PiVDC Tools Used in Grand Street Commons East

PiVDC Tools Used in Grand Street Commons East Project: Streamlining Spooling and Enhancing Efficiency

Undertaken by Pinnacle, the Grand Street Commons East project encompasses a dynamic mix of commercial and residential development located in Seattle, Washington. This project stands out as one of the notable construction endeavours in Washington for the year 2022, demonstrating its substantial scale and impact on the local construction industry.

The Grand Street Commons East project covered an impressive area of 333,610.00 square feet, and Pinnacle Infotech was entrusted with various responsibilities, including 3D modeling, coordination, and the creation of 2D drawings, specifically in the plumbing trade.

PiVDC's Scope of Work

In today's construction industry, automation tools have become pivotal in improving project efficiency, accuracy, and overall productivity. Pinnacle Infotech's PiVDC is one such suite of automation tools, offering a range of powerful add-ins that seamlessly integrate with Revit, Navisworks Manage, and AutoCAD Plant 3D.

In the Grand Street Commons East project, PiVDC played a crucial role in helping Pinnacle deliver high-quality 2D drawings by automating repetitive tasks and making the spooling process quick and efficient.

Within the project, PiVDC tools were primarily used in spooling, which helped generate detailed 2D drawings essential for fabrication purposes.

Challenges & Solutions

The Grand Street Commons East project presented diverse challenges that required efficient solutions. PiVDC tools provided the necessary capabilities to overcome these obstacles and enhance project outcomes:

Let's explore these tools and the solutions they provide:

Challenge

• Gathering data from fabrication elements
  Some parameter values of fabrication elements are not directly accessible in the Revit environment. Manually accessing these values for thousands of fabrication elements and populating them to Revit parameters was extremely time-intensive.

Tools Used and Solution Provided

• Fab Data:
  With a hit count of 100 and 2.2k processed elements, the Fab Data tool helped ensure accurate access to essential fabrication data. It automated the population of parameter values not directly available for fabrication elements, streamlining the process and increasing efficiency.
  
  
• Fab Part Information:
  Used 1.97k times, the Fab Part Information tool further eased the data-gathering process. It helped extract the parameter values from all the selected Fabrication Part items and pushed them to the Revit parameters in a few clicks.

Challenge

• Maintaining accuracy in BOM reports
  Numbering elements is important to keep BOM reports clear and precise. However, numbering millions of elements to quantify similar ones and differentiate them from others was complex and mundane.

Tools Used and Solution Provided:

• Renumbering
  With a hit count of 1.83k, PiVDC's Renumbering tool simplified the process, ensuring accurate and systematic numbering of elements, leading to streamlined workflows.

Challenge

• Managing spool elements and sheets
  Managing and identifying spool elements in a project with millions of elements was a significant challenge. Tracking whether spools were defined for each element was a cumbersome task.

Tools Used and Solution Provided:

• Spool Window
  The Spool Window tool, utilized 100 times, facilitated efficient tracking and identification of spool elements. It simplified the process of managing and arranging various views and parameters.
  
  
• Normal Color
  The color coding feature of this tool made the distinction between spooled and unspooled elements as easy as it can be

Challenge

• File size management
  Thousands of elements and their millions of parameter values were bound to weigh down the Revit file. Unnecessary and extra parameters added extra MBs to the file, making it heavier and slower.

Tools Used and Solution Provided:

• Clean Spool Parameter
  The Clean Spool Parameter tool ensured the cleanliness and accuracy of spool parameters. With a usage count of 0.01k, it helped maintain optimal performance by avoiding unnecessary additions of parameters that could bloat the file size.

The Bottomline

The challenges faced in the Grand Street Commons East project were handled with innovative solutions provided by PiVDC's automation tools. They were used over 400 times and processed more than 85,000 elements in the project. By leveraging the capabilities of PiVDC, the project team achieved remarkable results, including huge time savings.

The utilization of PiVDC tools amounted to approximately 1,000 saved hours, accounting for a significant 15% of the total project hours. These time savings translated into increased productivity and speedy delivery of the project.