Managing Shared Coordinates in Revit!

[Music] g'day there you're watching the Aussie Ben guru and today we're going to run through a tutorial on the demonstration for how to use shared coordinates in Revit so we've got a previous video which deals with the lining Revit model - DWG surveys this is actually going to lead on from that session so I recommend that you watch that or you familiarize yourself with the techniques of aligning to a survey before you proceed to this video because that will help understand the bigger picture the share corners lead on we're gonna have a demonstration which starts about halfway through so if you're ready nari the gist of shared coordinates and you just want to see that feel free to skip ahead but probably better you watch the whole thing and I'm not monetized so I'm not doing it for money it's just for your own education so what our shared coordinates so they're a system in Revit that can be used to establish each models relationship to one another via the use of the coordinate system regardless of origins so you might have heard of them before you might have used them before and yeah most people are pretty scared of them they're quite complicated and they do have a tendency to get quite out of control if teams don't understand how they work so they're really important to understand for a large collaborative project so why do we use them so it's to avoid things like this where models don't line up in coordination based environments it makes sure that we're all working in the same position and there's no confusion as to how things should line up in the project in any any particular program obviously Rabbid it's very easy to put things in the same position by just moving them but once you get exports to other programs such as novice works it's hard to position them and you may not be able to move them even you may need them to come into the same position and it can be even as it embarrassing as this the whole site just not lining up for the model so some common symptoms that you'll be able to see when shared coordinates aren't used are things like horizontal and vertical misalignment I'm so being at the wrong level or not lining up in the coordinate system every model might use a different origin which can lead to this and everyone can often start in isolation of one another one their model so they are any of the situation is that the survey is a shared document everyone should be working to it so really logically our coordinates should be shared as well so shared corn into the solution to this problem and they really let you brainlessly physician models once they're established and you literally just pick order by shared coordinates and if it's all set up you should be able to have confidence that your models will come into the same position regardless of which model you're linking into which model it could be a site model it could be a services model shared coordinates is always a solution so origins don't necessarily have to match when you shared coordinates which is great because sometimes people don't use the same origin points because they start differently so it won't be an issue and in either case just mark and track the rabbit origin even they're still even if you don't think it matters there's good to know where the model started from still so a common reason why models won't line up in origin quite early on is because when a project starts up it's pretty rare that Revit will be started in a collaborative approach instead there'll be a lot of super important business meetings for the you know the first maybe a week or two of the project and meanwhile all the cat monkeys in the background they're probably setting up their models and sometimes communication doesn't happen between these people in which case an origin to origin system may not be possible because maybe people that started from different origins so someone went this away and someone went that way and then we have to come back together later and solve the problem so the solution is shared coordinates and it represents a single point of reference for all the other models in the project this is sort of diagrammatically how it works so you have all your disciplines such as architecture structure and services and you have maybe a site model as well and they said there needs to be a point of reference for all those which is shared coordinates which you're able to connect the models together in relationship but the question is how what is the model that does this there's a few ways to do this so one thing that I usually say is almost never what never worth doing is to use a DWG survey to control shared coordinates it's possible but it's also very confusing and it's very rare that there are CAD managers on BIM projects these days that are capable of handling the intense UCS and world coordinate system understanding an autocad that's required to really make this work the only reason why it might be necessary is you may need all your documents to come together in the original survey as aw geez and this is one way that you can be sure that's going to work but I almost always advise against it because just the finesse of AutoCAD just isn't there so option one is the architectural model to hold the shared coordinates and the reason this is sometimes done is because it's the first model that's usually created and it's often used as a starting point for other disciplines before there's a survey so there might be common origins already existing back to this model as a point of reference and usually the grids that the levels start in this file as well so it becomes a bit of reference point for everyone so it sort of looks a bit like that so the architectural model is where you establish the coordinates then they're published out to all the other models where they are acquired and then everything is aligned back to the architectural models coordinate system but there's some problems with this so what if the building moves on the site everything needs to become relative to that building again after it's moved what a hassle and what if more buildings come into the project scope that are more important in this building and we've probably made the wrong choice because it's a strange thing to use as our reference