How to Save Hundreds of Hours by Automating the BIM Documentation Process
Courtesy of RTV Tools
What project managers need to know is that automating the BIM documentation process is going to save time and money, says HOK Design Technology Specialist, Shaun Peppers.
Scheduled to open in 2020, the new $1.8 billion, 1.7 million sqft, three-story Salt Lake City Airport terminal designed by HOK will accommodate 23 million passengers per year. It is one of the largest construction projects in North America. Read Peppers's explanation on how HOK used RTV Tools in the Salt Lake City Terminal redevelopment to automate BIM.
Sharing all the documentation and data across the vast amount of offices involved is tricky, to say the least. Currently, the SLC project is exporting upward of 4700 virtual PDF prints weekly. We were also exporting 51 Navisworks NWC files from the Revit models twice-weekly for clash detection and daily AutoCAD exports for civil coordination.
In the early stages of design, printing was done manually across all disciplines. Documents could take weeks to get to everyone who needed the information by which time the models had progressed and so the data would become out of sync with the current design.
The larger models take half an hour to open, then an hour and a half to manually print 300 sheets. If you multiply that by ten people every week then you’re looking at thousands of hours over the project.
There was also no way to control the quality of the prints because we were getting different formats from different people. It was like the ‘telephone game' by the time it had filtered across everyone.
RTV Tools’
Xporter PRO is an add-on for Revit that automates documentation processes allowing users to schedule prints to two physical printers while simultaneously creating digital files such as DWG, DWF, PDF, IFC and Navisworks, all unattended.
" The data needed to be streamlined and up to date at all times to prevent log jams. "
What we were missing was a way to export and print data in an efficient way. After researching and looking at possibly developing a tool internally, we decided to try out RTV Tools’ Xporter. We worked with the developers at RTV Tools to resolve the issues we were facing and one by one we tackled software roadblocks.
