Friday, April 13, 2018

Slice Of Life

How do?

My last post got off track because of the apartment/condo project that the AHJ decided to break his dick off in our client (after the city had already approved the engineer's plans) to the tune of roughly $20K worth of extra equipment/wiring/labor.

Now we get to sit back and wait to see if someone wants to go up against the AHJ (not really suggestable) or bend over and take it (thereby emboldening the AHJ to randomly jam his phallus into random orifices in the future).

What I was really working on that triggered my anti-Revit senses was (the latest in a series of) plans that I was lovingly beating all of the gay Revit bullshit out of. In this case it's a headquarters for a city fire department.

I started with the sad looking mess that was someone's idea of an architectural plan (I'm sure we requested the engineering drawings, but I had a hard copy of those that someone had highlighted all of the relevant information on when they were bidding - and I would've already been replacing whatever garbage they were using for symbols with my own anyway).

I blew out all of the stuff that I  don't care about, and what was left could technically have been used as my background - but it was just too sad looking (and would've continued to distract me) so I took the time to scrub the living shit out of it - a large part of which involved fixing nearly every fucking wall intersection in the building.

If they were just wrong consistently, I could probably overlook it - but each one was wrong in a different way (most due to how they had sliced through the model and set the view range). I found the prettiest looking ones (i. e. - the flukes) and tweaked the rest until I could go through the building without my delicate sensibilities being offended.

Another set I was working on the other day had relatively clean wall intersections, but the whole plan was indecipherable. It was a partial renovation of an existing building and a sizable addition - and when I say it was 'indecipherable' I mean you couldn't tell what. the. fuck. was. going. on.

It literally looked like someone had just started taking random slices through a model that had five different levels that needed to be defined (only three of which related to the addition) roughly connected by a grid of column lines and rotated to true north rather that plan north. The building is literally built into the side of a mountain - and the morons who designed it apparently neglected to take note of the fact that mountains tend to be made of SOLID FUCKING ROCK which is why they are mountains and not just big piles of dirt that wash away.

They had already attempted to start construction on the building nearly a year ago - ran into the aforementioned rock and had only recently managed to get it to the point where HOLY SHIT - WE FORGOT TO TELL THE PEOPLE DESIGNING THE LOW VOLTAGE SYSTEMS THAT WE FINALLY (SORT OF) FIGURED OUT WHAT THE FUCK WE ARE DOING!!!

Now it's a panic - and, like most panics, people neglect to remember that there are dozens of questions that really need answers (many of which were asked back then, and promptly ignored). To add to the fun, the owner was making the classic mistake of vastly overestimating the ability of their existing equipment to handle an addition - made even more hilarious when their 30+ year old control panel went tits up and had to be replaced.

It was right about then that someone noticed that entire sections of the, system were a little thing called 'not functioning'.  Some attempts were made to stop it up, pass it on, shove it to shelf it, to leave it off, and turn over (to quote Fugazi), and rather than just install a 100% new system, they opted for a no-warranty half-assed amalgamation of new and old wiring, devices, and most hilariously of all - two fundamentally different types of systems in the new vs. old buildings.

Back to the plans, though.  The building(s) are strewn all over the place and are at all kinds of crazy angles with different floors having radically different footprints. Once I got all of the plans oriented
correctly and cleaned up, I started to see where some of the issues were coming from.  Due to the varying floor levels and cut planes, some areas were being shown twice (resulting in duplicate information on separate plans).

Now, even as someone who despises Revit, I know that it's capable of adjusting the view range within a view (basically overriding the overall view range, so that you can tweak the plan to show exactly what you need to see - even if it is above/below the plane you cut and/or your view range.  Obviously the person that slapped these plans together did not.

I got the plans finished and issued - and then they came back and changed the scope of the project (still working under the impression that their ancient wiring was going to do the trick - and guaranteeing that we wouldn't warranty the system).  Now I'm still waiting on a change order because there are devices missing from the design (which I brought to the salesman's attention - but someone else had already noticed (certainly not the idiot designing it).

Anyway - today I came in and found that someone had responded to our request for CAD files on another project by providing us with a Revit model of the electrical plans.  This isn't actually an issue because we have access to several people with Revit on their machines, and they are generally very happy to stop Reviting for a few minutes to export some files for us (I could install a student version - but I don't want Revit anywhere the fuck near my computer).

 We get the exported files back from our friend, and what do you know?  The moron that sent the Revit file neglected to send the fucking architectural Revit model that their engineering model was linked to - so all we get is a bunch of crap floating in space (akin to sending a CAD file without any of the xrefs).  We pointed out their stupidity and requested CAD files again - but it won't surprise me if we get a Revit model again (with or without the Architectural model).

In the meantime, these Revit idiots can lick my balls, Autodesk can lick my balls, and if you don't like it - it's time to tonguebathe my balls bitch.


Next Time: Garbage Day

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