Communicating with Models Not Drawings

A Closer Look

The Problem: Engineers normally relay changes by drawing on PDFs and passing that to a drafter. That can cause 'lost in translation errors'

The Approach: Use Rhino as a way to handle the changes, engineers can move elements and change the elements themselves. Drafters can then run a script to import those changes into Revit

The Outcome: Fewer errors and a much quicker turnaround time from engineering to drafting.

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This was a weird one for me to learn about the industry. That engineers and drafter communicate via sketches. And I mean literally sketches like an engineer would just draw the changes he/she wants to see on top of a drawing.

Even though we still need that because some changes can’t be done by engineers, we can certainly make some parts of the communication process better. I have seen some projects gone wrong because of a communication break down between engineers and drafter. Just because it’s so highly dependent on each person. The drafter may have misinterpreted the changes or the engineer didn’t sketch it out properly.

Either ways a lot can go wrong.

So, we can’t always do this but for simpler projects, there is a potential to shift the mode of communication from drawings to a model. Like having the engineers update a Rhino model and having a script that can apply those changes from Rhino onto Revit.

Of course, this only works with simple stuff, like tags or columns, but the more things we can streamline the less communication breakdown there will be.