Kelly has posted his thoughts on the issues we have (and the things we love) about Parts and Assemblies, on his blog. http://revitfutures.blogspot.com/

Hi,
I want to add something here from the construction engineer point of view (or any construction company I guess..) about construction tools, cause Kelly's post is not really positive about that.
Parts and assemblies were not designed to be at first a design tool. They intended to go in construction workflow, and also precast workflow (reinforced concrete at the moment).
So I understand that designers may be disappointed that the Factory puts resources here that could be placed for something else (wish list is still open...) BUT those tools will be useful already in 2012 for the purpose they were designed for, as a first step to enhancements for 2013.
We all want perfect tools NOW, but that's the way life is....
I also believe that designers will create uses for such tools, that nobody imagines now.
I like really the way I will simulate construction without any change to the original model, create my own QTO according to my simulation, to be more accurate in the construction schedule. That's my all day job. I also have to do some precast shop drawings, and even if the OOTB solution, Assemblies, is not perfect as it comes, a few API enhancements may be helpful.
Your thoughts may be different, but I look forward playing with those tools. :wine:

Uh... Not to speak in his defense, but Kelly isnt speaking from a "strict designers" point of view. We are also a General Contractor, and- even looking at the potential- im not seeing anything earth shattering in these tools that we werent already acheiving in Revit, with a much better workflow.

Parts: Not on shape edited floors, or any roofs at all. (It works for PERFECTLY flat roofs, as in: not even shape edited. When was the last time you had a PERFECTLY flat roof???)

My beef with parts is quite different than Kellys, from the POV of using them EXACTLY as they are intended to be used. I dont think they should be a category at all. I think it should be: Model Tab, Annotations tab, Parts tab. As it is, there is a half breed of "control it with the Parts category visibility (and a wacky combo of Filters/subcategories/parameters), or shut them off entirely at the View Properties level. Either way you slice it, it means reconfiguring every View Template the moment parts are introduced in the project. And doing so also means (because of how theyre organized as a category) that you either see them, or you dont, by and large.

Assemblies? Maybe theyre better, maybe theyre not. The entire concept of Revit is BASED on Change propogation, and they dont do it. So far the ONLY advantages to groups are: Redundancy checking, scheduling, and tagging.. And the auto drawing feature, which you cant use with the rest of the drawings anyway. Redundancy checking doesnt scare me, honestly, and i prefer the workarounds to scheduling and tagging model groups over the limitations of assemblies (that ive currently seen, anyway) for a lot of Construction-esque things.

If anything, for the large GC portion of our company, im much more excited about the API advancements and what we are seeing coming out of third parties.

You obviously don't do a lot of work in California. ;-)

Kidding, kidding... it's so frustrating lately; these Revit features feel unfinished, not thought through, and with little vision.

It's like someone up the chain asks for a feature, but a minimum is what is actually implemented.

Or we're being told to not make sloped floors and to forgo proper roofs. Radical Architecture indeed!

I agree with them, that its a great concept. And that its something that we need. And that this is just a first pass. I just.... dont think i would have set it in to the wild as it is. But, im one person amongst many, and as mentioned... We WILL all find ways to use them, im just not sure it wont be a train wreck.

EDIT: Dont mistake this for disparaging the new release. Im SUPER Excited for 2012. I just think this particuarl feature set- while a great idea- needed to be unraveled back to basics, and throught through with more people who would use it.

Since the crisis, we've been doing more and more prep work for contractors than architecture. We take a DD 2d drawing from the contractor and make an as built model from it. Layers in walls are modeled separately. Since joining these walls together to enable windows to cut through doesn't always work, this feature could come in handy. However, my concern is the file size, since the host wall is still active.

The assemblies is also something we can benefit from. Our prefab concrete balcony slabs are placed on a separate sheet. Only problems I see for us is that these balconies are placed on a sheet together with the referring section. Í wonder is this is still possible with assembly views.

Maybe I am missing something here, but having tested it multiple times, the parts for roofs functions correctly for any single plane roof regardless of the pitch.

If one has a simple rectangular roof where three faces are set without an angle and the final face is set to whatever angle you choose, the parts tool works as expected. It most certainly does not work if you have a normal hipped or even a simple gable roof roof form - single pitched roof - no problems.

I had done a couple of tests where I modeled each facet of a hipped roof as separate roofs. One can use the part tool on each and the shape handlers are available for each. When you have completed the modifications, you can join the roof together and the parts function remains.

This is immensely interesting for us as a builder of serialised homes from prefab. I cant wait to get a copy to play around with and learn/teach how to use.
As for the unfinished part, may be true, but like everything, from the first car to the first CD player or plasma screen, there has undoubtedly been invested a lot of money and effort into this, and should start generating some revenue if they want to keep developing it. They're not scared of what the users might say, that's for sure, but they also know they have a user base who is self aware, know what they want and how they want to use it and they will collect feedback to polish this thing until it shines.

LOL, my bad. I hadnt tried that. Nor will i, LOL. The one or two benefits of the Parts isnt worth breaking up roofs in to individual pieces, IMHO.

Were looking in to a lot of the new add ons for streamlining Prefab work for large scale Healthcare work, and they are very promising... Moreso than these tools. But i suppose next year they will improve. And be useful for us. In the meantime, im sure people will find some clever way to use them.