Revit Standards of creation
In response to my last blog (FAR Quality Control – 6/18/09) I received several comments about NIBS and Style Guides from one of the LinkedIn groups. I agree that Style Guides are necessary guide lines with starting points showing how software should be used, however, that was not what I was trying to convey. Maybe NIBS will address the issues I am talking about - however, it has been my experience when you wait for a committee to do something or address an issue, we may be waiting a long time.
I looked at the date of the Style Guide from Autodesk and started wondering why they did this after loading all of the data (families) into their system. I feel this should have been implemented from the start, prior to loading the data. There is a saying about databases "Garbage in - Garbage out". Once you have the garbage in there, repairing or fixing it can be an impossible task. Being a software company, Autodesk should have known better. Autodesk’s role with the standards should stop here and let the industries decide those items. Maybe Autodesk, along with the other software companies should be members of NIBS and have the same input as every other member of NIBS.
Enough stated about Style Guides. What I really would like to address are the Standards of Creation - having the right data and the naming of that data.
The following is a simple example supporting what I mean regarding the need for Standards of Creation. If you start with a window in Revit you will find predefined items such as built-in Parameters, etc. The big question is ‘How do we define more specific items?’ For instance, with a double hung window you have lower glass and upper glass, do we show double or triple pane? And, if you do, how do you name these items? Also shouldn’t there be a glass size variable in a window so at the FM level they would be able to get the glass cut if they needed to replace it?
I think everyone agrees we need to have consistency for this type of data across the industries and having consistent data across different manufacturers would be a tremendous improvement for everyone involved. Imagine if window manufacturer A and window manufacturer B (as well as all of the generic window manufacturers) were following the same Standards of Creation.
Developing new Standards of Creation is a huge undertaking. We feel CAD Enhancement’s FAR process will be able to begin addressing this concern and will be adding it to our testing procedure. We will be watching NIBS and even consider becoming a member so when more detail Standards of Creation are released we will be able to work with them. CAD Enhancement’s FAR process will be able to incorporate the standard changes with extreme efficiency while utilizing the ability to communicate with both the manufacturers and architects who are using FAR and if necessary, will be able to update their families on their system and in their projects.
Patrick K. Johnson
I looked at the date of the Style Guide from Autodesk and started wondering why they did this after loading all of the data (families) into their system. I feel this should have been implemented from the start, prior to loading the data. There is a saying about databases "Garbage in - Garbage out". Once you have the garbage in there, repairing or fixing it can be an impossible task. Being a software company, Autodesk should have known better. Autodesk’s role with the standards should stop here and let the industries decide those items. Maybe Autodesk, along with the other software companies should be members of NIBS and have the same input as every other member of NIBS.
Enough stated about Style Guides. What I really would like to address are the Standards of Creation - having the right data and the naming of that data.
The following is a simple example supporting what I mean regarding the need for Standards of Creation. If you start with a window in Revit you will find predefined items such as built-in Parameters, etc. The big question is ‘How do we define more specific items?’ For instance, with a double hung window you have lower glass and upper glass, do we show double or triple pane? And, if you do, how do you name these items? Also shouldn’t there be a glass size variable in a window so at the FM level they would be able to get the glass cut if they needed to replace it?
I think everyone agrees we need to have consistency for this type of data across the industries and having consistent data across different manufacturers would be a tremendous improvement for everyone involved. Imagine if window manufacturer A and window manufacturer B (as well as all of the generic window manufacturers) were following the same Standards of Creation.
Developing new Standards of Creation is a huge undertaking. We feel CAD Enhancement’s FAR process will be able to begin addressing this concern and will be adding it to our testing procedure. We will be watching NIBS and even consider becoming a member so when more detail Standards of Creation are released we will be able to work with them. CAD Enhancement’s FAR process will be able to incorporate the standard changes with extreme efficiency while utilizing the ability to communicate with both the manufacturers and architects who are using FAR and if necessary, will be able to update their families on their system and in their projects.
Patrick K. Johnson
Labels: blog, Revit Family
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