by Kevin A. Custus
In the course of my work with IMAGINiT, I’ve helped many firms built and maintain their Revit templates. From architecture firms to MEP and structural engineering organizations, there’s always this question: When is the template complete?
My answer? The template is never complete.
Sometimes, I’ll return to a firm after creating a template. They’ll often tell me “We made changes to the template you helped create.” That’s when I remind them – the template is never complete.
After creating the first template, firms may need to add items to projects they used from another project. Or they want to place a view, schedule, view template, filter, detail or family into the template. Sometimes, it’s the opposite. There’s so much in the template that is rarely used that firms want to delete items.
Codes for buildings change every few years at the federal, state, and local levels. Not to mention LEED requirement changes. These can affect the template.
All firms should have a BIM committee that gather the needs and wants of their company’s project or design teams. The committee should create a database and provide it to the BIM manager on an ongoing basis. At the appropriate time (I suggest twice a year) the template can be updated. Maybe because of building type, it is time for your company to branch off the existing template and create another template.
Now is the perfect time to review your company’s template. With Revit 2019 available, many firms will start the process of rolling out the new version. Features added may cause changes to the template. Some firms will update or even rebuild their templates. IMAGINiT recommends rebuilding templates, not upgrading.
That’s an older blog post, but it’s still valid!
When is the template complete? We will leave that for you to decide!
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