BIM Chapters intro: The following article is an excerpt from the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) Standards Bulletin, a monthly email. Please read it and then consider upvoting the Revit Ideas i've linked at the end. FYI: I am the chair of the IES BIM Standards committee.

FEATURED ARTICLE: BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING (BIM) STANDARDS

By Rebecca Mintz, secretary, IES BIM Committee

The IES BIM Committee requests your help!

Have you been unhappy with the process of documenting lighting in BIM software, specifically Revit*? Do you wish there were features that the software had to make the lighting workflow more compatible with those of other trades?

From the survey conducted by our committee last year, we heard your frustration and are working hard to get Autodesk to listen to the lighting community. However, we need your help!

Autodesk uses public opinion to decide how to implement new features via its Revit Ideas forum. Users post requests; other users vote on the requests. Autodesk takes notice of posts that have a high number of votes, generally those with more than 100 votes.

That’s where we need your help! The IES BIM Committee has taken all the feedback we received from the survey responses and created a series of requests on the forum. Two posts have been on the forum for a while but haven’t received enough votes to reach Autodesk’s attention:

Multiple Light Sources in a single Family, without nesting. This request was authored by IES BIM Committee member Matt Kincaid and addresses the fact that nesting is required for lighting families to have more than one light source. Nesting is problematic for aiming and photometric calculations. For more information, read Matt’s post and vote!
Visibility Below Cut Plane In RCP. For many of us, it is helpful to see architectural elements, like furniture or step lights, that wouldn’t typically be shown on a Reflected Ceiling Plan as we lay out our designs. Currently, Revit doesn’t have a good way of showing that. There are workarounds, like making the cut plane close to the floor, but they all have their downsides. Allowing for visibility of elements below the cut plane would make it easier for us to see what we need without messy workarounds.

Please click on the links above and vote for these ideas, as well as any other ideas you see there that you would like to have implemented! If we band together and vote, we are hopeful that Autodesk will recognize that the lighting industry is worth pleasing!

We will also be highlighting feature requests each month in social media. If you see a post and want to share it, please do! Let’s advocate for our workflow needs and our industry recognition!

Also, please share these ideas with anyone and everyone! We thank you for your help advocating for the lighting industry’s needs in Revit.

* The IES BIM Committee does not endorse any particular BIM software. However, we recognize that Autodesk Revit is the most used software. For that reason, we are focusing our current efforts on improving its usability for the IES and lighting communities.

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Revit Ideas

Each Revit Idea is linked below. You need to log in using a free Autodesk account. Use these steps to speed up the process:

Click the first link below
Log in to your Autodesk account (or create one for free)
Click the vote button
Leave this tab open (keeps you logged in)
Click and vote for the remaining links (close each after voting)

Families - lights on sloped ceilings (6 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/families-lights-on-sloped-ceilings/idi-p/10951427

Schedules - Print Schedules (219 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/print-schedules-without-placing-on-sheets/idi-p/8528302

Schedules - Spell check (345 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/spell-check-in-schedules/idi-p/6255700

Schedules - Edit in sheet (421 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/edit-schedule-directly-on-sheet/idi-p/6598772

Schedules - Multi-line text (274 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/allow-schedules-to-display-multi-line-input-properly/idi-p/6859386

Schedules - Copy/Paste data (3 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/schedules-copy-paste-data/idi-p/10951492

Schedules - Sheet formatting visibility control (5 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/schedules-sheet-formatting-visibility-control/idi-p/10951497

Multiple light sources, without having to nest families (29 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/multiple-light-sources-in-a-single-family-without-nesting/idi-p/10574036

Support for new lighting definition - gldf (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/support-for-new-lighting-definition-gldf/idi-p/10951501

Families - toggle hosting methods (132 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/easily-change-hosted-family-to-non-hosted-family/idi-p/8582106

Update built-in parameters (7 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/update-built-in-parameters/idi-p/10951511

Support for MEP Logical Systems across Linked Models (3 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/support-for-mep-logical-systems-across-linked-models/idi-p/10951517

Support for ANSI/IES TM-32-19 Lighting Parameters (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/support-for-ansi-ies-tm-32-19-lighting-parameters/idi-p/10951521

Locate fixtures in an array - along a curve or a path (58 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/array-along-a-path/idi-p/8231208

RCP - Improved Visibility Control (14 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/visibility-below-cut-plane-in-rcp/idi-p/8307183

Improve copy-monitor workflows (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/improve-copy-monitor-workflows/idi-p/10951532

Lighting Fixture - multiple zone control support (3 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/lighting-fixture-multiple-zone-control-support/idi-p/10951535

Improve Support for Type B Photometric Files (*.IES files) (9 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/improve-support-for-type-b-photometric-files-ies-files/idi-p/9831091

Lighting Fixture - MEP connector enhancements (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/lighting-fixture-mep-connector-enhancements/idi-p/10951542

Design Options - MEP related enhancements (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/design-options-mep-related-enhancements/idi-p/10951547

Type catalogs enhanced to support photometry (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/type-catalogs-enhanced-to-support-photometry/idi-p/10951558

Update CSI OmniClass Table 23 (2 votes)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/update-csi-omniclass-table-23/idi-p/10951561

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