Scenarios & Tasks

Scenarios and tasks are tools we will use to test different designs via quantitative analysis or in live sessions with a prototype and real customers.

Scenarios:
The scenario  is essentially a story that provides additional context to a group of tasks that must be performed to achieved a goal.

Tasks:
These are more specific and describe actions a participant will need to perform using the system.  The tasks are required to achieve the goal of a scenario but may be common to many scenarios.  When defining tasks it is good to avoid words foreign to the domain and unique names of commands or features a test participant must find. This is done to avoid leading the participant down a path.

Here is an example of a scenario and tasks:

Scenario: Set up a cartoon Set

Sharon, the project manager, has just guided a project through schematic design development.  It is now time to get a handle on the documentation requirements and staffing assignments.  To begin this effort she identifies a standard set of plans and details as well as specific elements in the design requiring detailed documentation.  (enlarged plans, curtain wall sections, details ect..)  This will be the digital cartoon set that will become the starting point for the team.

Some related tasks:

• Create and name several series of sheets  A0, A2, A3, ect..
• Create a cover sheet with information on the project, team consultants and a list of drawings
• Establish a title block
• Create and name new views
• Compose the drawing sheets

This scenario and its tasks can be used to evaluate existing behavior to establish a benchmark. It can also evaluate potential enhancements to the existing functionality or completely new designs.

We are continually growing and enhancing our internal library.  If you are willing to share a particular scenario please do.
This may be a scenario you feel is:

• Unintuitive using existing features
• Encountered very frequently
• Infrequent yet critical to a job

I realize there is likely strong alignment with known requests and wish lists yet it is still valuable to understand the underlying goals stated explicitly in this form.

_erik

Comments

[x-p]

Scenario:

I have to schedule 100's of windows with all their information for a large building

Tasks:

Create a bunch of window schedules, split in order to fit them on sheets, making the column widths line up by eye from sheet to sheet, putting them on seperate sheets with seperate document nos. then driving myself mad when one of them spills over the edge of the sheet so I have to split it again and then wonder why multi-page schedule support has never been in Revit despite being asked for since the very earliest version :(

Scenario:

I have to convey complex information with text - eg. a table of fire regs and procedures.

Tasks:

Create a bunch of different text styles, set up a load of ref planes, then juggle lots of dumb text objects around this grid to make something that looks like a table, with differing text formats, but has no flexibility and makes me wish I was back in autocad where decent text tools have been around for a decade :(

[Mike Sealander]

Poor Sharon. She's completing design development and still has not cartooned her set, or even gotten a handle on a drawing list. Drawing lists should be developed at least by the end of SD. But not to labor the point, we put standard sheets in our Revit template.
One thing I'm noticing more and more: custom content creation. We have been making a lot of casework families for lab and MOB projects. We've also been making a lot of light fixtures. While content creation enhance the tightness of a drawing set by letting us model the actual fixture's geometric attributes, it's very tedious. And, a lot of manufacturers are simply pasting 3d dwg's into families. These are quite second-tier to native geometry families.

[Anthony Hauck]

Ah yes, I edited the paragraph to fix the phase. Multi-page schedule is good. You might imagine there are several ways to solve this so the scenario helps understand the desired end result.

[eddy]

Susan started a project in Revit 2010 but found the ribbon too much of a waste of time and wants to go back to 2009 to capitalize on the efficiencies in the UI.

or possibly a more politically correct scenario:
John wants to design a more sustainable building. John, with some experience using an integrated design workflow, brought his MEP consultant on board during SD and during the charrette process the MEP consultant gave John a percent of wall to glazing ratio that he needed to achieve on critical elevations in order to optimize the mechanial system vs. amount of window available. John would like a way to schedule the window to wall ratio using BIM so he can optimize his energy use and achive a higher LEED rating. His current system is to draw filled regions in elevations and go to their properties to find region areas.

[Donnie]

1. The task of reviewing warnings, finding the errant object and revising it and later going back to the review warning dialog to sift through the many errors again is extremely tedious. It would be nice to have a better workflow here, if we are forced to have warnings (especially the ones I don't care about - i.e. off-axis errors).
The better option would be to have staff that don't make mistakes (HA) or fix the errors as they go, but at crunch time that is too much to ask, so someone (yours truly) eventually has to clean-up the file using this cumbersome process.

2. Common location alignment for floor plan views on separate sheets. I have never liked the idea of copying detail lines for reference to "nudge" the plans to correct location since snaps are unavailable.

3. Fire-rated wall designation (I'm going to keep bringing this one up, sorry). Currently, our office has resolved to create detail groups of the rated linetypes (drawn as detail lines) and copy these to the applicable plan views. While the associativity is maintained between the views, it is not automatic once the walls are changed. The other workarounds are not feasible (wall hatch overrides & filters/integral wall sweeps & filters). If the wall families already have an Analytical line for bearing walls, why can't there be a line for ratings?

[Phil Read]

"Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them."

I'd like to know what constitutes a moderated comment. Can you please elaborate?

Thanks -

Phil

[Anthony Hauck]

Sure.
I am looking for discussion related to the post or subject and civility of tone. All comments are read. If I hold something back I contact that person via email to discuss further. So far this has been .4% so I may stop this since its extra work. Larger discussions on product direction have been occurring on AUGI where Tony Sinisi the Revit Product Line Manager has posted. These are better discussed there since I cannot always answer many of the questions. My aim is to bring the blog back to meaningful and constructive discussion I and the other authors can have. I hope this helps.. if not email me.

