Design Options

Best Use case scenarios for design options

Design options are best applied in:

• areas of somewhat limited scope
• When options are required to exist while work on other areas of the project continues

It would typically not be worth the setup to create a design option, if it is likely the design decision will be made within a day or two. Design options can thrive where showing multiple options is neccesary, but work on all aspects of the project must continue pending a final decision.

How to create Design Options

The easiest way to get to the design options dialogue box is to click on the icon at the bottom of the toolbar, indicated with a red arrow below. Once there, you should create an option set and then create options within that set.

It is preferable and faster if you have a general idea of the number of options you intend on creating when intiating a design option. As with everything, think before you draw.

The naming of the Option set should indicate the area or type of options being explored. The Options within the option set should indicate more specific information about the options. and Example:

As you can see, It is always reccomended that you maintain one option in each option set that is kept unchanged from the original design, prior to initiating iteration.

The guiding principle of Architecture at SAR+ has always been think before you draw. You may want to consider doing a simple diagram for your anticipated design options prior to creating them and populating them in the Revit model.

The best way to think about design options is like this: It is as if you have made a copy of your Revit file, but instead of copying the whole thing, you only copy what you put in the option set. Anything that goes in the options are now isolated from the main model. Resolving design options by using the Accept Primary option will essentially copy those elements back into the main model.

adding elements to a design option

Frequently the best workflow for creating a design option is to flesh out the considered options in your option set first, and then add all relevant elements to all options. This workflow mimics the functinality of essentially making working copies of your file.

A warning here: Do not add unnecesary elements to options!

elements can be added to options and option sets by selecting them and clicking on the add to option arrow on toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Getting a proper selection can be difficult due to hosting restrictions.

Design options can be reconciled with the main model, but options within the same option set CANNOT be reconciled with eachother except through manual copy and paste. Additionally, each design option becomes its own defacto workset, meaning only one team member can be working within a design option at a time, and team members will be unable to interact with those elements while that is taking place.

What does this mean? In practical terms, If a design option contains all walls on a level, and someone is working within that option, other teammates will be unable to tag or dimension to those walls while that work is taking place, even if they are not working within the option. The wall is within the option, and the option is checked out entirely by someone else.

Hosting and how that impacts design options

Many hosted elements cannot be added to a design option without their hosts, most commonly windows and doors. A wndow or a door is dependant upon its host, and therefore both the element and the host musted be added. This does not hold true for some surface hosted elements as they do not actually alter the properties of thier hosts in any way.

worksharing and design options

This part bears repeating. When a teammember edits a design option, they take ownership of the option and everything within the option. Attempting to draw any elements that interact with elements in a checked out design option will result in a worksharing warning. This can become quite arduous. This is one of the best reasons to attempt to restrict the scope of the elements in an option set as much as possible.

reconciling design options

You can switch between different options that you have created by selecting the option in the Design Options Dialogue and "promoting" it to primary. This essentially "plugs it in" to the main model.

When you have decided on an option, it is reccomended to reconcile your design options by accepting primary. Accepting primary will plug the primary option into the main model and delete all other options. It is highly reccomended to do a sync to central prior to doing this, and to make note in the comments that you are accepting primary of <blank> option on <blank> date.

There is a tendancy to avoid reconciling design options and this is highly discouraged. Design options should be reconciled by accepting primary at the soonest possible date in all situations. Maintaing design options unnecesarly will segment the model in ways that can complicate worksharing, visibility, and errors as the model progresses towards DD's and CD's.

Alternatives to design options

In some cases, design options are not the best way to explore iteration. An alternative can be to create a few different group types of an area, and then switch between those group types to show different configurations. Nested families can also be used in place of deisgn options for some situations, or in combination with design options. Workset visibilty could potentially be leveraged for some conditions as well. It is important to think through the timeline of the option and iterations before deciding on a path and setting up the neccesary infrastructure to execute that plan.