Delve into the intricate process of setting up a project using the Revit MEP courseware with VDCI's introduction videos. Discover key concepts, including starting a new project from a template, linking in an architectural or another Revit model, setting up spaces or rooms, and understanding work sharing.
Key Insights
- The Revit MEP courseware provides a comprehensive guide to setting up and starting a new project from a template and using elements through CopyMonitor to establish datum like levels and grids.
- Understanding work sharing concepts is vital for effective project management, not necessarily utilizing it, but understanding the associated concepts and its application.
- Creating a new project in Revit involves deciding on a template file, which comes in the form of RTE, and using it to launch a new project. Depending on the MEP course, learners select one of the available templates, such as mechanical, plumbing, or electrical.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Welcome to the VDCI introduction videos to the Revit MEP courseware. In these videos, we're going to be going over the concepts associated with setting up a project for, say, a Revit MEP scope of work. In this video set, we will be going over starting a new project from a template.
We'll talk about linking in an architectural or another Revit model as our background and using elements through Codewise called CopyMonitor from that file to establish datum like our levels and our grids. We will also be going over setting up spaces and or rooms. We will also be talking about work sharing a bit, not necessarily utilizing it, but we will discuss the concepts associated with work sharing and going over that.
This video set will be in every single course that you take through the Revit MEP courseware. It's good to refresh yourself on this information and go through it again to make sure you're starting the project correct. The project starting a project correctly is a major important step in making sure that that project runs well for the life of that scope of work.
So here you can see I have Revit launched in front of me and I'm at what is called the Revit homepage. You can see here I have my list of my recent models. I have a list of recent families.
Over on the left hand side, we have a back button. This will take us back to display is displaying an active model or family. Since I have nothing open, nothing is being shown.
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To get back to the Revit home, I just go up here right next to the R at the top left corner. I'm going to click on home. Then so you see I have models.
I can either open an existing model or create a new model. I have families where I can open an existing family or create a new family. I'm currently on my recent files list.
You also have Autodesk Docs. These are cloud-based projects that you may be working with. And other my insights give you insight about how much time you're spending in Revit, what you're doing, that kind of thing.
Feel free to check it out. It's kind of cool. It's a new thing that they've added.
They also have some links down here to what's new, online help, community forum and customer support. For what we want to go ahead and do is we're going to start a brand new Revit file. So here on our models, we're going to go to and we're going to use a template file, which is defined in the file system as an RTE.
Revit project files are RVT files. That is the file name extension. A Revit template file is an RTE where it says .RTE or .RVT at the end of the file name.
But the template is going to be an RTE. You can see here I currently have one selected. If I pull down, I could have a list of different templates if I wanted.
This is a list populated by an install location. They've introduced this multi-discipline template, which is a fine template, but it doesn't necessarily have everything that we want to go ahead and use. We're going to go ahead and hit browse.
This is going to take us to an installed location under our C drive program data, Autodesk Revit templates, and then our English Imperial templates. And you can see they have a lot of different templates here. You have a default up here.
You have a default multi-discipline. We have mechanical, plumbing, electrical. Depending on the MEP course that you're taking, you're going to select one of these templates.
We have some precast stuff, some residential, structural analysis systems. For this particular one, we're going to go ahead and use the mechanical. If you're in, say, the electrical course, you'd want to use electrical.
If you're taking the plumbing course, you would want to use plumbing. Here for what we're doing, we're going to use a mechanical. I'm going to hit open.
That's going to load that template into my dialog. And then to create my file, I'm going to go ahead and hit OK. It takes some time to create this Revit file.
There's a lot of things that the templates load in. And the office that you work at, they may have their own predefined template. So many offices do not necessarily use the Revit standard that is installed.
They take that Revit standard as a starting point, but then they build their own template to satisfy their own needs and requirements, or the needs and requirements of maybe different jurisdictions, government agencies, local school districts, those kind of things. So you can see I've created a brand new project. I have my project browser here on the left, and I have my properties here on the right.
In your version of Revit, you may have, say, like something like this, where it might be docked together. I'm not going to worry too much about it. I prefer to kind of have it docked on either side so that it can go ahead and you see everything.
You can dock it up top. You can dock it at the bottom. There's a lot of different things that you can do here.
I'm just going to leave it like this for right now. And there we go. We started a new project.
In this template, it's already given us sorted items by discipline. So it's sorting these views by discipline, where we have mechanical, and then HVAC, and then plumbing can also be underneath that. We have our legends, schedules, sheets, families, and everything there.
You're not seeing anything here because we haven't modeled anything, nor have we linked in the Revit architectural file. We're going to go ahead and do that in the next video. So let's go ahead and make sure we save this file.
So I'm going to go here to save. On my C drive, I have created a VDCI folder. So I'm going to go to my C drive.
I'm going to go to VDCI, my BIM321 folder. I'm going to go ahead and type in my course number. If you're taking BIM321, I would type in BIM321.
And then I'm just going to go ahead and type in mechanical. I'm going to go ahead and hit save. And there we are.
You should see the file name listed up here at the top, BIM321 Mechanical. And always make sure to save. Very important.
I'll go ahead and see you in the next video.
