What You Need to Know About PowerPack for Revit

The PowerPack for Revit is a features tool that has people talking. There are two options for the Revit user, Standard and Professional. The big question for the Revit user is, “Which one should I use?” So, we need to look at what each set of tools provides and how it will make your team more productive each day.

PowerPack for Revit is an everyday tool, not just for users but for the BIM manager as well. The PowerPack is designed to save every Revit user time and money by assisting in your Revit workflow.

First let’s look at your BIM workflows. What would help you?

Link To Excel is a tool that can help everyone. It creates a bi-directional link from Revit to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Link To Excel is in both Standard and Professional versions.

Another tool to help BIM workflows is the Element Lookup. This tool will allow you to search through the project database, using queries you create, to locate your objects for editing. Element Lookup is found in just the Professional version.

Next let’s look at parameters and tags.

Auto Dimensioning is a great tool that comes with the Professional version. Auto Dimensioning can be used to create a set of chained dimensions based on settings you choose.

Another helpful tool in the Standard version is Join Dimension Lines. This allows you to string together individual dimensions into a single chain dimension line.

So, what about your construction documents? How can PowerPack help you with that?

With the Standard and Professional versions, you can use the Create Views and Duplicate Sheets tools to speed up your project setup and the construction document sets that you need to get out the door.

A wonderful tool only found in the Professional version is Arrange Views. This allows you to align views on a sheet to make your construction documents look more organized.

Next up: file management.

Getting into file management, a great tool for the Standard or Professional user is the Family Manager. This is a great way to utilize your out-of-the-box content library, along with any custom content you develop or download. It is basically your one place to get content.

There are a couple other tools available only in the Professional version that are very helpful for management.

The File Updater will update several files to a newer version of Revit at once.

The Work Tracker can track the time spent by users on individual files. This is a great tool to figure how much time needs to be billed to the client.

When it comes to working with tools on the fly, a great tool in both Standard and Professional is the Category Visibility tool. Like Visibility/Graphics, it shows all the options of categories that can be turned on and off. At the top there is a filter; if you are looking to turn off a category that involves lines, you can simply start typing, and it shortens the list. When you make changes in this tool, it updates automatically in the Visibility/Graphics for the view as well.

A tool that is available for the everyday user in the Professional version is Join/Unjoin Geometry. “Now wait, isn’t there already a tool like this in Revit?” you may ask. Yes, but this works differently. This tool is an automated function with which you can choose what type of element to join to another and easily switch the order of the join condition.

Now, the tools I have described are just a short sample of the many tools in PowerPack for Revit. All the tools that are in Standard are included in the Professional version.

Watch for future tech tips, webinars, white papers, and additional info on PowerPack for Revit from the technical team at Applied Software.

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For more information on PowerPack for Revit, contact Applied Software today. Put performance, automation and capability in the hands of your design teams.

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