Lesson 6: Coordination and Interference Checking
In this lesson, students will learn how to link models created by all members of the design team and use the Autodesk® Revit® software Coordination Review and Interference Check tools to find and resolve changes and conflicts.
Design teams using a BIM-based approach to coordinate their work can use coordination reviews and interference checking to find problems and resolve conflicts during the planning and design phases of the project lifecycle. This early review helps teams avoid costly mistakes and oversights that would otherwise surface much later during the field construction process.
BIM-based coordination also creates an opportunity to verify the geometry and dimensions of elements before they are placed in the field, and this facilitates the prefabrication of components, which can vastly improve the efficiency of the construction process.
Coordinating and Reviewing Model Changes
Link the Autodesk Revit Structure and Autodesk Revit MEP models created by other disciplines in the design team to find changes made to shared elements and decide how to act up on those changes.
When you link a Revit model, the software automatically looks for changes to any shared elements and recommends performing a coordination review if any are found. The coordination review reports:
- The type of change found
- The elements in both the host and linked model affected by the change
- Recommended actions to resolve the change
Some changes can be resolved by choosing from the recommended actions in the Coordination Review dialog box. Other changes may require you to modify elements directly in your host project.
Checking for Interference Between Model Elements
You can also check for interferences and conflicts between model elements using the Interference Check tool. You can use this tool in two ways, to:
- Compare the locations of elements placed in a single model.
- Compare elements in a host project to elements in a linked model.
Interference checking is very helpful for finding conflicts that might otherwise go unnoticed because the conflicting elements are not seen in the same view. It is good practice for design teams to do internal checks within each model, and also do pair-wise checks to look for conflicts between the elements placed in each linked model by the various disciplines.
Objectives
After completing this lesson, students will be able to:
- Understand the importance of performing periodic coordination review of models that have interdependencies.
- Appreciate and apply the concept of coordination between models that contribute to the same project.
- Assess the options available in and the limitations of automated Coordination Review for acting upon the conflicts.
- Understand how to perform interference checking tests across different models, model categories, or particular selections.
- Investigate a particular interference and take action to resolve by changing the location of one of the interfering elements.
Key Terms
| Key Term | Definition |
| Coordination Review | A tool that enables users to review warnings about changes to the monitored elements, communicate with other teams working on the same project, and resolve issues regarding changes to the building model. |
| Interference Check | A tool that finds intersections between elements in a project. These can be a set of selected elements or all elements in the model. |
| Clash | A spatial conflict or intersection between elements in the model. |
