This invaluable tool with which to manage classification systems in Revit and Navisworks has been available for some time and may be downloaded free of charge here:
As a Revit modeller with knowledge of BIM then know that: throughout the lifecycle of a building, classification systems facilitate managing data information models (Revit projects). Autodesk has published a whitepaper which discussed standards with relation to Revit: https://www.biminteroperabilitytools.com/classificationmanager/downloads/Autodesk%20Whitepaper%20-%20Classification%20Systems.pdf
Different stakeholders use classifications for different purposes:
Owners
- Facility and Asset Management
- Development Planning
- Cost Estimates
Contractors
- Construction Management
- Scheduling
- Cost Estimates
Architects and Engineers
- Project Specifications
The extent to which multiple classification systems are used on all or some elements depends on:
- Needs of the project
- Data to be collected
- Effort involved
Standards that ship with Revit are American and/or Canadian.
- Keynoting – MasterFormat
- Loadable Families (Type Parameter “OmniClass”) – OmniClass
- Loadable and System Families (Type Parameter “Assembly”) – UniFormat
With the Classification Manager and a little bit of work, even a “custom” standard like the recently released ASAQS (Association for South African Quality Surveyors) may be cast into a form that can be read by the Classification Manager.
The workflow is to create a shared parameter that the classification manager references through the standards database.
These shared parameters (Instance or Type) can then be populated in the model for export through to Navisworks.
This is applicable to both system and loadable families.
Search (find) sets may be based on the above parameters to create selection sets.
So wherever you may find yourself in the world you can now quickly respond to construction scheduling using the Autodesk BIM Interoperability Tools.
