ofice standard and family updates - How do you manage this?

[pipapongo0909]

Hi,

I got a question about how you deal with family/shared Parameter (SP) updates:
Actually our engineering company is moving to BIM with Revit so our family catalogue and SP are not very large for now ( except: title blocks).

We recently made an update of our title blocks and its shared parameters, so the SP of the old and newer version differ a little.
I got contacted by a colleague who was working on a project he started some time ago in an older version and needed to import the updated version of the title block.

in this case the solution was easy:
import the new SP to his project file and the problem was solved.

But let's imagine the following situation:

In a few month ( i hope so) we will have much more of our office template and family catalogue created, and new projects will start with these configurations.

at some point we will have to edit some families and probably add/delete some SP - i am sure i will not get everything right on the first guess ( yes, "guess" is the right word )
So the template will evolve to newer, better "releases" for the next projects.

How do you deal with this? what happens with the old versions of the families living inside the projects that started with an older template? Shall they be updated every time a change occurs?
I can imagine the reaction of the modelers after my fifth mail within a week that they have to reload the family X again an check if everything works.

I thought about giving monthly releases of the templates with changed and new families and let the older one die with the project. As the office standard evolves the release intervals might get longer.

What do you think? How do you deal with this?


thanks a lot and have a great weekend,

Jeff

[BIMConsultingServices]

Jeff,

Consistency is absolutely critical in this area. You allude the likelihood that at some point an erroneous parameter will be created and then how best to address that when this issue is discovered. If and when you need to create custom content, I recommend strict adherence to Autodesk's Revit Content Style Guide. If you believe you need to create a custom shared parameter, check through Autodesk's Master Shared Parameter file first to see if such a parameters exists. If one does not exist to meet your needs, create the parameter and follow Autodesk's naming conventions for the parameter (Sentence Case). Consider creating a centrally located document that describes the custom parameters and their intended use. This way, other team members creating content can review custom parameters in use and avoid creating duplicated parameters with the same intent.

Autodesk's Revit Content Style Guide can be found Here

If you find that you need to replace erroneous parameters in a significant number of Revit families, you might consider using an Add-In to assist with adding and replacing Shared Parameters in the content. AGACAD has a great utility to help with this called Smart Browser.

Hope this helps!

Nick Fuller

Owner

http://www.bimconsultingservices.net/