Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring - Revit Phone.....

So buried inside of a medical facility plan that we received from some Revitards was this beauty - 13,926 line segments (13,214 of which are in the fucking cord). I deleted over 20 of them, for a total of nearly 300,000 lines (in addition to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lines showing the pattern on the bottom of the showers, buttfuckloads of hatching showing wall types (that I don't care about) and all kinds of other pieces of highly-detailed medical equipment and other overkill.

Every wall in the building had a multitude of extra line segments wherever it would join another wall - it was apparently breaking every line wherever it would cross a perpendicular line (even though the perpendicular line didn't actually extend to the line that was broken.  I cleaned up the majority of the wall joints, and eliminated god only knows how much more geometry.  It seems like as Revit has fully engulfed the industries that it set out to destroy, the concern for it's ability to export out usable files has gone completely by the wayside.

This drawing went from barely being able to open, lagging every time you switched sheets, taking forever to save (and autosave) to being a fully functional (and rather beautiful I might add) drawing that we were able to use to generate access control drawings.  Part of the problem was that someone else started setting up the drawings, and I didn't realize that the Revitards had sent us their individual sheets rather than an actual floor plan (which, in addition to having to be pieced together, quickly showed that they hadn't actually documented the entire building - just the parts that they were upgrading or adding stuff to).

One of my coworkers and I spent several days on this project - which was exacerbated by the fact that the guy who had sold it was withholding important information (like a door schedule that listed all of the equipment they wanted at each door - but which was somewhat incomplete and difficult to decipher).  I drew details for each instance, so the installer should be able to tell what exactly needs to be done - with some catch-all notes to make sure that the incompetent morons who modeled it and the incompetent morons who slapped together the door schedule (possibly the same incompetent morons) didn't fuck us over.

Then it was back to doing the absolute bare minimum to rig up a set of drawings for a massive school that had come to me in bits and pieces of ancient scans, early attempts at CAD, and then years of revisions (all, of course, done as partial plans that had to be pasted and shoehorned in), AND the new addition that was the reason that the school is going to have to take their decades old, grandfathered in clusterfuck of a fire alarm system and actually upgrade it to meet code.

Of course, rather than just do this correctly, the first set we are submitting is going to be a one-for-one replacement of existing equipment (just to get it all into one system) which will fail miserably when reviewed (unless somebodies brother's cousin's uncle's in-laws work at the Fire Marshall's office - which is always a possibility).  Sadly, this is the plan - because then we can determine what is necessary to bring it up to code, quote a price to fix it, completely redo it (again) and then go through the process of trying to convince the AHJ who we just sent garbage drawings to that this set is worth looking at.

I was able to cobble together a set based on one of our installers field notes on my layout - which I had sent to them in March, but only heard back about in the middle of June when the salesman contacted the owner of the company (that we both work for) to complain that I had designed a code compliant system.  This attempt at throwing me under the bus gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, so I got on the phone with the salesman, his boss (who is basically a co-owner of the company - although they operate out of a different office - we have six total), and they tried to pretend like they had taken my drawings into the field and marked them up (they hadn't).

I started receiving bits and pieces of information (most of which was not useful, and some of which was downright annoying - like the part where they marked up the original drawings of part of the building rather than the set I had sent them), at which point I fired off an e-mail to the salesman
explaining exactly what I was going to need to provide them with an updated (yet far from complete) set - and blind CC'd both the owner and the co-owner.

I almost immediately received a response from the co-owner that put a huge smile on my face.  It simply read 'GET HIM'.  It was vindication that I had been doing my job based on the information I was being given, and that their attempts at blaming me for their own fuckups - like the three month window between when I sent them a checkset to mark up and when they contacted the owner to bitch about me (and lie about having done so).

The worst part is that this project isn't even remotely done with - I have already had to bill waaaay too many hours to it, and when it falls back in my lap it's going to take waaaay too many more, because I can guarantee I'm not going to get any help from these stupid fuckups.  Fortunately this isn't my first rodeo - and I can put the beatdown on any project (even when I'm at a disadvantage).

I've shown time and time again that I've got the tools, and I've got the talent - so fuck anyone who gets in my way.

-SkullFuck

Next Time: I review 'The BIM Manifesto' and excoriate the dumbfuck who wrote it.