A look at QARCsystems – a start to end Revit design & documentation system.
CADgroup is pleased to be the exclusive reseller for QARCsystems Australia and their QARC4Revit product. We realised the value of this amazing tool and the productivity boost it can give to users. There is a lot to take in with the system and it’s impossible to cover every aspect of it without writing an encyclopedic entry. But let’s have an overview look and a selective dig in to a selection of some of the benefits of the system.
At CADgroup we give our Revit customers a link to the free version of the QARC tool because we think it’s great and it will give people a taste of the power of the tool. There are 2 levels of the paid version with an emphasis on customisation of content for the higher priced version.
To me, the QARCsystem is about spending money to gain massive productivity and as we’ll see this is a highly developed toolset.
Overview: What is QARC4Revit?
QARC has been steadily developing their tool for quite some time. Initially it consisted of a highly developed Revit Template and companion documents to guide users through the whole design and documentation stage as well as a handbook on the actually QARC template. These elements are still in the latest release of QARC and they are constantly under development.
In recent times the QARC tool has really taken to flight due to the inclusion of some really clever cloud-based technology that is a bit of game changer in the Revit world. This allows you open a content browser inside Revit that gives you detailed thumbnails of content as you browse. This browser links to manufacturers content, real world Australian Families (not generic metric stuff!) and also the standard Metric Library that ships with Revit. Since it’s Cloud based it can be updated at any time. Another aspect of the Cloud technology is that you can open the QARC Revit Template (more on this in a second) and it will download the latest template from the Cloud for you.
Opening a new Project using the QARC template.
If you go to the QARC tab in your Revit Ribbon and click on the new Project command this opens and saves the QARC template ( referred to as the ARCHEtype). Basically this template contains every View you’ll need to start documenting an existing Site or Building. All the Phasing has been set up as have the corresponding Views for those Phases. Levels, Grids, linestyle, Materials, Simply add in the ready-made items to represent what’s there at the start of the Project. The QARC Template is very lightweight to keep your Project size as trim as possible. If you need to add content (Families) you simply use the QARC Content Browser to drag new Component and System Families in (this last point is astonishing as there is no other Revit addin that can do this!).
Now using using the prolific Green Notes as guidance inside Revit and the refer to the Archetype checklist and Companion to help you remember all the bits you to add in and adjust
This is a screenshot of the Checklist. It’s very detailed and contains tick boxes that you can tick off as you complete a task or mile stone in the Project.
The QARC Companion is over 100 pages long and contains an exhaustive explanation of Revit from a Project centered point of view. There’s no unnecessary information in here and it’s all you need to get your head around the technical aspects of using Revit and the QARC4Revit system.
QARC has really thought the whole design and documentation through. So for example they’ve added in some clever Bracing Families and Bracing Schedules that allow to quickly create your drawings to submit to Council. There’s no massive learning curve and you’re quickly doing in Revit what you might have been doing manually or in 2D CAD.
Things like the creation of Area Plans, which to new Revit users are confusing are all dealt with and the Companion and Green Notes stand ready to assist if it’s your first time through the process:
And of course, all your sheet sets are set up for you with the relevant Views loaded into them.
When you consider the Template, the additional Help files and the content (Australian Families and Manufacturer Families) the amount of work, thought and dedication is astonishing. They’ve considered all the pain points that you might come across and put the solutions at your finger tips. This is as close as you can get to an out of the box documentation system from Revit. When you tally up the time saved versus the cost of the system, there is a great business case to be made.
If you have any questions about the QARCsystem please don’t hesitate to contact your business development manager to discuss this. If you aren’t with CADgroup then please call us to talk about the subscription benefits that you can get when we partner with you to provide your Autodesk product.
Here are some examples of completed Projects that used the QARCsystems QARC4Revit system:
