No preprocessing whatsoever. I dont even use DFC before uploading it.

Any models that i receive that have been stripped, get rejected and a note gets sent back for them to send the model exactly as it is in their office.

What is DFC?

Detach From Central

these days, theres little to worry about with people "stealing" your content.

there is so much available on the websites now, and often people dont even want other peoples content because it just ends up importing problems into their work...also their templates are all customised to their own office it really serves very little purpose to take content from models so the fear of people taking "Intellectual property" out of models is pretty moot and its about the only reason to worry about purging everything out of a model.

That said, I worked for a developer that demanded the model be "stripped" of all views except the 3D view, and that the view box be reduced by level (so I had to save about 7 different models of just that level isolated in a 3D view) honestly, it was a pain in the proverbial and I really don't see what the gain was for their end.

Totally agreed with Aaron. We don;t have time to waste on such a useless task

it can be a good approach
It gives the end user a Lighter Model to Load, and from our use of this - can help eliminate some errors downstream in making them look at the model

My experience with BEP's here in the UK and the Middle-East is that the the BEP's always insist on the files being stripped of most non-essential stuff.

I've found that very useful: in our role as architect's we only need the structural model to be linked into our model and therefore show in our drawings correctly for us to coordinate with; we don't want an engineer's file, that is often more than 50% by filesize of drawings and annotations, clogging our servers and RAM. The 2D drawings are issued to us as PDF's anyway. And with perhaps up to 2 model exchanges per week on a fast-moving project at DD stage and 3 or 4 consultant's models, that's a lot of storage and RAM being used for no benefit to us.

Our engineers also appreciate us spending a few minutes [using many of the apps available including the now open-source CASE apps] to clean out the model. Their workflow is to follow our work through 3D views and sections to arrive at their design and only look at our 2D PDF's as a last resort anyway. I'm seeing it as becoming the culture amongst consultants here in the UK.

What is often not mentioned frequently enough is that part of bring green is less waste. Less waste will ALWAYS mean a bit more HUMAN EFFORT. The following 2013 report will be an eyeopener for many: that 10% of electricity generated in 2013 was demanded by IT. Other quotes from it are "according to a 2007 report by the EPA US data centres consumed 1.5% of US electricity production, and was projected to rise to 3% by 2011". We're in 2017 now . . . you can read more here:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/0...n_you_thought/

Nevertheless in answer to the OP's original question, the model exchange process should be defined in a BEP [BIM Execution Plan] and that is normally done at the outset of a project in a collaborative process between the stakeholders.

Again, in our role as architects we are normally the Lead Consultant and often the end-consumer / customer so we follow the rule of "we are paying the other consultants so we can define parameters that will make our life easier" and therefore can insist on our consultants spending a few minutes cleaning out the model before sending it to us.

PS. Oh, and "content stealing" has nothing to do with it. Revit work is by definition open-source as soon as you are working collaboratively. Models get shared and families get shared. There's nothing you can do about it. You basically get paid for your time making the family by your client and any extra time you invest in it is carried forward as a deferred payment; you get paid on the next project by a higher profit margin from the time saved, as you have to do less.

DFC (worksets removed)
Links removed
Scope Boxes deleted
views deleted
schedules deleted
legends deleted
sheets deleted
Primary DOs accepted
Types phase elements deleted
Purged till nothing lists


All that adds maybe 5min per model but aids in our pre-send checks, and I've never had a model rejected, or ever received a complaint from my partnering consultants - so I'm sticking with it.