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Book Review – Mastering Revit Structure 2010

When I first opened this book the information it leaped off the page.  The presentation of the data was well laid out and I notice things like that.  The font selection was great and the good use of white space was impressive.  Illustrations and screen shots were on just about every page.

Mastering Revit Str 2010 [1]

Mastering Revit Structure 2010 – Sybex/Wiley publishing
Authors – Tom Weir, Jamie Richardson and David Harrington

The wonderful thing was the joy did not stop there.  This book does not disappoint.  Scattered throughout the book are “Real World Scenarios”.  Little vignettes of information that came from the practical minds of the authors.  Things that they wanted to share apart from the systematic presentation of the topic.   Also mixed in are questions that you should ponder – like “how much should I model?” that encourage you to think beyond the basics.

The book is also filled with step by step exercises.  Each starts from a data set that can be downloaded from a companion website listed on page 51 (may be hard to find).

Insider tips and tricks are placed in the book to assist with the problems that you may encounter or to give you options.  One that I found refreshing was the trick of using a wall to represent a column.  They caution you that this may give the proper appearance but lack the property data you might need.

Each chapter ends with “the Bottom Line”.  A collection of reminders and questions that recall the content of the chapter and press you on to find new ways to use these tools.  Clever idea.

One of the best chapters or sections is on worksharing and worksets.  This presentation of the work flow and concepts is one of the best I have seen.

Just when you thought that the book was jammed with just about everything you could think of, there is a multi-page full color section on real projects.  If you thought that structural work was all about square boxes, you need to look again.  Seeing the bones of a facility in color is fascinating.  No longer can you say “Revit can’t do that” (well almost).  There are small projects and very large projects shown.

Now you know that I am big on standards, so Chapter 17 is of great interest to me.  Imagine a whole chapter on standards – GREAT!!  Anyway, you can tell it is written by industry experts with many years of background in the trenches of CAD and BIM.  Included in this chapter are tips on what to do and not do, how to make small changes that impact the whole team for the good and how to tweak Revit Structure to perform better.

To top it all off the Appendix is an escorted tour of the color gallery I mentioned above.  These authors give you a personal guided tour of the projects they have worked on.  Zooming in on details and explaining the nuances of the design and how they modeled it.  What a value.

All in all, this book is a very valuable addition to your library.  I would recommend it to novice and expert alike.  The reward of digging into the meat of this book is that your Revit knowledge will expand and your ability to muscle the software into submission will increase.

Buy the book from my bookstore [2]