The Autocad Mentality

Revit Skullfuck back in action.

After listening to someone this morning speculate wildly about what Revit 'maybe could do' (each item underlining their lack of experience and understanding in regards to Revit), I decided to browse a few message boards and I ran across some people discussing 'workarounds' for how to handle a building that has typical units.

I was impressed that a few different people had stepped up with solutions that they worked out (and a fairly coherent discussion about the benefits of not using wall-based models) but other than some elaborate workarounds (most of which consisted of getting the fuck out of Revit and using an actual spreadsheet program), the consensus was that there was no really good consistent way of going about it (primarily because Revit 'developers' are oblivious to the needs of actual designers).

'Grouping' was one solution being floated (probably by someone who still wasn't grasping the problem - which there are always a handful of in any Revit forum) but someone mentioned they has run across limitations when 'grouping', like across linked models and when the typical units get rotated/mirrored/etc.

This almost immediately resulted in a Revitbot accusing him of having 'The Autocad Mentality' - not because he wasn't Reviting, but apparently because this Revit dick-socket equates concepts like rotation and mirroring with CAD and that they do not apply in Revit since it is 'bimtastic'

Apparently when the guy would attempt to mirror the group (attempting to not have to draw and circuit every variation on the typical unit) it would apparently flip the symbols/families around (causing receptacles to look like they were facing the wall, etc.).  The Revitbot solution was to model every unit (the guy floating this turd claimed to be some kind of teacher - which means he's probably never been in any kind of production environment with Revit).

The fact is, almost every one of these people (except maybe the teacher) is having to overcome hurdles that nobody responsible for 'developing' (read: 'marketing') Revit even knew existed. Reviteers from other disciplines like to completely ignore the fact that while they might be using Revit, they sure as fuck aren't using it for what I'm attempting to use it for.

I've had a few argue that other people are using it - but the only reason anyone at my firm can do that is because they have me to pick up the slack when job after job come due, and aren't even at 50% in Revit.  Everyone acknowledges that things take longer in Revit (even die-hard Revitards), but they refuse to take into account the reality that the extra time necessary DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST.

Trying to streamline a process that allows me to effectively crank out as much shit as humanly possible, regardless of shifting schedules, scope creep, and incompetence on the part of architects, other disciplines, owners, and other dipshits that insert themselves in between me and my goals isn't 'trying to get out of work'.

Detailing out every single room in a hotel isn't efficient, it's not cost effective, and like so many other things about Revit - adds exactly ZERO benefit to the designer, other disciplines, the contractor, owner, etc. etc. on and on.

NOW.

There is one person that might benefit from overkilling the overkill on a project - and that's someone who pads out their hours detailing out every aspect of a project to the gnat's ass (while ironically ignoring major flaws that will make their project impossible, impractical, or brutally expensive to build).

And even they don't detail out every room in a building - they can plug in a typical layout and have it work (because whoever developed that discipline portion of Revit knew that it came up frequently), but it simply didn't trickle down to the Electrical portion.  Even Mechanical designers usually don't run into this situation because their systems don't cross between rooms - but Electrical does.

Even if there isn't a panel in each room - you run into the even worse problem of having multiple rooms per panel.  To be fair ACAD doesn't have a solution for this either (and doesn't calculate panelboards) but what it does have is the ability to stay the fuck out of my way while I burn through the whole project (with panels only taking minutes to calculate in the first place).

Next time - Duplication Of Effort

-Skullfuck Out