BIM Object

[brianwclayton1969]

Is there a better Autodesk Seek????? What idiot came up with BIM Object? That is the worst thing since the idiot who tried to redo the Revit Library in 2013-2014. BIM Object is not user friendly. Can someone please help????

[dzanta]

Typically, if you are needing Revit family content that is specific to a manufacturer, the best is to contact them via website or email the CAD/BIM Design Dept and they can send you what they have.

If the families you need are generic, start with the Revit standard library.  If BIMObjects doesn't work for you, there are lots of sites on the Web to use...you just have to search for them.

Here are a few I found....

https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Index.cfm?keyword=revit

(this one cost money though)

https://www.mepcontent.eu/

(this is for mep content though...you might be able to see if they have one for architecture)

http://revitiq.com/top-15-sites-free-revit-families/

(this one has links to 15 different sites)

Hope this helps

[RDAOU]

@brianwclayton1969

Seek wasn't that all great all good either! It is free stuff people should not really complain about it and definitely not here on this forum where no one can really do anything about it.

The other alternatives out there are also not that impressive either...

1. model you own families 
2. contact the suppliers and collaborate directly with the parties involved in Development of their BIM elements/families/objects 
3. or hire a specialist firm that offer such services

from where I come from; when it is free, it is either a "thank you very much, much appreciated" and one takes it or "NO! But thank you" and one politely passes

[ToanDN]

I don't mind BIMobject's manufacturers' content.  They are freebies so one shouldn't be complaining too much.  I actually like the new interface a lot better than Seek.  The only gripe is the loss of generic content.  If Autodesk can migrate them back they would be more than welcomed.

[Sahay_R]

Actually, there is something to be said for modeling your own content - I don't think @RDAOU was being facetious.

• You can make the families as simple (eg. 2D 'placeholders' for furniture) or as complex (eg. for renderings) as you need to.
• You are sure that the families will do what you want them to do and have parameters per your company standards.
• You can set up types / type catalogs per your need.
• And you are absolutely sure that you don't have crazy complex geometry / voids / locks / constraints to make your life miserable.

[RDAOU]

Actually I was trying to be factual...

some time ago we hired 1 expert who trained 3 other employees and are now an in-house team whose task is just building families and maintain a repository of more than 3000 BIM Objects and Families ... the majority of which are simplified and custom tailored ones which serve exactly the purpose we define and do not bloat our BIM models with useless elements/info/geometries which adds no value.

Even when we are dealing with manufacturers; we provide them with our standards for family modeling to which they shall abide with no added info. Such families will be reviewed again before inserting into any project. In the event any of those suppliers do not comply; their products would be excluded from the project specs"

Both SEEK, BIM Objects and any other similar online repositories are a NO NO...and the first bullet on our best practice and BIM quality manual is

"when a team member needs a custom family or a new one, the team member shall not download and/or take liberty in editing and/or creating one without prior consultation with Mr. X or one of his team members. Call or e-mail and the required family shall be provided within a couple of working hours or the following day at 8:00 hours"



Sent from my iPhone

[Sahay_R]

No surprises. That's where I am - all new families have to be vetted - tested, company parameters added - by me first. Manufacturer / online families can be a bear - too many surprises. A tip with pre made families - just delete all the constraints and reference planes the model comes with, add your own and re constrain the geometry.

[Shawn_Graham99]

Let them eat cake right?

The problem with your response is the same problem that autodesk has - there is a arrogant assumption that all Revit users are working in large well funded firms working on high dollar commercial projects... that we all have some kind of support staff. This bias totally shorts the small firm or one man office which doesn't have the budget to hire "experts" or employees to train if we did. We are in the trenches grinding out the average projects that represent the vast majority of projects being built in this country. 

Autodesk products are not cheap, so the notion that we (those like me) are whining and ungrateful totally misses the point. I'm not too lazy to build my own families, I don't have the time and I can't afford a $1000 to take a weekend class that might help me do it faster.

If I need a library of generic families, then autodesk should provide that with the software. Seek kind of did that. Now we have the totally useless "Bim Object". Except for a specific Bosch microwave I once needed, they have been no help at all. I usually end up at RevitCity.

Bring back Seek - no, don't just bring it back - improve it. And while your at it, cut the direct link between the "insert" search function and the BimObject website. 

I wonder what the financial arrangement is between Autodeck and Bim Object? Clearly someone is making a profit here and it's not us. 

