About Fabrication Configurations, Profiles, and Services in Revit

Learn how to set up a Revit model so you can use it for MEP fabrication detailing.

Before you can place MEP fabrication parts in a Revit model, you must specify a fabrication configuration. A fabrication configuration contains fabrication content and associated product data to support coordinated modeling and detailing for fabrication and construction. The configuration must reside on your network or on a local drive. Each Revit model may use only one configuration at a time.

Optionally, you can specify a fabrication profile. The fabrication profile is a collection of services that are specific to a model. When you select the Global profile, all services in specified configuration are made available. See Profiles in the Autodesk Fabrication product Help.

One or more fabrication configurations and profiles that contain generic US Imperial and UK Metric content may have been installed during the installation of Revit. If you need to re-install the fabrication configurations, you can launch the Revit installer and select the option to install the fabrication configurations. See Download and Install Revit Content.

Configurations managed with the current version of the Autodesk Fabrication products (CADmep, ESTmep, and CAMduct) will also be listed for use within Revit.

Before you can use a fabrication configuration in Revit, use one of the Autodesk Fabrication products to set a GUID for the database if it has not already been set. Only one user should set a GUID for the database to avoid having multiple copies of the database with different GUIDs. For more information, see Setting a GUID for a Database in the Autodesk Fabrication product Help. If you need to access the database on multiple computers, copy the database with the GUID to each computer.

In a typical workflow, a single user manages the fabrication configuration and loads the services required for a model into Revit. Services are saved with the model, so other users working in the model do not need to load services from the database. Fabrication content is similar to Revit family content. After you load a family or service into a model, it is saved with the model.

If multiple users need to load services into a Revit model, then each user must have a duplicate copy of the database that has been linked using the Add Link command in one of the Autodesk Fabrication products.

With the fabrication configuration and profile specified, you can then load the fabrication services you will use in the current Revit model.