a bummer, maybe not? It does beg the question, "Why isn't there a better way for firms to collaborate between their respective firms?" Well, not yet anyway. The "Xmas" wish list is a lot bigger than "Santa" has time and "elves" to prepare and deliver each year.

I created a short video to describe what I'm suggesting might suffice...mileage may vary...or you can listen and watch here.

Equipment Elevations

Revit MEP focus again - Trying to determine what the correct elevation for equipment can be awkward when each connector is at different elevations. Sometimes a VAV, (variable air volume) or AHU, (air handling unit)or RTU (roof top unit) has connectors at really convenient (meaning really inconvenient) elevations that don't seem to relate well (or at all) to the nice clean elevations, like 9'-0" or 10'-6", that you've chosen for your duct or pipe runs.

By the way, I added the words for the acronyms for my mother. I know my typical readers know what they mean but she reads this blog too sometimes and its bad enough that most everything is gibberish anyway but I have to use acronyms too?!?

What I do is sketch a short piece of duct/pipe from a connector on the equipment so that I can cheat and use the offset parameter of the duct/pipe to raise the equipment to the correct elevation that I need (Video?).