[RobDraw]

Take Revit and BIM Object/Seek out of the equation and go back in time to the early days of AutoCAD for a minute. Small firms adopting it had the same issues. OOTB content wasn't good. Anything available for free, well, let's just say that you get what you pay for. If you bought some premade content, it probably didn't fit your standards. They needed someone capable of making generating custom content.

Bring Revit back in and we are in the same boat. These companies have to realize that the content does not come free. Yeah, you can get some for free but not all of it will be appropriate for your standards. You get what you pay for. These companies have to realize that there is a major investment to implement Revit and it's not cheap.

[chrisplyler]

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rsahayUZMK9 wrote:

• And you are absolutely sure that you don't have crazy complex geometry / voids / locks / constraints to make your life miserable.

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Or stupid masking regions, stupid categorization of nested crap, stupid and inconsistent visibility settings, etc., etc., etc.

[chrisplyler]

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@Shawn_Graham99 wrote:

Let them eat cake right?

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I understand your position, but just because Person A struggles does not mean Person B is obligated to provide relief. Little one-man, small-time firms maybe shouldn't expect to use the same expensive tools that are more easily afforded by larger, more successful shops. I don't mean that as a dig. It's true in lots of industries. A small machinist shop can't afford the big, powerful machines that a larger shop can afford. When the small shop finally does save up and buy a bigger machine, they can't just expect the manufacturer to also provide all the tooling for free. They can't just say, "We bought your expensive machine but can't afford the tooling, so you should throw in all the tooling because we're a poor, small shop." It doesn't work that way.

[Shawn_Graham99]

What are you, like 16? Wake-up young paduwan

I've been using Autocad (now Revit) since the late 80's when it was all monochrome and DOS driven and mostly 2d. I think I understand what I have a right to expect and how we got where we are today.

The problem with your analogy is that "Person A" is a customer and "Person B" is a company that sells a product; these are not two strangers standing on a street corner. Autodesk is now a large publicly traded company which has long since forgotten what their core mission was (create excellent software for architects) and who made them what they are today (small firms and solo practitioners like me). Back in the day, large firms had no interest in Autocad because it was new and unknown and scary and expensive to implement. Fast forward to today and Autodesk's entire business model is now oriented towards generating quarterly profits to keep the board of directors and wall street happy. Everything else takes a back seat. Like many who become rich and famous, they've lost touch with their roots. And by the way, I've worked in large firms - you can have 'em.

The other problem with your analogy is that the industry has been manipulated to the point where using Revit or not using Revit is not really an option. Just like buying a perpetual license is no longer an option. If you want to work you have to use Revit. If you want to work for more than a year, you have to pay for a subscription. A very expensive subscription if you're talking multi-platform license. And if you have any money left over, you are then expected to pay thousands of dollars to resellers and waste days off so you can learn how to use the software. 

I'm an expert at what I do - designing structures. I have no interest in becoming a family modeling expert as well - nor should I have to.

And while I'm on my soap box, let's not forget the poor customer who has no hope of hiring a design professional because the design professional's overhead is so high they have to charge ridiculous fees just to keep their heads above water. Of course this is not all Autdodesk's fault - but they have done nothing to mitigate this.

I'm not asking for an unlimited and infinite selection of custom made content that never needs tweaking, but the offerings are slim and pathetic and could be much improved - is that really asking so much? I'm sure Bim Object has their niche to fill, but it's not center stage. They should be somewhere off in the wings until they are more relevant and better prepared.

Now I think I'll go have a piece of cake.

Cheers and Aloha good people. 

[RobDraw]

Another person shooting the messenger instead of seeing the light.

[Shawn_Graham99]

I'm not sure if you're referring to my post or another or even what you mean, but I assure you I'm not shooting messengers. My hope is that someone who has the power to change the course of the ship might one day come across one of my occasional rants and be paying attention. We the consumers are in control, that's the way the supply and demand system is supposed to work. But everyone is so impressed with the technology, so mesmerized by the light show, and so distracted by the daily grind, that they forget who has the power. We just placidly float along and accept the status quo.

Obviously my issues extend beyond what this thread started with and I may seem like a crank to some, but outrage at Autodesk's seeming indifference to the suffering of the troops in the trenches is nothing new, it's a time honored tradition. And this is what I do all day, so it's an issue I am frequently confronted with.

At the end of the day, our jobs are simple; design beautiful and useful things that people need and can afford. Not create artificial realities that will one day hang in a mueseum. As my old man liked to say... "keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the whole".

[chrisplyler]

@Shawn_Graham99

So asking if I am sixteen years old isn't shooting the messenger?

Look... everything you said can be true without logically negating anything I said.

