Thursday, April 19, 2007

Why we need Track Changes

Track Changes:

We need the capability, in my opinion. Have you used it? In Acrobat and Microsoft Word? I use it when im proofreading peoples papers for classes or for work. The beauty of Revit is it updates things automatically. But that beauty is killed when we have to chase down all the automated changes by hand, to mark them as changed, during the Revision period. Not to mention, getting back in line with my original post, what happens to keeping track of changes youve made, if and when we ever get away from a standard set of documentation? Suppose hypothetically, that im leading a team of ten. No sheets in a document set. Instead, we have hyperlinked files, some showing Axons, some showing details, some showing plans, etc. Its ahrd to imagine it not being "sheets," but try. Now, if its hard to track revisions NOW, when we have standard sheet layouts, what will happen if and when we have to intrinsically "know" all the fancy knwe views we have? Already Revit lets up put 3D views on sheets. Well, everytime someone puts a 3d view of a building on a sheet, do you remember to cloud it AND the plan AND the elevation AND the section? It seems restricting, that a program lets us avoid hitting every sheet for change, but we have to check each sheet on our own, in case it needs a cloud or change tag. Let me know what you think?

The reasoning is as follows: Where Revit is great, is making change. The entier model updates at once, its amazing. BUT, we tend to use a lot of Working Views, that arent in the drawing set. I may make a change on "Floor Plan - Aaron Working", and it may actually "revise" 4 Floor Plans and Elevations in the Drawing set. Even with this automation, i have to manually look at each drawing, to see if there is something i need to cloud. Its not feasible to Cloud things automatically, but maybe it could have a dialogue that lists what VIEWS have had things change?Maybe they just highlight in the Project Browser until someone right clicks and says > Revision noted? The beauty of this would be clouding could be done much faster at the end of the Revision. Right now, we spend hours again, checking to make sure we have Clouded and tagged all the right sheets.