By Dennis Collin
Much has been said about the inclusion of Fabrication Parts within Revit 2016, however, before you can place fabrication parts in a Revit MEP model, you need to specify a fabrication configuration and load fabrication services into the model.
Look familiar?
If you're a Fabrication products user you can set a ID reference (GUID) for the database if it has not already been set. Configurations managed with the current version of the Autodesk Fabrication products (CADmep, ESTmep, and CAMduct) will be shown in the list to add and then use with Revit.
Use the Fabrication Settings dialog to specify a fabrication configuration for the model. The configuration must reside on your network or on a local drive. Each Revit MEP model may only use one configuration at any one time.
The fabrication configuration contains fabrication content and associated product data to support coordinated modeling and detailing for fabrication and construction.
If you don't have any Fabrication Products installed you can download a sample configuration set from Autodesk. The sample UK fabrication configurations can be accessed from here; www.autodesk.com/revit-2016-mep-fabrication-sample-content-metric.
Run the installer which will enable you to see the fabrication configuration. You can then load the fabrication services you will use in the current Revit MEP model.
NB: If you are using a workshared environment and changes need to be made to the fabrication configuration, all users working in the model should synchronize with the central,relinquish and then close the model. The user responsible for making changes to the fabrication configuration must reload the configuration before adding or removing any services.
To open the Fabrication Settings dialog, within Revit click Systems tab, Fabrication panel. Or, If the MEP Fabrication Parts palette is visible, you can also click the Settings button to open the dialog.
In the Fabrication Settings dialog, for Fabrication Configuration, select a configuration from the drop-list of available configurations. A list of Unloaded services for the selected configuration is shown on the left.
To update the configuration used in the current model with modifications made in one of the Autodesk Fabrication products (CADmep, ESTmep, and CAMduct), click Reload Configuration.
To add a service into the current Revit MEP model, choose a service from the list on the left and click 'Add'. The service is added to the list of Loaded services on the right.
To remove a service from the model, select a service on the right and click Remove. Although remember, If a Revit MEP model contains parts from a fabrication service, you cannot remove the service from the model.
When the required services have been loaded, click OK. The MEP Fabrication Parts palette is populated with the services and associated fabrication parts. You can now place fabrication parts in the drawing area as desired.