Workstations in the Conference Room

Problem

Much of the “heavy lifting”  work in Revit is collaborative in nature, and thus not done exclusively at the desk. Indeed, the heaviest lifting, where the entire suite of A/E team models and resource files is loaded at once for coordination, can only be done at the desktop in a virtual meeting scenario. For a face to face Working Meeting or presentation, some variation on the conference room approach is likely the best scenario. However, historically conference rooms have gotten lower spec’d machines or older hand-me-downs, and often been provisioned with low resolution projectors suitable for PowerPoint presentations and perhaps web browsing. Efficient use of Revit in this situation requires provisioning the conference room with hardware at least as capable as that at the desktop, and ideally even more so.

Context

• In house DD Working Meetings demand the ability to check coordination issues.
• In house design Working Meetings benefit from eye candy like shadows, ambient occlusion, anti aliasing and consistent color or realistic views.
• Coordination meetings require loading of all linked models.
• Client presentations demand fluid movement and maximum eye candy.
• Lunch and Learns and other group training or presentations should not be limited by the infrastructure.
• Hosting user group meetings and other public software demonstrations.

Details

Conference room machines should be provisioned with the same workstation spec as your standard Revit user at a minimum. If your standard Revit user gets less RAM than your Job Captains, then you may want to consider setting up conference room machines with the additional RAM to support full consultant model loading as well. Also, if your Designers are provided with higher end graphics cards, matching or exceeding that spec in the conference room will facilitate full eye candy sessions for design Working Meetings, Presentations, Training, etc.

Because the focus of Working Meetings is on the Revit model, it can be very helpful to provide a second small screen, which is positioned in front of the Revit Driver and contains Project Browser and Properties. This allows the actual focus of the work more room on the large screen, and removes the distraction of some incidental Revit Driver tasks.

• Workstation level computer, ideally suited to both Designer and Job Captain level tasks.
• Large screen monitor/TV/projector screen appropriate to the size of room and most distant viewer. High resolution is also very desirable. 1080P should be considered the minimum resolution if at all possible, and higher resolutions for large screen monitors is helpful.
• Secondary monitors can be quite small. Where a wired solution is viable repurposing an old 19” monitor can be more than adequate. And even smaller screens are possible by leveraging the new generation of tablet devices.
• Wireless where appropriate. If the computer lives under the conference room table, then a wired keyboard, mouse and secondary display can be minimally invasive. But when the wires must be exposed, strung across space or otherwise get in the way, then wireless solutions become very useful. Bluetooth keyboards and mice are commonplace, and wireless solutions like Air Display on a tablet or Wi-Fi USB to VGA/DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort solutions are becoming much more common and affordable.

Related Patterns

• Working Meetings
• Infrastructure Requirements Increase
• The Mobile Conference Room