ELEN Consulting, Inc. is an award-winning MEP engineering and lighting design consulting firm providing a wide range of innovative services to clients nationwide in the commercial, institutional, government and private sectors. The firm has been a “power user” and advocate for Design Master Electrical since purchasing it as a startup in 2009.
Now an established and highly competitive company with offices in three states, ELEN Consulting began using Design Master Electrical RT, an add-in for Revit MEP, early in 2014 when it was still in the pre-release Beta stage. Currently the firm has five to seven designers using the new software on about ten different projects of various sizes.
According to Cory Murphy, P.E., Electrical Engineer, “We use Design Master Electrical RT on all of our Revit projects—there’s really no reason not to.”
“The biggest project we’re using Electrical RT on right now is a large and complex casino and hotel addition here in California,” Mr. Murphy adds. “It’s integral to our process at this point.”
“Electrical RT basically fixes the key deficiencies in Revit from an electrical design standpoint, and makes things a whole lot easier from there,” explains Mr. Murphy. “It cuts way down on all the errors and extra manual work that we would normally have using out-of-the-box Revit, by automating the various calculations that Revit either can’t do or doesn’t do correctly.”
Mr. Murphy continues: “For example, if I move a panel board in Revit, typically I’d have to re-measure the feeder and redo all the fault calculations by hand or in a spreadsheet. Electrical RT recalculates everything automatically, inside Revit.
“That automation makes circuiting in Revit a whole lot faster and easier. But the biggest benefit is probably the fact that it automates voltage drop and fault calculations.
“Electrical RT makes it much easier to tell what’s connected to what in the hierarchy of the electrical distribution system as represented in Revit,” offers Mr. Murphy. “It also creates a ‘one-stop shop’ location within Revit to update variables that change frequently when you’re doing electrical design.”
“Electrical RT is a very solid product and we have full confidence in it,” states Mr. Murphy. “I haven’t found any bugs in it at all.”
“If you knew how to use Revit before using Electrical RT, it’s completely seamless—like it was part of Revit to begin with,” Mr. Murphy asserts. “There’s no learning curve with Electrical RT. Just push one button and the calculations start working.”
By saving time, streamlining the design process and eliminating errors, Design Master Electrical RT gives ELEN Consulting’s designers more time to focus on quality.
“Electrical RT lets us focus on the functional issues that the end-user is going to appreciate, rather than on calculations,” says Mr. Murphy. “It enables us to better coordinate where electrical devices should go in relation to mechanical and architectural elements within the Revit model.”
“The bottom line is that using Electrical RT leads to a higher quality design and fewer problems in the field,” Mr. Murphy summarizes. “It makes it easier for us to give the client a better product.”
