Monday, April 25, 2016

Revit Conduit not functioning the way you hoped?

So you’re an electrical contractor that has made the switch to Revit. You’re excited about the simplified one-model approach, you’re looking forward to utilizing the schedules for material takeoffs and forecasting, and you’re looking forward to seeing how this new tool will improve your workflows. Revit is a more robust platform with greater capabilities that those offered by AutoCAD, but as an electrical contractor, it won’t take long to realize that there are some holes in the software that can make getting useful information from the model difficult.


One of the biggest holes in the application is the way that conduits handle data. Because they are a system family (one that can’t be directly edited by the user in a family editor), it becomes necessary to tie project parameters to them if you want to attach more information than the out of the box parameters. Common parameters would be wire information, from-to, voltage, or design status. Because each user populates their own parameters, it becomes difficult to provide an out of the box solution because each project has different parameters loaded into it.

Once you have your parameters set up in your conduits and fittings, you populate the information you’d like to see, and then go check your Conduit Run Schedule… and it is blank. Not completely blank, there are length values that prove it is getting some information, but all of your custom parameters are not populating. The most import part about material forecasting and prefabrication with conduits is the length parameter, and the schedule that can provide that information is not populating. This is a known issue and has a number of work around that will be explained in later posts. One common workflow is using the “Comments” parameter, which when populated across all the parts and pieces of a conduit run will report back on the conduit run schedule. Which leads us to the next issue.

As soon as you adjust a conduit fitting, or add content to the conduit run, you’re going to lose the information from your comments parameter, and you’ll no longer see it on the conduit run schedule. Revit assumes that updated content will need new instance parameters and wipes out old data which will occur consistently during the coordination process. So this means with every adjustment and addition you make, you’ll need to re-type the parameter information you’re hoping to see or risk gaps in your material reporting.


The GTP Electrical Add-in solves the problem of data loss during coordination and improves project workflows. With a continuously growing list of features, we are seeking to solve the problems our clients face in a simple and flexible manner that still leaves room to innovate.

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