The Ninth Circle Of Revit

I was pondering just how PTSD several years of being exposed to Revit had made me (and based on posts and comments of other people banging their heads into their desks, questioning how the fuck they had gotten stuck with this idiotic bullshit - other people are in the same boat), when I picked up a hotel project that someone shat out in Revit while apparently high on crack.

After eliminating a handful of 12,000 line segment gooseneck lights from the front of it (linework so dense it was almost generating a 3d surface - for no discernible reason), I started cleaning up the drawings for my use.  That's when I ran across their third floor that was either cut at the wrong height, had the wrong view depth setting, or one of a bajillion other settings that are necessary to tweak in order to get an actual plan view out of Revit - making it to where the doors into the bathrooms weren't showing up (and these were the drawings they submitted - which means they were reviewed and signed off on - without anyone in their firm noticing).

I'm sure they are there - but I'm just looking at the wall above them (since they are shorter than the doors coming into the room from the hall - which are showing up fine).  A Revit apologist would probably just toss out an 'oh yeah - just tweak this' but I can guarantee that if I were still in Revit 'just tweaking this' would result in something else breaking (that's the way it tends to work).  Then it would be four hours later, two calls to the Architect Lackey/Reviteer, three to 'Revit Guru', and I would finally be able to start work (and then crash headlong into the next problem).

Fortunately, since I was in ACAD, all I had to do was spend a minute or two deleting the remnants that were still visible (they are sliding doors - that apparently block the closet adjacent to the bathroom when the door is open), copying the necessary linework into place, and then trimming the wall segment out.  That's when I start to notice other mistakes they made because of their fucked up view settings - bathroom countertops extending into walls, walls that stop short of other walls or overlap, doors that overlap desks, etc.

Then it's on to plumbing fixture locations that got screwed up when they moved walls around (and of course - no standardization, with nearly every single room layout with custom dimensions), and finally - fixing the exterior doors so you can tell that they are entrances/exits - and not a stack of lines showing the curb, wall above the door, and other stuff that inexplicably extends part of the way into the openings (oh - and these issues are all evident on the .pdf construction document set I received from them - so it's not a problem with exporting to ACAD).

My next task was to decipher their typical floor plan layouts - they actually did a good job of distilling down a building full of rooms into one sheet with four layouts that were representative enough to use throughout, but I noticed that all four showed exactly the same equipment - and their notes (that were attempting to clarify this) had several conflicts in them.  Their legend seemed to be the most logical and accurate, so I based how I proceeded off of that and ignored the notes for the most part (for some reason the concept of handicapped vs hearing impaired rooms turns people's brains from 'low' to 'off'' - I've seen dozens of projects where they couldn't keep them straight - or remember to include them in the first place).

I take a great sense of pride in the appearance of my drawings (not to mention things like missing doors is a good way to have an AHJ immediately reject a set of drawings - which I'm sure the Architect is going to have to deal with at some time in the very near future), and it amuses me greatly to have my drawings be superior in quality to the ones that the Architect submits.  It's worth it to me to spend a few extra minutes tweaking them to perfection (especially compared to spending hours fighting Revit to get something half-assed).

To those still suffering under the Revit boot heel - there is hope.  Go somewhere that you are appreciated for the skills and abilities you possess and are capable of learning - rather than your compliance to an arbitrary standard set by uncaring, unfeeling, and incompetent fucking assholes that have been responsible for this nonsensical garbage.

Fuck'em.

S.F.