[Anthony Hauck]

I may also solicit topics in an upcoming post just so I am not accused of steering conversation. : )

[Graham Briggs]

Scenario:
200 typical details, call-outs and detail sections need to be placed on sheets in a modular, gridded layout, with title left justified and drawing number in lower right-hand corner of each module. Some/many may have to be relocated or shuffled between/to alternate sheets to preserve the consistency of sheet content.

Task:
This needs to be done in the next 2 hours, for checking, printing and plan check submittal.

Problem:
There is no good way of snapping views into a modular system. There is no way of simply moving one (or multiple) views to the same place on a different sheet - without removing, re-placing on the new sheet, and nudging each into place.

[Phil Read]

Thanks Erik. Very much appreciate the clarification. Chin up and please keep up the fine work.

-Phil

[eddy]

A search field for the Project Browser:
- many times I know the name of the detail, but not where to find it in the list.
- or I know it's an elevation, but not where in a list of 50 elevations it falls.

you can have thousands of views in the PB - filtering is great, but sometimes you're looking for that one thing. it would be great to be able to dynamically filter with any field content (scale factor, name, etc) kinda like you do in iTunes.

[Phil Palmer - BAM Construct UK Ltd]

Scnearios we have that drive us mad :-

Creation of 10 x large scale plans in a 8 storey building.
Lots of sheets - NO duplicate allowed of sheets to just change 'Sheet 7 of 8' in the title.

Creation of Individual room layouts - plan/ceiling/ wall elevations and schedules

No means of Revit being able to place these out for us on a sheet.
Current Project involves in excess of 1000 sheets of room layours and elevations
Sometimes more time spent on sheets than drawing - Must be Wrong.

Eddy's post above about browser - 1000 schedules and NO Sorting available in the project browser
its like finding a needle in a haystack as they dont even appear in the broswer for sheets.

[DoTheBIM]

Scenario: Carpenter in field calls and says all these prefab wall panels are are 1/2" to short (or long). Upon further investigation the plans have a dimension snapped to the face of the drywall.

Tasks: Carpenter has to fill in 1/2" on 37 walls (or cut). Designer has to zoom in further and more often and pay closer attention to what is being snapped to when dimensioning.

Preventable by: Having a feature to turn off outside the core wall layers for dimensioning/clarity. Maybe even turn off/show specific layers one by one in special cases (similar to override element or hide element features).

[DoTheBIM]

Scenario: Must assign internal sku code to configured revit object.

Task: user creates text parameter manually fills out parameter per defualt type. In project the text parameter must be updated when revit object changes it's parameters.

Better Task: Would be to have Revit determine/build the value of the sku text parameter based on user defined rules using text based and existing formulas.

[John Anderson]

Scenario: For a campus type project, one set of detail sheets need to be maintained and tagged in many separate building model files.

Task: Create a separate Revit file fora all drafting view details and detail sheets. Import these sheets into each building file and tag.

Problem:
-Details are updated or repositioned on sheet and re-imported into building files. Tag numbers are now incorrect and imports don't overwrite existing.

Better: Link detail Revit file into building Revit files. Provide capability to tag detail with reference to detail on sheet in linked Revit file. Automatically update tag if drafting view is moved on sheet or to another sheet in linked file; unreference or remove tag if drafting view is removed from sheet in linked file (prompt for deletion).

[Chad]

I'd like to show my support for John's detailing scenario. I've only come across this one this year when dealing with multiple highrise buildings on a single site. A lot of the details are 'shared' across all buildings.

There really does need to be some sort of linking, with referencing between files to make this task easier.
The argument could be made to link the details into the project and then place them onto a sheet in the project. But another alternative is to create a standard detail 'book' which contains details that are already sheeted up, and all you require is a uni-directional reference link between this and the project file.

[Anthony Hauck]

I'll record this request and add the discussion here. I can completely see the need and benefit. It would also seem the technology is there it would just need to be hooked up.

[darkwing]

Scenario:
During schematic design, the design Architect began their Revit model and in order to design certain aspects of the building, created some floors, walls (portions of walls are load-bearing while other portions are not), structural members, some key lighting fixtures and MEP equipment. To further refine the building design, said Architect brings on a Structural Eng. and an MEP Engineer as consultants, each working out of physically seperate offices.

Skip forward to project bidding and build-out and a contractor, who also uses Revit, is brought on board.

Tasks:
- Coordinate Architectural, MEP, Structural
- Copy monitor MEP from Arch model into MEP model. Scratch that. Cut and paste MEP stuff from Arch to MEP, CM only works for a few select elements.
- Cut and paste lighting fixtures into MEP model. Live with the MEP engineer trying to locate lighting fixtures.
- Copy monitor floors, columns, beams, walls. Oops, beams can't be CM'd; walls will need to be split into load bearing and non bearing segments.
- Link in new MEP and structural models.
- Now learn to live with duplicated floors, walls, and colums in certain areas.

Construction:
- Further divide up walls, slicing the finish from the framing.
- Apply scope and trade to model elements, recreating elements as needed.
- cut up foundation and structural walls in order to apply 4d.
- Through away design duct layout and recreate considering fabrication requirements.

General:
- Get used to sending back and forth 200mb model files that are out of date the second they are sent.
- Get used to holding the MEP's hand to make sure they have and are using the latest Arch. and Struct. models.
- Hold Struct hand to make sure they have and are using the latest MEP and Arch

You probably get the point. Someone ought to really dive into coordination of trades and the BIM lifecycle. I can think of no single larger water of time.