Noviun Architects
Case Study
Award winning UK practice Noviun Architects were formed in 1997 and have developed an expertise in the education, healthcare, residential and leisure sectors.
Introduction
Noviun Architects has a keen interest in new technology and constantly strives for more efficient methods to deliver projects successfully.
Since day one they have used Autodesk products, initially AutoCAD and various verticals, 3ds Max and onto Revit in 2008. They now have around 25 seats and use Revit to deliver all technical data and in combination with Enscape, Twin Motion, and Lumion for visuals.
Problem
Noviun have been completely aware of the time wasted by users making or locating data, which could easily be up to an hour per day, then multiplied across the office it’s a huge inefficiency.
‘We have a lot of centralised content but wanted to make it more accessible and simpler to manage. Given projects run for up to 5 years, keeping office content compatible with all office Revit versions is very difficult’ noted Andy Wiggins, Managing Director.
‘Essential technical information such as the Building Regulations is available on the network but clunky and time consuming to locate.’
"Finally we have a centralised system for our Revit families and products we use daily"
Dan Smith
Digtial Lead
Solution
Andy could immediately see the benefits of a structured content management system such as BIMflow and decided to implement it.
MonkeyFlow built the product and installed on the Noviun server. The roll out was swift and easy using the specifically created EXE file for installation on users’ machines.
Result
Noviun users immediately found the BIMflow ribbon simple and easy to navigate, and the ability to view an item via a graphical interface was far more engaging than browsing a folder hierarchy.
A huge benefit is the ability to supplement the BIMflow content with Noviun’s own system and loadable company data. ‘Knowing you are calling off the correct family for use in the correct place makes a huge amount of difference…and extremely useful to know that it will perform consistently for all views and scheduling downstream’ commented Andy.
The quality of the generic content provided by MonkeyFlow is ‘absolutely ideal’ and made to the perfect LOD / LOI for swapping out for the actual items as the project progresses.
In addition, having key technical information such as Building Regulations and British Standards available from Revit has made a big difference as users don’t need to leave the Revit interface to search for necessary data.
Conclusion
Future management of the data through Revit versions is now structured and much simpler using the BIMflow warehouse files as data can easily be upgraded.
‘We did have a Revit template that contained many family items, with BIMflow we can insert families when we require them. It allows us the flexibility to have different templates for different deliverables as the content is now stored externally’ added Andy.
MonkeyFlow are keen to gather feedback and continuously strive to improve the products.
