Modular construction can be one of the most efficient ways to build, and its gaining serious ground across residential and commercial projects. For teams designing these buildings, Revit is usually, if not always, the backbone of the workflow.
But there is a step in the process that can consume way more time than it should, and it starts long before a single component is produced on the shop floor and shipped to the jobsite.
Once the architectural Revit model is in place, someone still has to go into, define the modular groups, and frame everything – the walls and floors, the openings, the sheathing. Accurate shop drawings need to be generated. Downstream, the BIM data needs to be readily accessible by the manufacturing team. On a project that has a lot of repeating modules, the work has a way of stacking up fast.
How to automate modular construction framing and shop drawings in Revit
The good news is that there’s a better way to handle this — and it works entirely within Revit.
To show what that looks like in practice, we partnered with the Balkan Architect to walk you through a real modular construction project inside Revit 2026. Using Strucsoft, a suite of structural framing plugins that add a dedicated set of tools directly into the Revit interface, the walkthrough covers the full journey from an unframed architectural model to a complete set of shop drawings.
The project we’re going to look at is a multi-unit modular building in light gauge steel, with several repeating module groups, each requiring framed walls and floors. Once the modeling is done, we’ll look at producing documentation such as shop drawings and bill of materials (BOMs) to aid the post-design construction process.
If your team is spending more time than you’d like on either of these stages, what follows should look pretty familiar — and hopefully, pretty useful.
Workflow 1: Instant framing with Quick Create
The first challenge in any modular framing project is straightforward but time-consuming: getting every wall and floor in the model framed quicky and correctly in a consistent manner. In a traditional workflow, that means placing members manually — a process that’s as repetitive as it sounds.
With Strucsoft’s Quick Create, that changes considerably. Rather than placing framing members one by one, Quick Create applies pre-configured framing templates to your selected walls and floors automatically. Select your elements, run the command, and in a matter of seconds the framing is done — members placed, labeled, and ready for the next stage.
The key to making this work consistently across a project is the Template Map. This is where each Revit wall and floor type is matched to a corresponding Strucsoft framing template — set it up once, and Quick Create knows exactly how to frame each element type every time it runs. For modular construction projects with repeating geometry and standardized components, this is particularly valuable: the same logic applies uniformly across the entire model, which means fewer inconsistencies and less time spent checking your own work.
Workflow 2: Model framing across Identical Groups
Quick Create handles the framing for a single module group quite efficiently. However a typical building might have dozens of identical units, and therefore a smarter approach is required that avoids having your designers repeating the same work over and over again.
This is where Strucsoft’s Copy All Same ID command comes in. Once a module group has been framed, Copy All Same ID pushes that framing out to every identical group in the model. What would otherwise be a repetitive, and potentially error-prone process across multiple groups is reduced to a single command.
When copying framing across groups, there’s also the question of panel numbering. Strucsoft gives you control over this directly: you can either carry the same panel numbers across all identical groups, or have the numbers continue sequentially from group to group. Both approaches have their place depending on how your fabrication team needs to receive and process the information.
Certain situations require that you need to work in the other direction. Sometimes you’re starting from a completed group and need to apply its framing to another one. The Copy From Group command is designed for those cases. Together, these two commands cover the full range of scenarios you’re likely to encounter while designing the framing on a modular project, without having to step outside the Revit environment.
Workflow 3: Generating shop drawings automatically
With the framing complete across all module groups, the next step is documentation. This is often where the design phases of modular construction projects hit their second bottleneck. Even when the digital framing design has gone smoothly, producing shop drawing manually is a significant undertaking. When the model changes – as it inevitably does – manually produced shop drawings don’t update themselves. This is where automated shop drawing creation makes the process a lot easier and streamlined.
Strucsoft’s Modular Gather Sheets command automates this entire stage in one operation. Select your framed groups, configure your settings, and Strucsoft generates a complete set of shop drawing sheets that include:
- plan views
- elevation views
- labels
- and bill of materials schedules
Which are all automatically placed and ready to issue. What would typically take hours of manual sheet setup is reduced to a matter of minutes. The sheets Strucsoft produces are a properly structured, labeled, and scheduled set of documents that your manufacturing team can work from directly.
The output is also highly customizable, including:
- title block
- sheet numbering
- margins, View scale
- and BOM fields including reported length, weight, and count.
These can be configured to match your project standards and fabrication team’s requirements.
The Bigger Picture: What the Strucsoft for Revit Modular Workflow Upgrades
Taken individually, each of these three stages: Revit framing, propagation, and documentation — represents a meaningful improvement over the vanilla Revit alternative. But let’s look at what that entails when you look at them together.
What Strucsoft enables, in combination with Revit’s modular project structure, is a continuous workflow that runs from an unframed architectural model to a precise set of shop drawings without leaving the Revit environment. For structural engineers, and BIM managers working on modular or offsite construction projects. It removes the handoff friction between design stages, reduces the points at which errors can accumulate, and means that when the model gets modified (as it usually does) the documentation process doesn’t have to start over from scratch.
For project managers, the benefit translates directly into schedule. Framing and documentation stages that previously consumed days of coordination and manual effort can be completed within a single working session. That’s not a marginal efficiency gain — it’s a structural change in how modular construction projects move from design to fabrication.
Watch The Full Walkthrough
Try Strucsoft for Revit
If the workflow we’ve covered here looks like it could change how your team handles modular framing and documentation, the best next step is to see it in the context of your own projects.
Strucsoft is available to try free. You can also watch the full walkthrough with Balkan Architect on YouTube to see every stage of the workflow in action before you commit to anything.
Get started with your free trial now
Automate your next modular construction project with Strucsoft for Revit
