INTRODUCTION

It has been said that one of the most tedious and unrewarding tasks in an Architectural/Engineering/Construction firm is compiling, counting, and organizing schedules. Whether a schedule lists doors, windows, vents, parking stalls, sheets, or anything else, time spent devising and populating the schedule is much better spent elsewhere.

If you are a working designer, does the thought that "today I am going to count, categorize, and organize all of the windows on this project" sound depressingly familiar? If you are a student, does the prospect of spending your first years at work preparing lists from plan pages feel like the right preparation for your landmark design?

Computers are unambiguously excellent at these tasks. The developers of Revit Building understood this when they set out to develop a software package for the AEC industry. One of the founding principles of Revit Building is to let the computer handle the tedious, trivial tasks, and let the designer design. The Scheduling module is the perfect example of this concept. Because Revit Building is a central database of building information, scheduling is quick, accurate, and simple. The fact that you can create an accurate custom schedule in a matter of minutes means you can spend more time designing and less worrying about the count and sizes of your windows. For that matter, you can create several custom schedules and provide more specific information for better communication, resulting in less confusion in the field. Virtually every object in Revit Building can be scheduled.

The...