point because maybe that big building is gonna move less and maybe this building's going to move more which means it's more to coordinate and what if the buildings removed from the project scope all together what if this is a little little shed on a defense barracks and a massive upgrade comes in and they say I'll forget about that shed and suddenly your shared coordinates reference model isn't even in the project anymore there's a stir so another option is the site this is much more common because the world in principle can't be moved so usually it's a clean version of the building model as well typically the architect models this other side and the building together at the start of a project until they receive a survey where they'll probably split them apart at that point and then they'll probably verify the site model against the survey or they'll verify the building and the site model against the survey and then split them apart so it usually holds property boundaries as well which are a good way to check that things are lined up because if the property boundary is not in the right position usually it leads to a lot of problems because things like setbacks can be wrong so the site model is usually quite trustworthy so it's it's almost the same thing but really just the site model is in place of the architecture model which is pushing the coordinates to all the other building services instruction models but again there's some issues so what if a new site is chosen what if the project is recited that site model suddenly is irrelevant technically that site doesn't relate to the project anymore and what if the survey was wrong and they need to completely reestablish the site model to something else so these challenges are manageable but you need a lot of team communication to realign everything on the project so really I think the best option is what I call a control model so really the only purpose of a control model is contained to contain grids levels and coordinates and it has very low impact on the overall project scope it's really just a container file it's really exchanged because it only really needs to be used to align the project and it will set a very low file size as well so it's very easy to exchange and it may be it's too intensive and management system for small projects but I have had successes on large projects so it's really the same thing but instead the control model holds the coordinate system and the site model in the architecture model sit at the same level in this case and for large projects I always recommend this system anyway it's time talk to do a demonstration to put this all in context so we're just going to take a scenario for our demonstrations so we're going to imagine that the architect has started a building model without a survey so they haven't set up any coordinates they've just started modeling and they've shared their model with the structural engineer the structural engineers began modeling from the same origin so they've been using origin to origin positioning between them but meanwhile the service engineer was off to the side and he began modeling in isolation so he doesn't have the same origin points so they can't use our oceans origin to origin so what happens when we get to coordination something a bit like this different face palms and we all have to go back to the drawing board and we all have to make our project work so a bit of a challenge there and it's not necessarily the engineers fault it's this communication just bad communication by all parties everyone everyone's responsible so even worse after this the architect receives a survey creates the site model and aligns that to the survey but they keep working in their building model without that to their start model and then we get to the next coordination meeting and even worse nothings they've been lining up to the site now everything's coming apart at the seams so we need to find a way to fix this and I guess through fixes this is always the question and it's usually the bim lead consultant whoever on the project is responsible for managing the bim is usually who will fix this process and it's usually the architect or sometimes the lead engineer so let's fix this using shared coordinates so if I just jump in here I'll just show you what's going on and Navisworks so I've got my architectural model I've exported here and we could have structural model and they still with these two models are mined out so they're working because of the origin the origin system however our services model as I was showing you before isn't lined up because the project base point and the origin point were at different locations so everything's sitting off from that so the solution from there that the architect went with is they establish the site model at that point so you can see that site model there but beyond this they went and changed the coordinates of the site model to align with the survey so unfortunately even their architectural model isn't lined up at this point so if I'll just jump into my architectural model the way that you can work before you have shared coordinates is if I link in my structural model origin to origin it should come in to the right position there you go you can see that works so we don't need shared coordinates to work that way however at this point if I want to line up my service engineer model I have no positioning way to achieve that because origin to origin will not come in to the right point so at this point we need to engage a shared coordinates method so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to our site model where it's had its coordinates adjusted already to match the survey I've got a tutorial on the last session that shows how that process works I haven't moved the survey and the slide too far really all I've done is just taken the survey point zero zero is this corner at the property boundary they're just rotated the site by twenty and a half degrees in the project base point settings so you can see that twenty and a half so at this point what we need to do is actually linking our models and we need to publish coordinates to them so at the moment this has a coordinate system set off so currently our coordinate system is called internal if you're going to