The inaugural MEP User Group, held on the 30th of April 2009, covered both of the Autodesk solutions for the building services industry, namely AutoCAD MEP and Revit MEP. This was extremely well attended and generated lots of positive feedback. Participation from the audience was excellent throughout and ensured that it made for an interactive experience for all those involved.
The session commenced with an introduction and informal discussion on the current situation regarding the positioning and progress of both AutoCAD MEP and Revit MEP. This generated some early contributions from the audience and set the tone for the rest of the session, as well as provided some early insight into the technologies being used by those in attendance. Most of the audience were actively using AutoCAD MEP in some way but there were representatives from a few organisations who have started to implement Revit MEP on specific projects.
The first main presentation was on the updates to the 2010 versions of both products by Dave Shepherd of Excitech. This covered the enhancements to both AutoCAD MEP and Revit MEP. Most of the improvements that were highlighted related to AutoCAD MEP and these received a very positive response, in particular the introduction of true sloped pipe and fittings for modelling drainage and public health systems. Although there have not been a great deal of changes to Revit MEP that are immediately relevant to the UK market, there were a few positive areas of improvement such as the Ribbon interface, the improved gbXML transfer and the automatic space generation option. There was also a discussion on the use of the ADSK file format to transfer manufacturer parts created in Autodesk Inventor and some of the practicalities and limitations of this potential workflow were highlighted.
Following this opening session, we had the first client presentation from Steve Rudge of MPS on their adoption and application of technology. This started with an overview of their design process and mapped out the various tools that they use and how they initially set out to co-ordinate the various aspects of their designs. They then talked about the structure of their teams and how they managed the production of their information. This was followed by examples of how they zoned the building and split the various elements into separate reference files. He also stressed the importance of managing the files properly and explained how critical Navisworks has been for them in managing these projects.
Overall, this was an excellent presentation delivered in a very open and honest style that highlighted the realities of adopting this method of project delivery. The presentation itself lasted around 20 minutes but there was easily the same time used for questions thereafter. The audience were clearly interested and Steve was asked numerous questions about their methods, procedures and operational framework.
The last session before lunch was the eagerly anticipated presentation of the EastCoast fabrication solution for AutoCAD MEP. Dave Quigley started by briefly outlining their strategy for the development of a fabrication solution that was integrated inside AutoCAD MEP. He also described their strategic partnership with Autodesk and how they were working directly with the core MEP product development team at Autodesk.
He then handed over to his colleague, Randy Swaim, who proceeded to demonstrate the capabilities of the current EastCoast fabrication solution. He started off by showing the fabrication components as they are presented within AutoCAD MEP and then loaded in some UK manufacturer catalogues from the Part Manager. He proceeded to create a generic pipe layout and then was able to swap this over for a layout defined using specific manufacturer fittings and specification data. He then defined a pipe spool and automatically produced a spool drawing complete with material and quantity schedules.
He then performed a similar exercise with a generic duct layout before numbering each segment and then defining a pickoff list for the fabrication exercise. Next he opened the EastCoast DuctMaker program and proceeded to load in the pickoff list and demonstrated how each component could be accessed and edited prior to machining. The DuctMaker programme allowed the individual segments to be refined manually if required and it was also able to automatically ‘nest’ the faces of each component, to ensure that the cutting of the sheet metal was done with the least amount of waste.
This demonstration seemed to capture everyone’s attention and there were many people scribbling notes throughout and at a number of stages there were audible ‘gasps’ from the audience. As anticipated, there were lots of questions at the end of this session and many in the audience were asking about availability, cost and evaluation software. The overall feedback from the audience was extremely complimentary about the functionality of the fabrication module, as well as the inherent capability of AutoCAD MEP.
After lunch, John Phyall of Excitech presented a high-level overview of his work with a major government project and how they were managing the process at such a large scale. He was able to highlight how they had built upon the methods developed during the T5 project and adopted the CDE (Common Data Environment) approach in line with the revised BS1192. He also outlined some of the challenges that they had faced in managing information from remote design offices and also in controlling the quality of information delivered so that it could meet their requirements for through-life management of data.
The remaining technical sessions were rolled into a fairly informal and interactive information workshop, presented by Scott Grant of Excitech. There was a Tips & Tricks session for both Revit MEP and AutoCAD MEP. Due to the fact that few in the audience were using Revit MEP then the tips were used to highlight some of the benefits of the software and raise awareness of some of the key operational issues that people need to consider when adopting the platform. There were more tips and tricks for AutoCAD MEP, which most people seemed to find very useful; and in most cases made people aware of basic functionality that they were not utilising.
The final session relating to the use of systems in Revit MEP, provided the chance to highlight some of the key differences in the approach that Revit MEP takes to the traditional design and production process, compared to AutoCAD MEP. There was an outline and quick demonstration of how the design information is captured and manipulated inside Revit MEP, along with a discussion and overview of some recommended content development strategies.
Yet again, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to our guest speakers and equally, to all of those who attended and contributed to make this such an eventful meeting. We hope to see you all again soon and please feel free to contact us with any suggestions for the next meeting!
