Large Projects in REVIT - Information Compilation

I am getting ready to do a pretty large project using Revit.  Since i generally spend more time engaged in 3d monkey-business, rather than setting up projects, I knew i needed to do some research.

As I poked around on the web, I saw the same 2 questions over and over:

The Pessimists: "Can REVIT do large projects?"

or

The Optimists: "What are the setup techniques for a large project in Revit"

I gathered alot of very helpful data and i think i am off to a pretty good start.  In the spirit of peace and love, I wanted to post links to all the document's i found because it might be helpful to others.

AU 2006 - Techniques for Managing Large Projects in Autodesk® Revit®.pdf - Handout for AU Presentation by James Vandezande - Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

AU 2008 - Managing Large Projects in Revit® Architecture.pdf - Handout for AU Presentation by Lonnie Cumpton - BIM Traininer, Friedmutter Group

AU 2008 - Managing Large and Complex Revit® Models.pdf - Handout for AU Presentation by Erleen Hatfield – Thornton-Tomasetti

AU 2008 - Collaboration and Large Project BIM.pdf - Handout for AU Presentation by Elizabeth A Chodosh & Gary T McLeod – Cannon Design

AU 2009 - Chaos__Multidiscipline, Multi-Firm, Multi-Location.pdf - Handout for AU Presentation by Eric Kuszewski + Eric Mitchell + Liz Raycroft - KlingStubbins

Sharing the Work in Revit - AECbytes Tips and Tricks by Bill Knittle - Synergis Design Applications Engineer, Building Solutions  This is a really thorough explanation of worksets.  Its a little old but the fundamental concept is explained quite well.

36 Best Practices for Large Projects in Revit  - Concise and to the point blog post from Revitize

And last, a paper from the Mothership about getting Revit to work real good:

Autodesk Revit 2010 - Model Performance Technical.pdf - Starts with a section on system and network setup but then gets into some very good guidelines for model setup and modeling techniques for better performance

To those who actually did this work, i offer my thanks.  It has helped me alot and i hope others will find this compilation helpful as well.

And finally, some ridiculous pictures:

The Wackiest Olympics Ever

Have you guys seen this monkey business? The 2012 London Olympic Mascot's will be....these guys!

Full story is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/19/london-olympics-2012-mascot

London Olympics 2012: Meet Wenlock and Mandeville, drips off the old block

Organisers have unveiled their mascots – creatures supposedly fashioned from droplets of steel used to build the stadium

...With a metallic finish, a single large eye made out of a camera lens, a London taxi light on their heads and the Olympic rings represented as friendship bracelets on their wrists, they resemble characters dreamed up for a Pixar animation....

As if the logo design of Lisa blowing Bart wasn't bad enough...

 

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and with that in mind...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

VOTE TO GET MY CLASSES INCLUDED AT AU NEXT YEAR!

Go here:

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Search for speaker Lazarus, Philip (because that's what it sez on the troublemaker's driver's license)

Pick my classes and  

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I am not above bribery either so, 

If elected, i promise to bring great, exotic prizes to give away!

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PLEASE HELP!

Can I go blind from using WORKSETS by myself?

I work solo alot and i don't mind a bit. I get to do alot of interesting work that i am quite passionate about it. I get to explore many different avenues and abilities of REVIT that would be difficult if i was tied to the monogamy of a single project. I get to spend big chunks of time, looking at BIM-Porn on the internet and getting paid for it (BUILDZ is always soooooo sexy...I love Zach's deep voice in his videos..)

One of the consequences of pounding it out alone though is that i have never really had reason to play with 'worksets'...until I got this wacky model come across my desk the other day:

My job was to extract the grids from all the orange panels in the interest of structural analysis and downstream manufacturing. The model had come from the architcet with a whole bunch of worksets and all the facade panels were grouped together....easy enough to isolate, but still too damn many to work on all at once. So here is what i did.

First i picked the Panels i wanted to keep together and i put them in distinct worksets.

After the the worksets were created and the panels isolated, I turned the panels into a group and then exported them by right-clicking over the name in the GROUPS area of the project browser (process shown shown in the next 3 images).

and then BANG! I have an exported model of just the pieces I want.  INDO-BOY The API-Genius wrote me an add-in to pull the model lines out of the curtain grid.  Add some dimensions to check the modulation against the Archi-documents, export to DXF so my engineers can do the analysis in their software, and i am on the plane to Phuket by 6pm...

I am not afraid to admit that i use worksets all alone...by myself....and still haven't found any hair on my palms!

Out of curiosity, do i have ANY female readers (other than Lira)?  Somehow i doubt it.....I have been wondering if we could put together a Ladies of AU Calender this year....but somehow i think that would be a long shot...