Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> How to deal with cost@unit rate in revit?

ale02

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Joined: Sun, Sep 19, 2004
202 Posts

Hi, all..

I practically don't have any experience on dealing with material cost @ unit rate in a particular design but I can forsee that should be a very tedious process. (or maybe I am wrong)

just need to ask how is everybody dealing with material cast @ unit rate input for a particular project? Let us visualize this..A few scenarios.

1) if we have cost field for all standard items, walls, floor, ceiling..etc and key in unit rates and put them all in a template..what happen if we want to change the unit rates as the rate a fluacuate from time to time? Open up one by one to change?

2) How to deal with in-place family?

3) Anybody working on API on this? Can it be done? or anyway we can use excel/ access update cost input for revit.

Open for discussion!

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Life is never easy but nor it should be complex. Just stay simple

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TomDorner

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Joined: Sun, Apr 25, 2004
1207 Posts

Trying to deal with costing inside of Revit is not a very good solution.  The costing data is best looked at outside of Revit using the Revit model as the basis for quantities.

 The most complete solution is by Innovaya and written about in my blog at: http://blog.reviteer.com/

You could also export via ODBC to a database or Excel and use your own custom database reports to develop costing.  You could aslo link or import the ODBC data to a number of different cost estimating packages.  I hope to get a post out to my blog this weekend on the ODBC export process.

 There is also the option of exporting schedules from Revit to .txt files which can then be opened in Excel.  If you start a project with the construction template in Revit you will see a bunch of schedules made just for this purpose.  Ken Stowe from Autodesk has made a semi-automated process using these schedules, Revit journal files and Excel macros that may work for you.  I can contact Ken and see if he will allow his method to be shared.

HTH

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Tom

www.reviteer.com   http://twitter.com/Reviteer

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ale02

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Joined: Sun, Sep 19, 2004
202 Posts

tomdinmn,

I think you are right.. costing maybe best be handled outside revit.

but  I am just wondering whether anybody done it within revit. In that case, properly we can get to know the preliminary indication on cost during design and not after. (or should designer worry about cost at all, ) That would be a good tools to work together with design options

I was thinking it might not be that difficult to get it working. If we have the unit rate updater which will update all the cost field in the revit templete and revit family (for price fluacuation), a templete schedule within revit can get the total cost fairly easy as what we draw, revit quantify them automatically. 

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Life is never easy but nor it should be complex. Just stay simple

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