Topic: bim model libraries / templates

[jumpy]

Hi All,

having spent the last 3 days attending a revit MEP fundamentals course, I feel I am totally ready to work with revit to produce professional quality bim projects...





lmao I am so not ready at all hehe.

Having just scratched the surface of revit (and being the only fledgling user in my company) I am on the lookout for recommended resources for bim models. Mostly this means any company who makes stuff for electrical installations. From mains incomers all the way through the panel and distribution boards right down to the sockets and lights and stuff at the end of a circuit.
If anyone has any suggestions for free (at least free for the time being for me to get my teeth into a test project) bim models?
There's a few places in the UK where I can acquire manufacturers kit directly, but if anyone has any other resources I'd be interested.

I'll also be looking at some basic template creation (though this wasn't covered by the course; that's family creation and modification for MEP advanced ?) for electrical services and also for our sheets. I had a tip from the training guy to import our current autocad title sheet and trace over the linework as a basis for starting a simple sheet template family.
I have some ideas as to how this might be achieved but again, I'd appreciate any prompts or suggestions and tips some of you more experienced users might have to offer.


Is it wrong to say I like the way revit works better than autocad? I feel somehow like a cheating spouse, sorrid and a little bit dirty  

[hudster]

Honestly, nothing that anyone provides will be as good as creating your own stuff.
We don't use any manufacturers families, 99.9999% of them are way too complicated, the remaining are just rubbish.

As a jumping off point, have a look at all the schedules and information your company issues on a typical job, then look at creating shared parameters to carry that information in the Model.
Then create families that have those parameters included in them.

It took us 6 months from deciding to use Revit to being at a point where we felt comfortable enough to actually use it, and even then, we are still creating families and parameters on a weekly basis.

[jumpy]

Thanks for the insight fella.
For the time being family creation from scratch is going to have to wait; We glossed over importing and what have you but making bespoke family entities is a bit beyond my current revit skillset hehe.

I know the sort of electrical kit varies greatly from job to job here. I was hoping to be able to take some existing manufacturer kit and perhaps modify it a little at least to begin with whilst we are testing revit against our practices (some of which are going to have to change quite drastically).

As of right now, I've not had a chance to touch revit at work since taking the course. If I'm honest, that concerns me more than a little given my understanding of how we will have to change our design practices here.
I guess the main impetus for change here is going to be driven by having a contract that requires the use of BIM and Revit specifically. Like you, I feel it's going to be at least 6 months of testing and application before using revit on a live job. At this time I don't have the freedom to work on any of that during office hours, which is a problem.

[hudster]

I feel for you, we were the same, the bosses thought we bought a product and could instantly use it.
It took a project failing badly, (it was very bad, we ended up in court), for them to realise that we needed to spend time configuring the software for our uses, before unleashing it on a project.

Now I'd say we are ahead of the curve, our models regularly surpass our competitors, and our BIM reputation is winning us work.
It was a shaky start, but it's a fact that you'll only get out of Revit what you put in.

[Matt__W]

We don't use any manufacturers families, 99.9999% of them are way too complicated, the remaining are just rubbish.

I don't mean to hi-jack this thread, and maybe it's better if we take it offline, but what type of info and how detailed (or NOT detailed) would a manufacturer's family have to be in order for you to use it? Just curious because I've recently taken on the role as lead content creator for a company that builds and supplies Revit families to use, free of charge after being a CAD/BIM Manager at multiple architecture firms, a multi-discipline engineering firm, and a bridge/civil infrastructure firm for the last 20+ years. And I'm in the same boat as you when it comes to overly-complicated, overly-detailed Revit families. Just because you can model it in Revit, that doesn't mean you should model it. I've been saying it for years. I'm looking at some of the families we (as a company) have created in the past and I'm not super impressed with some of them. I firmly believe "less is more" when it comes to families, and that the true value of it lies in the underlying parameter data. I also understand that everyone has their own set of parameters and ways they like to schedule things so there's that side of things as well. Again, I'm happy to take this offline and chat. Would love to get some feedback as to what you think is beneficial to the end user/designer and what's overkill/useless fluff.

[hudster]

We work to LOD 300, documenting the actual size and shape of the equipement, but without the bells and whistles manufacturers have.
Does a luminaire really need to have the diffusers shown and textured, or is a rectangle the size and shape of the luminaire adequate?

Also by using our own families, our schedules are filled in as we go, no need for much end user input, just size shape and load, also, our shared parameters are already linked to pre made schedules,  and until there is a universal standard shared parameter file we need to make sure our families are usable with our schedules.

Adding all the necessary information each time we use a manufacturers familiy can get very tedious very quickly.

As the creator, if you could create different family versions for each LOD, that would be amazing, so we as designers can use what we need, and if the architect wants to create a decent render, he can copy monitor our stuff, but substitute a higher LOD version for his renders.

[Matt__W]

Great feedback. Thanks! Sounds a lot like what I had set up when I worked for an MEP firm.

One other quick question... if there was a way to quickly add your parameters to content you downloaded so that it will schedule properly, would it be something you'd use? Or would you still just use your own content?

[hudster]

We have used Revit addins to push newly created parameters to existing families, so I don't see why this couldn't be utilised in the future if we had content which matched our needs