engage a shared coordinate system I always recommend duplicating that coordinate system so I'll just go back a step so I'm just going to the manage tab another project location I'm just opening up location and jumping to the site the site tab so if i duplicate this usually what I'll do is call it pull it shared site or shared coordinates and we'll just make that our current coordinates okay so cuz we've duplicated last side we still have the same survey point and the same project base point so at this point we can start linking in models and let's say we want to publish the coordinates to the architectural model so what you're just going to like this in auto origin - origin and we're going to manually move the architectural model into position so usually an easy way to do that is to use grids typically so I'll just cross check it looks like this one has come in to the right position except I think in elevation maybe it's not lining up yes you can see that it's too low so at the moment that parapet is 5 meters below so what we need to do is shift that architectural model up 5 meters ok they still have the same project in origin ok so now we've moved that up five meters I'll just turn off my section books so at the moment our architectural model sitting in the right position in the XY plane and also in the vertical plane you can see they're 1,100 level three is lined up level two okay so at this point what we do is we get our manage tab and we go to coordinates and we get published coordinates okay so we're gonna need to remove our internal coordinate system okay so we're just gonna have a shared site so we're gonna publish our coordinates and at this point it's prompting us to pick the coordinate system in the architectural model that we want to publish our coordinates to usually I recommend again duplicating this system and calling a shared site and then the discipline that you're sharing it to so this is actually being published inside the architectural model so I usually recommend that everyone's out of the model when you do this of the architectural model because we're actually gonna save over the architectural model by doing this okay so okay that and at this point this is now shared so if I select the architectural model in its properties you'll see this setting called shared site and you'll see that it's referencing its its site at the moment so if you click on this you can see the options of how these things can be positioned so you can move it to a system from the architectural model you can record the current position as architectural shared site which we're doing you'll see that it says it's going to modify the link so I'll explain that in a second and the final option is just not to share the site of selected instance which basically disables shared coordinates but the last thing we need to do is typically I recommend pinning the model in place and then when the next time you save or when you're going to manage links and you go save positions you'll be prompted by this dialog so this is basically Roberts Way of telling you that this model has been told to be somewhere else in coordinates versus where it is outside of the model currently so obviously the right option here is to save the new position back to the link you cannot see not show it not save and disable shared positioning as well if you ever see this dialog and you're not sure what to do don't pick disable shared positioning because chances are maybe your models moved without you intending to move it and this can break shared coordinates relationships quite quickly or it can start pushing models one at a time so the coordinate system can just get redefined every time that's the a new position is saved back especially if you're pushing coordinates back to the host of the shared coordinates so just be really mindful of that ideally you should only ever have to do this once when you first establish shared coordinates that's why I'm pinning the link as well so that it can't be moved so we're gonna save position and if you go reload from you'll notice in this case it actually has saved over the model without me opening the model so that's really important to note okay so we're just gonna okay that I'm gonna do now is I'm just gonna save my site and I'm just gonna go to my architectural model because the next thing you'll need to do is you'll need to actually set its site to current as because currently it's internal system will still be set so if we go to site and we're just gonna make current on our shared site we should be in business and straight away what we can already do is we can link our site by shared coordinates and it should come into the right position and there you go and you'll see that also this site understands that it's using at the shared site within the site model as it's petitioning method so we'll just pin the site and because it's already the host of the shared coordinates and that relationship has been established if I save it doesn't prompt me to go and update the position of the site model and we don't want it to have it if this model gets moved immediately I'll be prompted to go and save the position of the site model and I don't want to do that because I can start pushing the coordinates in the wrong direction so we go cancel pin it down save and at this point we have two models talking to each other and coordinate system obviously the next thing we need to do is actually go and do the other two models as well and these ones are quite simple so we just go back to our site model and note that I'm always going back to my hosts of my shared coordinates that's really important you've got to use the same model to establish those relationships so I'm just gonna hide my architectural link so that I can just focus on my structural link now so we're gonna insert our structural model but I will do the origin to Origin open okay so this one's come in again it's too low because I saw it's been elevated when we aligned to our survey so again in this case we need to line up our floors so we'll line up all three to floor three group and then we'll just check our floor plan and see how we're lining up in the plan at the moment and it looks like we're lined up in plan I believe secret a is lined up the grid and all these