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Monday, January 18, 2016

Are You Tired of Downloading Bad Revit Families?






I'm just as guilty as you are.  I'll admit it here on a public forum for the whole world to see.  I, The Revit Kid, have downloaded free Revit families from the Internet.  


You may be thinking, “So what? How else will I build my models?”


I will respond by asking a question.  Was the last family you downloaded for free a good family?


Was it parametric?  Did it actually look like the production intended it to? Was it even the size of the product you are specifying?  Finally, did it kill the performance of your overall project model?




When I think back to the last free model I downloaded I can tell you that it was “kind of” parametric, it “kind of” looked like the product I was specifying, and it most certainly was not the exact size of the product I was specifying.


In fact, here is the last free family I downloaded online:



Looks pretty good. The detailing looks nice and the title of the download says “parametric”.  Of course, it was not exactly the height and width I needed… So I adjusted the parameters and got this:





At first glance it looks okay but look a little closer.  There is a definite problem between the landing and the first run of alternating treads.  How many times has this happened to you?

In the comments section below, tell me what the model was and if it was good or bad.  What was wrong with it?

Let's have a little BIM therapy session to start off the week … ;)



Comments (25)

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The worst thing is when you get a bad family for a manufacturer with "Revit Content". I have found 75% of the manufacturer content is wrong or so bad it is not even worth the time to try and correct.
2 replies · active 477 weeks ago
Yup, it is unfortunate but the truth. Even Autodesk SEEK has some "standards" but I have downloaded many families that don't meet those standards.
What is annoying is also opening up a family to find out it was not created with native Revit geometry at all...but was rather made with some other software and imported into the family
2 replies · active 477 weeks ago
Haha CAD blocks are the worst! And you get all those vertices and faces... UGH!
I have tried to download a piece of structural support called unistrut P1001. I found it from the manufacture that was parametric, but when I cut a section thru it. it just shows as a rectangular void. When I searched other sites. I could not find one that was truly parametric, so i decided to try it myself with no luck
4 replies · active 477 weeks ago
David, did you check the detail level of you section? Sometimes families will look like blocks when the view is set to course but will show correctly when the view is set to fine.
I changed the detail level to medium and it still showed the same. I will try changing it to fine and see what I get from there.
Last free family I downloaded was for an IG steel cavity lintel. Was actually OK I think. Didn't look at it too closely though, it was for someone else. They can be found here if you are interested http://iglintels.com/.

Last free family that wasn't from a manufacturer was pretty ***t. Which I guess is the point of this article. Far better to create your own, at least you only have yourself to blame if it doesn't work as intended then!
1 reply · active 477 weeks ago
I create some free content with a friend, but ONLY model what's needed and display at least a half dozen images on what the downloader should expect it to do. Rarely will we go in depth on nesting families or parametrically controlling objects that simply don't need it. It dawned on us last year that we should include PDF cut sheets of the model. File size is important to us, rendering is important to us and accuracy is above all, important too!
For example: http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/I...

No CAD-add's as we call them!
1 reply · active 477 weeks ago
TurboSquid Rocks. Our Nola friends!
I downloaded a conductor head and downspout. Well first the bugger was not categorized correctly and second the constrains were not well defined (locked)
1 reply · active 477 weeks ago
Downloading free content can be a hit and miss affair. I don't really worry about the accuracy of the families too much. It kinda forces me to edit and improve them. That's one of the best ways to learn family and content creation in Revit. Yes there are many headaches trying to fix stuff, though the more you know, the easier it becomes. Universal standards and units don't exist really. The world is a big place and standards exist for just about every single different place on this planet. So use what you can get and then fix / modify to your needs. It will only help you to become a more powerful Revit user.
1 reply · active 477 weeks ago
Can I assume that the families you have to pay for are better then those that are free.
2 replies · active 477 weeks ago
Never assume that.... But, hopefully, if someone either paid to have content made or you are paying to get content it suits your needs and is well built.... Hopefully...
Leo, good point... This is going to be more and more important in the future as models are used at a greater extent b contractors during construction. I see it every day.

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