Wednesday 16 November 2011

Draft Revit NBL Content - Feedback

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If you have read my previous post you will see that I did not believe that due time had been allowed for the NBS to gain a true measured review of the content released, however it has to be said that the feedback following the Monday meeting has been swift and Stephen Hamil has posted it on the Linked In Group

You will have to join Linked-In to access the group http://www.linkedin.com/ which is not a bad idea anyway

Due to it being released only yesterday I have only scanned over it and the additional posting regarding the new naming convention.  The NBS needs you feedback in order to make this thing acceptable and adoptable by end users of Revit and the industry as a whole. Please add your thoughts to the Linked-In Group and threads.

Stephen HamilFeedback response

Firstly, a big thank you to all of those who downloaded our draft content and took the time to give us comment both on this forum and in private emails. I have tried to articulate our thoughts in the reply below, I also have posted some thoughts on library naming convention in a separate blog post.
http://constructioncode.blogspot.com/2011/11/naming-convention-for-national-bim.html

A. Should material parameters such as “thickness” be in the wall library names?
We believe material parameters should be included in the object library names where it provides differentiation between similar library objects. Please see naming convention blog post.

B. Have the objects been authored against Building Regulation requirements?
The documentation provided for the door objects shows that regulations have been referred to (see references to BS 8300). However, the end user of the objects will be ultimately responsible that any final project design meets the regulations. Our terms and conditions will cover this.

C. Will u-values be calculated for the wall constructions?
The overall u-value for a wall will depend on the proprietary products that are used in the final design. U-values may be included for proprietary wall constructions that we eventually publish, but we will not include them for the generic objects. We believe the end-user should calculate this on a project-to-project basis.

D. Will proprietary materials such as Rockwool be used in the generic objects?
No, they won’t, the generic objects will contain generic materials only. In this example “mineral wool bats” will be used for the launch content.

E. Is the NBL going to be a standard?
No. We hope that over the years that the NBL may become a de-facto standard as NBS specification clauses have become. But these BIM objects are simply a freely available resource that we hope users that like them will adopt.

F. Is IFC a file format that can be used for design?
I think Nick Nisbet has answered the IFC questions extremely well in the discussions so please see his answers. I’ll work on a blog post summarising some IFC thoughts in the next week or two.

G. Are COBie parameters really needed for wall constructions?
Some of them will not be relevant. Depending on the client requirements, on some projects, it is possible that none of them will be relevant. However, for consistency they have been included. Also, if you used an NBL wall object to build up a pre-fabricated wall construction then you may wish to complete the majority of these COBie FM parameters.

H. The object material names are hard to read – can they have a separator character?
Yes. We will introduce a “_“ between the abbreviated names. So “PFBBlck” will become “PFB_Blck”. Please see naming convention blog post.
http://constructioncode.blogspot.com/2011/11/naming-convention-for-national-bim.html

I. Can the list of abbreviated names plus explanation be put in the documentation?
Yes

J. Who is responsible for the accuracy and ownership of these objects when used on a project?
Our terms and conditions will cover this at launch.

K. Until you have more than just Revit objects, can you publish IFC content only?
For every object we will always publish at least IFC content. However, to create IFC content we believe we must choose one proprietary system to author it. The decision here was Revit and as such we will publish Revit objects. However, we will work together with the other CAD vendors to try and get other native content in too. We have met at least once with Vectorworks, Tekla, Bentley and ArchiCAD. We meet again with them next week.

L. What are the nbl_iCIMMaterial parameters?
These are for a research project that is currently internal. These will be removed for launch.

M. Should the library provider name really be the prefix to the object name?
We believe it should. This helps sort common items together easily when used in proprietary software. Please see naming convention blog post.

N. Should the library provider name really be the prefix to the parameter names?

No, with hindsight we will change this now based on a number of discussions with other providers of BIM content. “nbl_FireDesignation” will be replaced by simply “FireDesignation”. Within IFC the parameters will be grouped in “NBL” property sets.

O. Should the IFC parameters contain descriptions?

Yes, our aim is to get this in for launch.

P. Should the IFC owner information be included?

Yes, our aim is to get this in for launch.

Q. Should the IFC rules for classification be followed?

Yes, our aim is to get this in for launch. We’ll also include multiple classification systems.

R. Will historic wall constructions be included?

This will be considered, but it is unlikely that these will be in for the first release.

S. Can embodied CO2 information be included?

We think that linking generic materials within BIM objects to carbon and capital cost information is a great idea. We’ve actually been working on this for a little while as part of a TSB funded project with a number of other companies. This project will be demonstrated at ecobuild in March 2012. So, not for launch, but watch this space.

More info on TSB ICAT project and members:
http://constructioncode.blogspot.com/2010/07/carbon-assessment-tool-project-icat.html

Finally, with respect to CO2, Alan – thanks for sending through the LRUG presentation from Arup. Very interesting.

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