Purging is a question we get at Ideate all the time.
Who’s afraid of the big bad purge button?
I was! When I started my first Revit MEP project, I was still waiting to get trained formally and I thought “How different can it be from AutoCAD MEP?” Not realizing that the files in Revit are going to be larger than my AutoCAD files, I wanted to get the file size down. What do we do in AutoCAD? Purge. So, I did, much to my dismay. This event so traumatized me that I never again hit the purge button.
For years I would clean my files by removing unused views and limiting .dwg files, but never the purge command. That was silly, but we all have developed avoidances from things we’ve done in our life.
Well, yesterday I ventured back into the purge command in Revit MEP 2012. I could actually feel my blood pressure rising as I moved my mouse the purge button. “Am I going to make a mess of this file?” kept running through my head. Then, the dialog box popped up and it didn’t look anything like what I remembered.
The dialog box allowed me to Select None and the pick the elements that I was sure I no long needed.
File maintenance has its own workflow. Check for unused views (sections and 3D views are the biggest culprits), check for .dwgs (Ideate Explorer for Revit can help), and I now will use the Purge command in the Manage tab without any heart palpitations.
MEP Solutions Application Specialist
Lana has a wealth of real world experience, having used Autodesk products on projects from hospitals to universities, restaurants to corporate office headquarters, from strip malls to tenant fit-up. Most recently she focused on coordination drawings/models with MEP contractors, and fabrication from the model. Lana successfully ran her CAD business and worked as the CAD manager for an international MEP engineering firm in Seattle. Lana is a Certified Autodesk Trainer and NECA certified electrical estimator. Currently pursuing her MBA in Sustainability and based in the Ideate ATC in Seattle, Lana provides training and services for AutoCAD MEP, Autodesk Revit MEP and Autodesk Navisworks. @LanaGMEP
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