wish: protect families against unauthorized editing

[BorisVian]

Hi all,

A customer of mine recently asked if he could passwordprotect his revit families against unauthorized editing.

He wants to:

- prevent his coworkers to change specific families

- protect his intellectual property against other building partners that might want to recuperate and modify his families for their own purposes

Cheers,

Steven

[adam.jw]

Point 1: Great idea. Just like making our networked tool palletes (AutoCAD) at our office so only myself and the other CAD guru can modify them.

Point 2: Nope. Dumb.

Draconian software copy protection schemes are bad enough these days. I don't want to see any of that garbage in my Revit families. It's annoying enough when I get a code book in PDF format that won't allow me to copy/paste language into my drawings. It's like "I bought your damned expensive code book, which I'm using, to make sure that people who bid on my job, meet your requirements, which were drafted up by industry leaders, who make the very equipment that will be installed in the building." 

The instant I get a Family from a manufacturer that keeps me from modifying it to suit my needs - It's going right into the round file. And I'll use a different manufactuer. 

So excuse my French, but **** that ****.

Tell your customer it's the year 2012.

Further elaboration edit about Option 1:

The way to do this will be through the Manage tab of the actual project itself. Give "Revit Manager" premissions to one user in the office. He can than select which families in the project browser can and can not be modified.

That's how you'll do it. NOT by making the Family itself write protected in some way.

[CoreyDaun]

I have a method of sort of protecting my families, to a degree. Within only the noteworthy, intelligent families we design, we add a tiny little Author Label to the model and add an Author Parameter (a yes/no that is named Created By...). The important dimensions are actually based off of the little tag, so if it gets removed, the family ceases to function. The Author Parameter is used arbitrarily in several formulas, but that could just be renamed (still cannot use Text in a conditional statement!)

[adam.jw]

Derail, but wouldn't it be awesome if we could use Text in formulas?

[adam.jw]

Also, that's an inventive way of being a pain in the arse.

Do you work for a manufacturer? Or an MEP consulting firm? Because if you work for a manufacturer, us specifiers laugh at you and use someone else's family. Also, how difficult is it to trace down to see what paremeters are dependant on your silly variable?

However, if you're an MEP and you've created something special... and well... your Architect clients are always giving your Revit models to competitors to look at (this never happens ) -- then I can understand going through these hoops to "protect" your content.

I still find it distasteful, but I do understand.

[CoreyDaun]

Yes, a major pain in the arse. I work for an MEP firm, and a competitor will have access to a model with our stuff though an Architect (believe it or not). If I worked for a manufacturer and did this, I would have to bludgeon myself with a hammer as penance. The only reason I am doing so is as previously stated. Someone who is good can trace back the parameters, but I imagine there are not that many people that can be called "Good with Revit"...

Derail, just a bit more - Absolutely. It is on my "Revit List of Pains" along with many other thing such as the need to CONCATENATE! This list is a real document that I have been compiling for some time.