Things We Love… NOT: Phased Projects!

17 Apr Things We Love… NOT: Phased Projects!

Let’s just jump right into it… the next thing on our April series is phasing!

Now we understand that sometimes the client doesn’t have enough capital to fund the total scope of a project, which then leads to phasing. The tricky part about phasing is how to create the drawings and how they are filed.. which is the part we love NOT!

AutoCAD vs Revit

We have a project that is in phases and in AutoCAD which means many different files with the same base but different layers related to the phases. Remembering to turn off certain layers so they do NOT show in the wrong phase and on the right drawing is super fun!.. NOT! So below is an example of how we try to keep our plot files organized in the phases.

This seems to work for the most part but it is very important to remember what needs to be shown and just as importantly… NOT shown. This is especially important when submitting to the city and to contractors so that confusion doesn’t happen which will lead to mistake… and mistakes are another thing we love NOT!

Above is a simple example of work broken down into phasing. Now the total scope through Phase 4 might be worked through and you are already producing drawings for, but you are only submitting Phase 2 for right now. You have to make sure only the Kitchen and Lower Powder Rooms information is shown on your drawing set and the Roof Deck or Guest Bathrooms, for example, work stays off even though you’ve already produced the drawings. You also have to remember that Phase 1 work has already been done, so in the Phase 2 drawing set Master Bedroom and Front Deck would be shown as existing and not new work… Make sense?

We have another project that is phased but in Revit. So in Revit you can have all the phases and the work for those phases in the same Revit file BUT you have to create new drawing views and drawing packages for the phases which makes the file kinda heavy. This does, however, make is easier to go between phases. Check out below how we have our project organized for phases.

So it depends on the user, but I do prefer Revit to AutoCAD for a phased project. How do you deal with project phases? Let us know which method you prefer!!