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Monday, March 14, 2016

I Don’t Have Time to Create Custom Families...





When I think about the least customized elements in a typical Revit project casework, or “millwork”, always comes to mind.  It’s true, the out of the box (OOTB) casework families are well-made and fully parametric.  But, when you have something other than flush solid door cabinets, as you would in many residential applications, the out of the box cabinets are lacking...




“I don’t have time to make them look “exactly” like what I specified…”

That is the number one excuse I hear when asking someone about why they did not make their cabinet elevations looks like the cabinets they wanted and specified.  In fact, when I surveyed the BIM After Dark audience you named “time” one of the biggest factors for not creating custom content.  Before I continue on and illustrate to you that it does not take as much time as you may think to produce custom parametric cabinets I’d like to demonstrate how valuable the time spent can be.

Let’s use the example of custom cabinets (“casework”, or “millwork”, whatever your favored term may be).

In our example, you are designing, modeling, and creating a set of construction documents for a four story apartment building.   The kitchens have a few upper and a few lower cabinets of varying sizes.  You don’t feel you can spare the hour or so it would take to modify the OOTB casework to be a face framed overlay with a shaker door, so you use it as is.

When creating your interior elevations of the kitchen you add a note that states face framed overlay shaker door.  You justify this by telling yourself “at least they have the cabinet dimensions, number of doors and swings, and locations of the cabinets.”  The notes and details cover that fact that the cabinets will be face framed overlays with shaker doors.

Fast-forward a few months and your project is out to bid.  You’ve hired a few third-party estimators throughout the process and you are confident the project will come in on budget.  To your surprise, the project comes in over budget.   When breaking down the bids you find that the cabinets are the culprit.

It turns out your third party estimator was not carrying the face framed shaker door note and was carrying what he or she saw visually on the elevations (flush, solid cabinets).  Meanwhile, the contractors who bid the cabinets saw the note and were carrying the face framed overlay shaker doors.

You could argue that the estimator should have saw the note and carried the correct cabinets.  That doesn’t change the fact that you, as the architect, are now responsible for getting the project back on budget.  You can’t simply use the flush solid cabinets because the owner clearly wants face framed overlay shaker door.

Now, you will spend the next few days trying to value engineer other aspects of the project to get it back on budget.  Exhausting yourself and your fee.

Could this have been avoided?  Of course, all you had to do was spend four hours a few months creating accurate parametric cabinets.

Oh, and your renderings would have looked more accurate, too. ;)






BIM After Dark - Volume 3: We Are Family...


BIM After Dark -Volume 3 is live!

In the series, there is an entire chapter (almost an hour of video) dedicated to custom cabinet creation...

If you find yourself feeling as though you don’t have time to create custom content.  If you or someone in your company spends all day drafting over out of the box families in Revit.  If you simply want to take your Revit family creation game to the next level, Volume 3 is for you.

Volume 3 is focused 100% on custom family creation while stressing the use of real-world situations and examples. In addition to over six hours of non-stop, easy-to-follow, and information packed tutorials you have the option of some great bonuses in the complete package…  From simple parametric tables to funky adaptive facades, Volume 3 has something for everyone.

Click here to download Volume 3 today!



Comments (18)

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This is not a hypothetical situation.
That EXACT thing happened to us on a project.
The Cabinet supplier provided "Shaker style" cabinets because that's what our drawings showed instead of the Flush cabinets that were in the spec.
Client rejected them and guess who had to pay to replace them?
1 reply · active 469 weeks ago
When I was writing this post it felt all too real... I had a feeling I was not the only one who has experienced this situation or something similar...
Nickomiscione's avatar

Nickomiscione · 469 weeks ago

And why not modeling in place rather than creating a family -- which is what i normally do for custom millwork? (Please forgive my ignorance...)
1 reply · active 469 weeks ago
Nicko, modeling the "shaker doors" in place (for this example) may resolve the issue of graphically seeing the "shaker" details but they will be a nightmare to edit or change.

For example, if you had to now change those "in-place" families to be a 4" instead of 2" framed shaker you would have to either edit every single family/sketch.

The advantages of creating them inside of the cabinet family and making them parametric is that simple changes like 2" to 4" can be handled in basically one click... The power is insane! In the next couple days I will be diving deeper into other examples and how you can use parametric family creation to resolve those issues!
How ironic at the timing: I just built a brand new Millwork library, where every single piece is fully optionable and swappable, including the Door/Drawer styles AND the size of the doors and drawers if they arent *full bleed* on the cabinet size itself. Plus hardware that can read the size of the door or drawer its on, and adjust itself to that.
4 replies · active 468 weeks ago
Oh man... Those things are worth more than gold to Revit users... haha!
Is it possible to buy any of your cabinets.
Its absolutely possible! Reach out to me through Parallax Team dot com. Happy to show them to you, and see if its something you are interested in. :)
Finally got a quick teaser video up about the new Millwork Library i am working on. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZswyY648c
Manuel Lopez's avatar

Manuel Lopez · 469 weeks ago

do you have like a tutorial to how to create custom millwork or casework for our projects in revit and not
to have the time to look in the internet for some components to fit in the project.

thanks
Manny Lopez
1 reply · active 469 weeks ago
Stay tuned Manny... Stay tuned...
This IS the tutorial that I need! All of our residential clients want inset doors with recessed panels. I'm constantly making shop drawings for custom cabinets and something parametric would be amazing. My attempts to create customizable families have not quite panned out.

Last week, I had to fall back to AutoCad to meet a deadline... RevitKid if you have some tutorials that focus on custom cabinetry, please let me know.
1 reply · active 469 weeks ago
Stay tuned Mike... Stay Tuned... ;)
Love your posts...I have seen lot of times that because of very short deadline peoplel tend to make up time with "workarounds" that in long run doesnt pay off. Maybe problem is with beginers that are not comfortable with making or modifying families. Its awsome that i can show people your posts:))
I heard of something similar happen but with windows instead of casework. Some of the windows were to be operable, so the designer added detail lines to the building elevation views to show the projected swing. Unfortunately, those lines never made it back to the window type sheet. Guess what was ordered? That's right; $100,000 of fixed windows were ordered and installed, and subsequently had to be replaced with operable windows. That could have been avoided if the projected elevation swing was built-in to the families. To those who say they don't want to see swings in all elevation views, I say they are easy to control using subcategories and a view template.
1 reply · active 469 weeks ago
Great example Kris... I had a feeling many others have experienced similar situations!
Nice

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