I have stared diving into managing information for COBie data drops. It seems straight forward in principle, however, there are certainly some areas where Autodesk could improve on the user interface.
One such is the listing of the parameters for system families. After the Autodesk BIM Interoperability tools have been used to attach COBie parameters to the system families, they appear in the Type properties. However, when one needs to inspect or populate the parameters, it is extremely frustrating to find it is impossible to list them alphabetically.
Compare this to the type parameters of loadable families, where the same parameters are listed alphabetically and are easy to navigate.
If you think it is a good idea to sort system family parameters, please vote for the idea here. Remember, unless you vote for the idea, Autodesk will not understand how important their user base considers this.
As an aside, for those of you that don’t know COBie, it was piloted by the American Military to do Facilities Management (FM). It is very common to find this listed as a deliverable for clients the world over, and all BIM managers should at least consider making their supplies chains compliant.
If you need help creating ideas for Revit, managing your model information or applying Revit to your company in general (adoption and training), please contact Micrographics so we may be of assistance. We specialize many areas associated with the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) and the Manufacturing Industries. We even have a financing sister company to help you with terms as banks won’t necessarily finance software.