Revit Adaptive Components for MEP

          

          The initial release of Autodesk® Revit® (Architectural Design) and its early adoption by the  architecture industry has afforded architects the ability to effectively utilize specialized features and functions over the platform’s continued evolution. Over the years, Revit has released additional versions that focus on specific disciplines and workflows (i.e., MEP Engineering and Structural Engineering). As these disciplines have adopted the platform and its features into their workflow, the opportunity to utilize the features offered in other versions of Revit were not easily accessible or even thought to be beneficial—until now.

Autodesk Revit is now an application that combines the capabilities and features of all its Revit releases (Architecture, MEP, and Structure). As designers and technologists, we found an opportunity to research and experiment with features that yield useful results in efficiently managing MEP workflows.

A feature architects are utilizing is the Conceptual Massing Environment as well as the use of Adaptive Components within this environment. Adaptive Components offer a high level of flexibility that allows the application to accommodate certain circumstances that the normal modeling tools would typically make difficult. With the introduction of Revit “One Box,” the flexibility of these tools can be applied to the MEP side to tackle difficult design constraints as well as advanced uses of parametric control.

BIM Concept

 A shift in process and expectation is happening in the Indian construction

market  following  the economic bloom and gloom, and architects are stepping up to the challenge. The  focus is shifting from traditional 2D based to a practical reality with respect to functional, economic, energy, etc. All disciplines involved with a project can share a single database.  Architecture, structure, mechanical,electrical, infrastructure, and construction are tied together and challenge to coordinate them is unprecedentedly possible. Energy analysis can be done at early stage of design, and construction costs are becoming more predictable.

                BIM allows use of a parametric 3D model to auto generate traditional building documents such as plans, sections, elevations, details, and schedules. Drawings produced using BIM supported software’s are not of manually coordinated lines, but interactive representations of a model. The changes made in this Model are automatically coordinated throughout the project, which eliminate the coordination mistakes, improve overall quality of the work.

                There are many modeling software packages in the fields  which have excellent application for conceptual level models, but these models don’t have the ability to document a building design for construction.

BIM: Structures Architectural Documentation

With BIM, Architectural Documentation process has reached

maturity. Systematic documentation can be traced back

duringRenaissance, when Filippo Brunelleschi represented the plans for

Santa Maria del Fiore in Italy in the drawings’ format to make the

patrons understand how the building would look like. Through

ages, Architectural Documentation has evolved. Availability of

computers opened scopes for creating a data model for a complete

design process starting from conceptual phase to the operational

phase. In the following section a brief sketch of the evolution has

been depicted.

 I phase – Till early 1980s: Before 80’s design documents are

made traditionally by drawing lines to represent a building. These

documents like plan, section and elevation are the main source to

describe the building to be built. In these traditional drawings each

line meant to convey design so that a building can eventually be

constructed.

II phase – 1980s to Late 1990s: With the introduction of computers,

the major switch over started from manual drafting towards

the computer aided drafting, which helped in producing drawings

faster. As buildings became more complex, specialization in the

design and construction process emerged, which in turn lead to

more elaborate forms of information. Use of computers, especially

for 2D drawings and reports are revolutionary changes into

Architectural Documentation

 III phase – Beginning of the 2K: In the present day, buildings

are much more complex than ever before. The numbers of people

involved in producing drawings are too large. With the growth

of technology, the building systems are also many. Today, buildings

have more security, electrical, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation,

and Air Conditioning), and energy requirement. Computer based

technology has been updated in order reduce errors, but in the

end, they are still collections of manually created, non-intelligent

lines and text.

BIM @ Prompt

OBJECTIVES
This is a 3-month part-time
programme. The objectives of this
programme are:
• To equip participants with fundamental
knowledge for the adoption of BIM including
the skill-sets required for the desired change
to processes in the building lifecycle;
• To familiarize participants with BIM standards,
guidelines and strategies for BIM project
planning and implementation; and
• To equip participants with relevant skill-sets
to use BIM for design analysis and project
coordination among different parties and
disciplines

BIM - Introduction

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the documentation process
consisting of information about different phases of any project
like design, construction planning, construction, facility management
and operation. It is one holistic documentation process beneficial
for operational visualization, and construction application
such as estimating, scheduling and design coordination. Main
advantage of implementing BIM application is the visual coordination
of the building systems such as MEP (Mechanical, Electrical,
and Plumbing) systems and it also identifies the possible
conflicts between the building systems. By detecting the conflicts,
problems can be resolved before actual construction which in turn
saves money and time invested, (Damian, Han Yan and Peter (1)).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), reported
(NIST, 2004 (2)) that the lack of adequate interoperability
cost the U.S facilities industry about $15.8 billion per year. In India,
the BIM application is not widely practiced till now has scope
to use this technology in a much wider scale.

BIM and CAD

The main differences between BIM and Computer Aided Design
(CAD) are that CAD system is usually 2D document, which are
created separately and have no intelligent connection between
separately created documents. In CAD, two lines represent a wall.

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