Hey there, hi there, ho there...
So it's apparent that Autodesk is in this thing for the long haul.
Reader 'hysteresis' let me know that lists of Revit 2021 'features' have been dribbling out, so I thought I would give them a quick look-over to see if any of them actually addressed the utter failure that is Revit MeP.
I wasn't disappointed, as the first one that caught my eye was the ability to have a slanted (i.e. 'tilted') wall - which was definitely one of the main reasons it was fucking with my productivity and work flow. It does beg the question as to what people were doing prior to this release if they needed a slanted wall.
The answer is probably 'faked it in', and then 'kept up with the fact that it was faked in throughout the project so that nobody made the mistake of thinking it was done properly.
I was really surprised to see more than one or two items in the official list that related to the electrical portion - this actually came close to an admission that the panelboard families, schedules, etc. that were included with Revit were incapable of taking into account fairly common situations.
"Single phase L-N panelboard: To better support distribution systems commonly found outside the US, Revit supports single phase two-wire L-N panelboards."
Oh wait, never mind - the very first one only applies to applications in other countries outside the US.
"Electrical circuit naming:
To better support circuit identification conventions outside the US,
you can define circuit naming schemes in the Electrical Settings dialog.
Use the Panel's Circuit Naming instance parameter to select a scheme. "
And... so does the second one.
Select phase for switchboard circuits: Use the Switch Phases command to assign a phase to a circuit in a switchboard panel.
Ah - here we go. The ability to assign a phase to a circuit. This used to come up all the time. No wait... I mean 'this never came up - ever'. One of the big 'selling points' of Revit in the early days was that it could automatically balance phases - which, over the course of 12 years, and two different engineers, I never had a single time that they expressed concern over unbalanced phases.
I guess if I had shown them a schedule where I had specifically put everything on Phases A and B and skipped any breaker slot for Phase C, it might've led them to question it, but besides never actually doing that, I think most of the reason they didn't actually care was that most of the really large loads were three-phase already, so the panels tended to already be more or less balanced.
Combine that with the fact that installers didn't always follow our panel layouts (panels tended to arrive on-site with factory installed breakers, and rather than waste time rearranging them, they would simply wire it up) and it was a waste of time to even think about it.
New parameters for spare and space circuits:
The Frame parameter is now available for spare circuits and displays in
panel schedules. Similarly, Space circuits now support the Poles and
the Schedule Circuit Notes parameters.
Thank God. Spares and spaces. Just - fuck you Autodesk.
Panel schedules display in the Project Browser: The Sheets view lists the panel schedules that appear on each sheet.
Whaaa?!?!?! That's amazing!!!!!! Wait... did I say 'amazing'? I meant to say 'who in the fuck cares?!?!' My bad.
Max #1 Pole Breakers: This parameter on panelboards has been renamed to: Max Number of Single Pole Breakers.
So... they renamed a parameter - you know they are really reaching when they add renaming a parameter (i.e. rearranging deck chairs) to a list of 'new features' - although the fact that they called it 'max #1 pole breakers' in the first place pretty much lets you know how much of a fuck they gave about the electrical portion of the software.
I should probably also mention WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT A MAXIMUM NUMBER OF BREAKERS, REGARDLESS OF HOW MANY GODDAMNED POLES THEY HAVE? A standard 120/208V 3-Phase panelboard has 42 spaces - which can be filled up with any variety of breakers, as long as when you add up the number of poles, it comes to 42.
Panels could also have feed-thru lugs that would take up 3 spaces to allow a second panel to be connected and give you more space for breakers - for a total of 81 spaces, that could be filled in any arrangement of breakers.
Max Number of Circuits for Switchboards: Switchboards now have a Max Number of Circuits parameter, replacing the maximum number of #1 pole breakers.
This is basically a re-wording of the last item - so, again. Padding much? Max number of circuits comes into play in two situations, one is where you have a panel smaller than the standard 42 space commercial panel I described above, and two is if you need to leave a certain % of spare capacity in a panel. Of course, when I did it manually, I simply modified my schedules as necessary - and if it was a matter of capacity, I could simply fill it up with 1-pole breakers (or a mix of breakers) tagged 'future capacity' and then size the panel accordingly.
That's one of the things that always drove me crazy in Revit - you had to select a panel and configure it first, THEN fill it up and see what the actual load was. When I did it manually, I would start with a generic panel schedule, fill it up with circuits, tally them up, and THEN decide what size the panel needed to be - although I got really good at guessing what they would need to be based on electric vs. gas heat, type of lighting, kind of building, etc.
Changing it was just a matter of typing in a number on the schedule (and on my riser that I was generating in tandem with my schedules - and then tagging it with the proper size of feeders based on the size of the panel and the distance that it had to travel from the transformer or switchboard. Sure it took a little more effort to do this manually (and when I made changes I had to keep up with them) but if you compared the amount of time I spent on an average project manually calculating it was more than offset by the amount of time (and mental effort) I would spend watching Revit load, saving to central (just to find out that they had been making changes that destroyed everything I had just gotten done working on) and of course, trying to figure out why the thing I had just done five minutes before would not work the same way again - and spending an hour coming up with a workaround (leaving me mentally drained).
