Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Automating Revit Families with FAR

We are developing a unique software tool which automates the creation of Revit families and calling it FAR (Family Automation Revit). I am recommending that manufacturers take this into consideration to ensure they are maintaining the integrity of their products while providing the most accurate product data to architects who are using their products in their building designs.
FAR is being developed with the intention of benefiting both Manufacturers and Architects.

These are the benefits I see for Manufacturers to use FAR:
  • The Manufacturer will maintain control of the Revit families with assurance their product specifications are accurate.
  • The same file will be able to create an automated Revit family in either inches (US Standard) or metric.
  • There will be no need to maintain Revit Families as it can be an automated process.
  • No staff will be required on Revit – if individual families need to be created – see CAD Enhancement ‘CAD on demand’ service.
  • Using FAR will ease the process of making adjustments for product changes.
  • Using FAR will create a simple customization solution for easy, quick and accurate Revit families to Architects for configurable products.
  • This tool can be developed for accessibility to customers and prospects via the Manufacturer’s website.

These are the benefits I see for Architects who have access to use FAR:

  • Manufacturers using FAR will provide approved Revit families assuring product data accuracy compared to what is found on various websites on the Internet.
  • Architects can receive clean Revit files – no importing / exporting overhead in their project files.
  • Architects will finally have control to select the level of detail of a Revit family.
  • Creating Revit families using FAR will be more efficient and will improve productivity as there is no need to re-create an inaccurate Revit family.
  • There should be no need to manage Revit files created by companies using FAR.
  • Architects will have accessibility to accurate data which is crucial to designing a better building.
  • FAR will allow Architects to use the efficiencies of the BIM (Building Information Modeling) platform as it was intended to be used.

    Let me know your thoughts about FAR.

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4 Comments:

  • The idea of 'Automated' family content is intriguing but you don't really explain the 'FAR' concept in solid terms.

    Are you making use of the new family creation API introduced in Revit 2010? If so, I would imagine all content created is 2010 format? Or is just an 'outsourcing' service, where your staff creates the Revit model? What does the manufacturer need to provide you with? Do you have any examples of a family you've created? I'm interested in the ability you mention for the architect to specify detail level.

    Thanks,

    Best wishes to you and your new undertaking.

    Patrick Villella

    By Blogger Patrick Villella, At May 6, 2009 7:51 PM  

  • Patrick,
    All very excellent questions, I hope we should see the answers soon.

    joseguia@cadkicks.com

    By Blogger Jose Guia, At May 19, 2009 6:48 AM  

  • To add a few more questions to Patrick's, I'm also curious how much of the data is 2D vs. 3D, and how much of the manufacturer specific information comes across in this process (I'm actually worried about too much!).

    There is a lot of information that isn't useful to Architects and Engineers and we don't need our files to get any bigger. For content the key is to get the right information not all information...

    By Blogger Kelly, At September 9, 2009 6:34 AM  

  • Actually one of my complaints of the people creating content is putting too much detail in them. What we will be able to do is establish rules of what geomtry to use in a manfucture cad model. The keys are foot print, connector points. Make the geomtry as small as possible and to get all the data necessary in the paramters is the goal.

    pat

    By Blogger Patrick Johnson, At September 9, 2009 7:15 AM  

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