If you work in the manufacturing industry, you get all sorts of files from customers.  Most are exports to a generic file format so it can be opened by you, but doesn’t carry any design info with it.  People who fabricate things that are attached to a building in some manner often have installation issues because you might have lacked detailed information on stud location or even the room configuration.  If the customer uses Revit, now manufacturing companies can collaborate with the architectural company and their CAD models.

What this can do is cut down on issues down the road.  This allows for increased accuracy because you are using the exact data used to design the building you are mounting onto.  The company using Revit can even increase efficiency more by making a “3D View” that is set up in Revit specifically for you to use in Inventor which will cut down the size of the model brought into Inventor.  No more miscommunications with regards to the CAD models.  Manufacturing uses exactly what was designed in Revit.  Keep in mind that there is a lot of data in Revit that may not be needed in Inventor.  It may be beneficial to also utilize some simplification tools in Inventor like Shrinkwrap.

Now what happens if the building design is changed and the product being manufactured needs to be changed accordingly?  Inventor uses AnyCAD to use the Revit model.  With AnyCAD, the files are associative, which means, if Revit changes, Inventor lets you know there is an update available.  If you are linked to the Revit file in a Dropbox, or some other cloud storage, it will update Inventor if the Revit file changes.  You may want/need to install the “Desktop Connector” from Autodesk to use files from cloud drives like OneDrive or Dropbox.

I think it is safe to say that any Feature based CAD user loves their constraints and can do wonderful designs using them in inventive ways.  The manufacturing designer can constrain directly to the Revit model.  If you constrain your design to specific parts of the Revit AnyCAD file, it will automatically update if the Revit file changes.  If you link something to be centered over a window, it will move with the window if the Revit file changes.

Once the design is finished in Inventor, you can just save the Inventor file for use in Revit and it can be used in the full final Revit design.

I hope this brightens your day a bit and you start collaborating more with Revit in the future.

Here is a link to a video from Autodesk.  Enjoy.