Best Practices: Container Model

A container model is an empty Revit model which has models from different disciplines or trades linked in. Rather than uploading individual design models to folders in Autodesk Docs, create a container model to organize design models.

The container model approach is most appropriate for projects:

• Of medium to large size
• With at least 2 to 3 models per discipline
• With more than four disciplines
• With more than 2 to 3 external stakeholders
• Where designers are unable or unwilling to add more 3D views to Revit models

Create a Revit container model and link in trade models to create and control the 3D views from Revit that are published and used in Model Coordination. This approach reduces the need to request each trade to prepare their models and reduces the risk of a trade mistakenly publishing a version without all 3D views from Revit (which would appear as though that model had been deleted, affecting clash and coordination workflows).

There are three options for linking Revit models:

For details, see Share Revit Models.

A container model may be broken down. For example, you can break down container models per building level and create views in Model Coordination per level. Or, you can break down models by object category to make the clash matrix show as category versus category.

Keep in mind that files in a container model can become outdated. If changes are made to the Revit models, they must be published in order to keep the data in the container model up to date.