Sure, maybe the industry was manipulated into the state you describe. Maybe Autodesk has turned its back on all the little shops that made it into what it is today. Doesn't change the fact that they owe you nothing beyond whatever obligations have been established by contract (language in the licensing agreement) and/or applicable product law (if any).

You decide whether the offering is worth the money/terms or not. The fact that you view Revit as a necessity is a value add - so to speak - whether it was achieved through manipulation or not. The fact that family availability is not what you consider good enough is a value deduct. You aren't forced to make your evaluation one way or the other.

Now, you can hope, and you can state your case. Nothing wrong with that. I'll even agree with your complaints. Still my points are valid.

I'm forty-eight, by the way.

[Shawn_Graham99]

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you were a child, but the "logic" you argue and the analogies you used suggested a certain arrogance and lack of compassion that one is more likely to find in a much younger person. Small does not mean unsuccessful and large doesn't mean better. "I've seen the world from both sides now, but still somehow it's life's illusions I recall - I really don't know love at all" - Thank you Joni Mitchell.

In the world you suggest we should all turn our backs on justice and a better world and just let logic and market forces duke it out regardless of the consequences. And yes, you are correct, I have a choice - sort of - but the essence of a valid contract is the exchange of fair value on a level playing field. When one party to the contract has an unfair advantage, it can be shown that the contract was coerced or not fair and is therefore invalid.

Many things are logical, but unless you're a Vulcan it doesn't necessarily follow that they are good or wise or right, or desirable. The issue for me is "what kind of a world do you want to live in?" 

There's a reason that anti-trust laws were enacted over a hundred years ago - during the heyday of the American expansion and the industrial revolution. When there is a lack of competition, there is a tendency for business practices to become abusive and selfish. Now clearly this discussion rises beyond the simple issue of "family" content and goes to a deeper problem, but Bim Object and the many, many, many, other issues that have plagued Autodesk consumers over the years mostly stem from the fact that there is no competition and therefore little motivation for the company to address our complaints.

I think Autocad is a great product, I think Revit is amazing, even considering its many flaws and defects, but Revit could be a lot better without much effort. And just because I use and value the product, that doesn't mean I like having someone piss down my neck just because they live on a higher floor.

If you care to respond to any or all of the above, I promise I will let you have the last word. Cheers. 

[RobDraw]

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@Shawn_Graham99 wrote:

I think Revit is amazing, even considering its many flaws and defects, but Revit could be a lot better without much effort.  

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Yeah, that effort is on the user end, not Autodesk. There are plenty of sources for content. In fact, that was supposed to an earmark of Revit. Guess what, it worked. It took a long time but it did happen. Manufacturers got on board very quickly and converted their libraries to Revit. At that time, the families sucked. Most of them were just .dwgs converted to .rfas. In my world and others, they have refined those families and some are quite good.

IMHO, if you are relying on BIM Object. You are severely limiting your resources.

If you are a manufacturer, you are doing yourself a disservice by not providing quality Revit families for free.

If you expect Autodesk to provide everything you need with the software. you got your head in the clouds.

[chrisplyler]

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@Shawn_Graham99 wrote:

The issue for me is "what kind of a world do you want to live in?" 

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Fair enough. I want to live in a world of reasonable justice. That does NOT include allowing people to just define an injustice based upon their desires to get more than they bargained for at no extra cost. I really have a high disdain for those who enter an agreement to get the good stuff, then complain about the bad stuff afterwards. You know what I'm talking about? Like people who willingly sign agreements with credit card companies, spend money that doesn't belong to them, and THEN complain that the agreements are unfair once they're expected to hold up their end.

I would like better Revit families also. It would be super great if Autodesk would provide them. I do kinda have a lowered opinion of them for the bare trickle of improvements they seem to work on each year. But I certainly don't think I'm ENTITLED to anything more than I paid for.

Yes, Autodesk is a big corporation, only out for profits. But I'm fine with that. They don't force anything on any of us. To me, that IS fair and just.

[brianwclayton1969]

Everyone on the community, this was not to start a firestorm. I understand some people like the Autodesk seek mode, it was better useful than BIM OBJECT, many manufactures don't have someone on staff who knows how to create a true Revit family. I understand that many firms or companies are large enough to have someone on staff, me, myself am a small company and I create my own families for myself, my projects and for my clients if there isn't one from a manufacture. I am a Revit consultant and preform Revit production work I also teach companies how to create Revit families unless they hire me to create the families for them.

Yes companies need to learn how to create families, or hire an outside source like me to create families for the companies. 

[RobDraw]

Not to start a firestorm? You did use the word "idiot" quite freely in your opening post.