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So - that's the sad little list of 'updates' relevant to the electrical portion of Revit. I expected nothing, so I was not disappointed (the power of negative thinking). I'm sure there was some 'general tidying up of shit' that went along with these that may have created the appearance that they actually gave a fuck, but I think we know better.
In the meantime - they found it necessary to remove some functionality (to make room for all the new awesomeness).
"Revit Model Review has been removed and is not available for Revit 2021."
This was actually an add-in that I'm sure people raved about how awesome it was, and that some people probably still rely on, so whatever.
"Site Designer for Revit has been removed and is not available for Revit 2021"
I'm sure this thing was a fucking abortion of a program - since every Civil Engineer/Designer that I know still uses Civil 3D (basically CAD with some discipline specific tools). It probably allowed Architects to slap their models on a shitty attempt at modeling a site, and drove Civil people crazy as they had to de-fuck incompetent morons attempts at comprehending how that actually works.
I've mentioned it in the past, but I was personally responsible for bridging the gap between the Revitards and the Civil people on every single project I worked on. Unless someone was holding my face to the Revit grindstone and forcing me to waste time/effort modeling something that I was just going to issue on 2D floor plans and some details, then the only time I would spend in Revit would be to slap my lights into the their model (and maybe the panels, if I felt like it) so their reflected ceiling plans would be correct. After that, it was 'export to CAD' and 'do my fucking job'.
Next, I would go back in and fix my lights after they fucked around with the plans, the mechanical people ignored my lights and put plenums over them, etc. - and would occasionally notice that one of my wall packs that was supposed to be over (or next to) a door was no longer in the right place because they had moved the door. Five seconds later I've fixed the Revit model and my CAD version. Then I let Civil know that the Revitards have been up to their old tricks, and almost certainly haven't bothered to re-export CAD plans for Civil to use.
In fact, Civil got to the point where they didn't even waste time talking to the Revitards, and would just use my plans. The trick being that if a door gets moved in the Revit model, Civil has to adjust sidewalks leading up to that door - and just like I would regularly find some 'minor' change that an architect made that required considerable rework on my part (in Revit or in CAD), Civil would find out that the sidewalk moving just set off a domino effect as it fucked up where their handicap parking spaces were, radius of curbs, locations of various utilities, easements, etc. that the Revitard was whollly unaware even existed before they made a (often arbitrary) change to the model because they rarely think outside the envelope of the building.
While I've been working on the tower project I mentioned in the last post I spent some time talking to the engineer who got the unenviable job of trying to figure out how things got so fucked up on that project (lack of communication, people with too much time on their hands, etc.). He had recently taken the deep dive into the shallow end of the Revit pool (on another project - not on the tower), and was describing some of the very same issues that I (and everyone else involved) had run up against early on.
One of the selling points of Revit is how 'easy' it makes making changes. That's all fine and good - *EXCEPT* that it makes changing things SO easy that people don't have any motivation to leave shit the fuck alone that would be better off left the fuck alone. Obviously changes are going to happen, that's reality - but then you start to get people bumping stuff around out of boredom, and without any consideration as to how much you are fucking someone else over. I've described the Civil issue, but this guy was designing sprinkler systems.
He was overcoming the myriad issues with the Revit application, but was running directly up against other disciplines that were constantly moving things, and then expecting him to make adjustments as necessary. Again, this is obviously going to happen to some extent, but it became apparent to him after a little while that absolutely no concern was being given to the fact that there were a half-dozen disciplines all trying to share the same space, and none of them gave a fuck if they screwed another one (or all of them) over.
The reasoning behind Reviting the whole goddamned thing was 'coordination' (another 'selling point' for Revit) - but what it actually turns into is 'hey, I had to move this thing' - and the question comes up 'Did you *actually* need to move that? Because I finally had my entire system designed, and now I'm having to revisit it for the third time'.
To someone outside of the process, obviously you want to coordinate every single change (no matter how minor) so that everything will work out perfectly in the field - only for it to get into the field and have it immediately fall completely apart. The engineer and I were laughing about how you can always tell which discipline's installers got on-site first, because they would just run roughshod over everyone else's shit, leaving them all scrambling to *coordinate* (remember that word?) their work on-site.
I told him about one of the very first projects my old firm did in Revit (I've mentioned it here before) where they had large ductwork running across the bottom of structure above racking, only for the client to buy taller racking, and force the mechanical installer to custom-fabricate fittings to allow the duct to run flat against the roof deck, and then wrap around the bottom of the structure in between racks. (Someone actually took a picture of it, framed it, and hung it up in the office - to the best of my knowledge nobody knows who did it - I wish I could've taken credit for it).
I'm not saying that you shouldn't attempt to do ANY coordination - but as I've said countless times over the years, coordination happens when PEOPLE COORDINATE, not when they expect a piece of software to do it for them.
Fuck Revit 2021, and fuck anyone willingly using, selling, or propagating it. You can all eat a bag of dicks.
Any Way You Kick It,
Skullfuck
Next Time: (If There Is A Next Time)
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