leaf isn't lined up so that one's quite easy as well the surfaces models going to be a bit more challenging because we know that one's not positioned correctly so again we're just gonna pin am I going to manage coordinates publish coordinates and again same process dead site structural okay and at that point we can I think we've already pinned it so now we'll just cross-check our coordinate system is in place which it is we're saved and we'll save the bridge from back to the structural model same workflow and that's that model done as well and then we go into a structural model and obviously this would be the consultant not the architect doing this phase I'm just representing all the parties as they dopper eight so typically the architect would set up their shared coordinates with their building prob'ly and they'd probably send their site and their building at that point instead typically a much better workflow because it means at least one consultant is fully coordinated we share coordinates and then the consultants have a method of checking if the shared coordinate system is true and correct as well by linking in the building assisted by check coordinates as well and it's really important so make sure to hassle your architect if you're not an architect for them to do that for you because that's really critical so now we should be able to link in our site by shared coordinates Oh see it currently some reason just remember that the dragon okay let's try that again I think rabbit slap modal share coordinates by shape coordinates let's check I like some of the categories that turned off in this view there we go as I saw it that's just the default view settings but now what we can do as well is we're looking an architectural model by show coordinates too and we'll use the architectural shirt so and there we go we're really in business now so everything's coming into alignment which is great so I think I've made the right side yep it can be a better workflow to transfer project standards as well and take the same shared site from the site model so if you get a site model coordinate the shared in managed transfer project standards and you go and transfer project info new only you will actually gain a shared site in this model so you can actually go and make shared site your current site if you want to use the same shared coordinate site amongst all your models typically I think that's required if you're on a beam 360 cloud project anyway that workflows so just be mindful of that as well and obviously the last model we need to do is the services model and I'll see the mall model to have the more things you'll need to link together velocity shared coordinates makes that process far easier so we'll just type this and we'll link in our services model this one would be quite obvious because the coordinates will be off as well that's what your origin to urgent I'll go to my floor plan and you'll see that i crits are all misaligned so we've got grid a which is misaligned because you can see that used a different print system I believe so that grid a isn't actually grenade so what we'll do is we will realign the grids actually the grid a is grid a we just have too many models turned on we'll just turn off architecture in structure there we go that makes more sense so now what we need to do is line up our ribs so line up grid 1 so we'll line up the services model and then we also need to line up like grids in the other direction to ease our align tool or al for the shortcut and we'll go to elevation and just cross-check the vertical line under the model as well really important to do that a lot of people forget so at the moment it looks like everything is lining up three eight three eight everything's lined up I think okay so at that point as you can guess we get managed coordinates published coordinates and we create a new site shared site services and again we'd go inside our services model and we will set us so I actually we will do it just so we can show you that the positioning will works or safe position of the link okay and then we'll just let's say we'll open our architectural model and we'll link services model into our architectural model and we know you that definitely before they weren't coming in the right position because of the origin discrepancy so now if we just go link Revit and we'll link on our services model by shape coordinates they should expect that now the services will sit inside the building if we use shared site services and brilliant there you go you can see our services are now inside our building in the right position and if I just jump back into Navisworks and I take the outcome so the NW sees that I've exported earlier you'll see we have a fully aligned site which is great so everything's coming together which is exactly what we want so if I just say grossed out these you'll see that our services should be sitting in the right positions in the building so there you go so we have a coordinator bull project now which is brilliant so that's more or less how the process works obviously big projects it'll take longer and it's more complicated but it's the same logic in each case a lot of the models publish the coordinates save the position pin the links and you're good to go and so everyone's happy and the project manager especially because now the project can be coordinated and move forward so that's that's pretty much it so hopefully that sort of helps break down shared coordinates and really make them understandable and above all approachable if you've got any comments or feedback feel free to leave it down below try not to comment on my new haircut and I'll it's a bit different and a bit weird the hairdresser took a little bit too much off but it'll grow back anyway so if you're following and subscribing thanks and if you're not then feel free to and hopefully I'll see you in the next video thanks take care

Channel: Aussie BIM Guru

Views: 11,900

Rating: 4.9845562 out of 5

Keywords: aussie, bim, guru, cad, revit, dynamo, computational, tutorial, demonstration, how to, educational, shared coordinates, revit coordinates, project coordinates, shared, coordinates, revit survey, revit shared coordinates

Id: cKvIIJd9hSI

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 21 2019