Incorporating a drafter into Revit workflow

[chrislsnider]

In all of my past Reviting, I have done all of the modeling, detailing, and document production. The drafters we had at my old job were treated as line tracers and not given much opportunity. I have recently switched jobs to lead a building-structural department "inside" of the existing bridge-structural department and want to try to integrate drafters more into the workflow of Revit if possible.

Background - Right now, the structural design of buildings consists of me, half an intern and half a drafter (half = splitting time with bridge structures). The drafter I have has limited building-structural experience having mainly dealt with bridges. I believe his building experience will be able to ramp up quickly. Obviously, as he gets more comfortable with buildings, I will get more comfortable with him in the model.

I am hesitant to pass off the major modeling to the drafter due to its intimate relationship with the analytical model. Speaking with my friends in other offices that have drafters integrated into Revit, it sounds like the concensus is to have the drafters complete and/or prepare details to be finished by me. But the major modeling of beams, columns, walls, etc are left to me so I can keep the Revit model and the analysis program talking to each other (I'm not using Robot).

Does anyone have any better advice as to how a drafter can be integrated into the Revit workflow? What successes have you had? Pitfalls?

I appreciate your time.

 

[asixth]

I have had many pitfalls. But most of the drafters I have worked with don't know how a building goes together, don't understand how to co-ordinate details with architecturals, mechanical and other consultants, can't work out basic geometry and never model structural elements in the correct location. That and they just don't care about what they are doing or take any pride in their work.

End product is a poor standard of construction documents that piss off the builder.

 

[USCeng09]

I have to agree with asixth's opinion. I've always been wondering if it was an internal problem with our office.

Not to change topics, but along the same line...who does the modeling in your offices: Engineers or drafters/technicians?

 

[chrislsnider]

USCeng09 - My experience has been doing all of the modeling, detailing, etc my own. That's a lot of engineering salary for detailing though. But, if I were to get the modeled section "finished" then print it off, redline any last changes and add text, let the drafters fight with it, back check the drafters, x however many iterations that takes, I could do it faster by actually doing myself.

 

[jittles]

In our office, we have drafters that do all the CAD and Revit work. We draw details or plans, they draft them, we backcheck.

Drafting time is billed at a rate just below even a junior engineer (let alone an associate or principal), so any drafting time that an engineer doesn't have to do is a net savings to the client, I would think.

 

[FishTheStructure]

At our office, the drafters start the Revit models based on coordination with the architectural drafters. The engineers feed them structural information to put into the model throughout this process. It makes it easier to engineer because less time is spent gathering information. If the engineer wants to add a detail, the drafters start the detail with information from the model background and then the engineers mark it up to show what they would like to convey with the detail.
After they export drawings from the Revit model, we backcheck everything.

Please note that our drafters are inteligent and understand buildings and construction. Also note that our structural modelling is not linked to the Revit model - Revit is soley used for coordination with the architect and drawing production.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds - Albert Einstein

 

[aaronPTeng]

I agree with FishTheStructure,

I employ revit drafters who's main responsibility is to incorporate my structural concepts models (FEA models not in Revit) into the architectural requirements. They should know how a building goes together, the practicality of detailing and construction.

Engineers who draft is the same as asking draftsman to engineer, not efficient and practical.

I work out of a structural package which links to revit but all the modelling is done by me out of revit. revit is only used as a documentation program

 

[kylesito]

My experience in "dumping" my analysis results into my model leads me to believe that responsibility for the actual "model" be kept to the engineer. This is because I usually "dump" my analysis into my model only a few times during the course of my design because each time involves some massaging of the elements to get them to be constrained or connected correctly.

So, if it was me in your situation, I would keep control of the actual building elements in a file to myself and let the draftsman work on other aspects of the project that are more drafting related...details, building sections, etc. This could be controlled by keeping 2 revit files, one of which links into the other. Then you could be working on the "model" while your draftsman is able to see/snap-to your model for the purposes of putting together details and sections but not actually modify the model until you are comfortable. Of course, once the major elements of the building are established and you are no longer "dumping" significant information from your analysis program, full control over both files can be given to the draftsman who can then annotate, tag, and organize all aspects of the drawing package while your role shifts more to specifications and/or proofreading of the drawing set.



PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi