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

FAR Quality Control

One of the issues I see with all of the websites offering Revit families is the lack of Quality Control (QC). I have been told that some of those websites have QC, however, when I asked and never received a response, it lead me to believe there wasn’t any QC to talk about. I welcome a response comment from anyone reading this blog who has information regarding the QC standards from any of the websites offering Revit families.

As we start providing the FAR program we will be implementing a QC program that I want every end user to know about and be aware of. An important part of the FAR program QC will be the testing procedure that is in the midst of being developed at this time. This testing procedure will be used for all Revit families that will be created and accessible thru the FAR program whether it is a Revit family or FAR data.

The FAR testing procedure will not be public knowledge (meaning it will not be posted on our website) but will be available only to our customers. We will also provide, upon request, the actual testing document of any family to show that we are adhering to the QC standard we have set for the FAR program. If someone has issues or suggestions regarding the FAR testing procedure and/or testing results, we will be happy to talk about those concerns.

One of the long term goals we are trying to achieve with the FAR program is not to just create the families and walk away, but to promote the continuous improvement in the quality of creating automated Revit families while improving the communication between the manufacturer and AEC industry.

I encourage you to respond with your comments regarding Quality Controls and Revit families. You can also contact me if you would like to schedule a demo of the FAR program.

Patrick K. Johnson

FAR - The Revit Family Solution for Manufactureres

In the manufacturing world today we are seeing a great demand to produce more than just ‘off the shelf’ products as the customer is "demanding to have it their way" and in a timely manner.Manufacturers design product lines including static parts/products (what they may have in their catalog); configurable products; as well as total customized products that have been tailored to meet the customer’s specific needs. The following is how I see these product types and their relevance to providing data for architects working in a BIM format, specifically Revit.

• Static parts - These are products that may be singular in size or manufactured in multiple sizes. If they offer multiple sizes the data for these products would be great in a look-up table allowing the end user to select and load what they need, not to download all of the types at once which we feel would be unnecessary data for the architect.
  
• Configurable - These are products that allow the end user to select their needs based on criteria provided by the manufacturer. When providing data in Revit families for configurable products we caution that you have to be careful in not over doing it. This is where CAD Enhancement can help. We would build these Revit families based on our theory of constraints and not all of the design rules that it takes to produce the products, thus reducing the size of the Revit family.
  
• Custom - This is the made to order product designed to meet the specific needs of the customer. More and more manufacturers are requested to create their custom products in a Revit family on a daily basis. CAD Enhancement has the solution for this increasing need by automating the process to provide these Revit families and also allow the end user the opportunity to select the right amount of detail to load into their project.

With the BIM world encroaching the manufacturing world for this BIM data the question is “How to best do this?” It appears websites such as Autodesk Seek, Reed Construction Data and TurboSquid do not have the answer or possibly cannot handle this in their current format. It is also possible they just do not understand how to work with manufacturers’ product data to create efficient and effective Revit families.

CAD Enhancement has the solution in the FAR program to remedy all of the above mentioned product scenarios. The FAR program will not only address these issues but will also allow an architect the ability to select the amount of detail that best represents a product within their Revit project file.Demos of CAD Enhancement’s FAR application will be kicking off the week of June 22, with the anticipated release of the FAR Manager to be around the first week in August. If you are interested in a demo with the opportunity to ask questions about the FAR application, please contact us to schedule a time. We are keeping the attendance for these demos to individuals or a small group in order to allow for constructive interaction between CAD Enhancement and the attendees.



thanks



Patrick K. Johnson

Revit Standards

I have talked to a few people about creating Revit standards for families - which I personally feel is a very good idea. Trying to create Revit standards across an industry would require a willingness for those in the industry to adapt to some changes but the results would be great.

Some basic items I think should be standardized to create Revit families include: the names of the parameter, the reference plane names, what gets dimensioned, and what gets shown in a Revit family, just to name a few.

However, the most important item I think that needs to be addressed to create Revit standards would be having the manufacturer’s data in line with the Revit family. What I mean by this is that a parameter in the Revit family should match the parameter in the manufacturer data. A length parameter in Revit should match the length parameter in the manufacturer data. Once this happens, you can then make changes to the families within projects, especially from a manufacturer who has custom products. In a sense, this data becomes bi-directional, where you could extract that data from the project and pass it to the manufacturer and vice versa. By accomplishing this you will prevent errors and misrepresentation of a product in your design, making sure the manufacturer can produce what is required. It goes without saying the accuracy this process offers will also speed up the approval process.CAD Enhancement’s FAR application will have this bi-directional capability built into it resulting in higher quality Revit families for a manufacturer’s standard and custom products. To accomplish this will require working with the manufacturer closely to get the application set up correctly. However, the results will be time and cost effective for both the manufacturer and the architect. The manufacturer maintains the integrity of their product while the architect can trust the product will fit within the project design the way it was intended.I strongly feel it is only after the connection is made to accurately pass the manufacturer’s data to and from the Revit family, that the process to standardize the other items can take a foot hold. The question to ponder is “Who holds this responsibility?”

Feel free to share your thoughts or comments by responding to this blog or contacting me.

Patrick Johnson

Multiple languages - use of Dictionary and Xrecords

I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter on the internet about providing drawings in multiple languages. You may have noticed I touched upon this topic in my previous blog on Dictionaries and in one of the comments I was asked to elaborate a bit on how to use dictionaries and Xrecords to make this happen.

First, I feel the need to state this disclaimer; using the technique described in this blog will not translate English text to Spanish text or any other language automatically, you need someone that knows the languages to help set the text in each language. Also, the number of languages that can be stored in a drawing is up to the user.

As I mentioned in the Xrecord blog and the Dictionary blog, there is nothing available ‘out of the box’ to use these tools. These data containers must be implemented with the use of lisp and/or dot net. I recommend dot net for any AutoCAD version 2007 and newer. I would say that dot net is about 4 times faster than lisp and 100 times faster than VBA. You would notice the speed difference when you switch languages, especially for large drawings.

The following is a description in a step-by-step process for using dictionaries and Xrecords to create a drawing in multiple languages:

1.) The first thing you need to decide is how many languages you want to use in your drawing. The number of languages will be the number of Xrecords you will need per extension dictionaries.
2.) You need to build your set of tools to handle these different languages.
3.) You need to create an individual command that will set an extension dictionary and the Xrecords to each entity that holds text (dbtext, mtxt, dimensions, etc....) and set the current language text to the Xrecord.
4.) You need to create a command that will scan a whole drawing and set the extension dictionary and Xrecords to the text entity.
5.) You need to create a command that will display a dialog box that allows a user to add the text to each Xrecord. Note: This is where you would edit your different languages.You need to create a command that allows user to select what language to display in the drawing. Actually, this data would get stored in the NOD, the main dictionary of the drawing file.

Through the use of dictionaries and Xrecords you will keep your drawing much cleaner. If you move the text the languages will follow. It is much cleaner and user friendly than trying to manipulate with layers. There are more items that could be built into this, such as an interference check (some languages will require longer text strings) or create a batch routine to change a folder of files to the new language to display or set the dictionaries and Xrecords.We have all the logic to do this within our framework. There is so much more you can do and of course, we need to take into consideration that each company will want to add their own touch to this.

Feel free to contact us if you would like a collection of commands to work with your language issues in your drawings.
Patrick K. Johnson