We have just started eSpecs with Revit.
Intriguing? Interesting? Infuriating? All of the above, and more.
I’d be interested in hearing from colleagues who have started the process with these two softwares. Please post comments or wise insights if you have some to share.
When I last poked around in e-SPECS for ADT it had a lot to do with how drawing notes are used, and coordinating with design teams very early to make sure notes corresponded with specs - a good thing to do anyway - but if not done right then you’d really get missing or wrong results in the spec editor (“GIGO”).
From demos I’ve seen of e-SPECS Revit it seems to pull from UniFormat instead of MasterFormat numbers.
One thing I defintely noticed is you do NOT want to refresh the project manual per drawings AFTER any of the specs have been further edited manually, or it might overwrite without prompting. That was several months ago, maybe they’ve done some work on the program to at least warn, or better yet tippy-toe around what has been edited by hand.
If used skillfully and with good teamwork between specifier and designers early in the project, it should be an excellent tool to add to a specifier’s toolbox.
If more intelligent management of master information is desired, the e-SPECS Designer program could be very useful. Never was quite clear from talking with InterSpec though as to how subscription updates would work when custom links have been added. I think a separate section or file might be needed, and the customizations to be reconsidered, unless the program has been developed to give user some alerts as to changes that would affect the customizations.
In the past 7 months has anyone had additional expereince using or understanding e-Specs. I have been asked to help a firm with evaluating master specification sytems, and I woudl like mre input.
The text for e-specs is straight from Masterspec, so the content will be what you might be used to. the firms I know that are using it have done a LOT of customization on the program and links, though – its not going to be out of the box for the user.