“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!
DaveP · 469 weeks ago
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?
TheRevitKid 72p · 469 weeks ago
Nickomiscione · 469 weeks ago
TheRevitKid 72p · 469 weeks ago
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!
Aaron Maller · 469 weeks ago
TheRevitKid 72p · 469 weeks ago
Chinara · 469 weeks ago
Aaron Maller · 469 weeks ago
Aaron Maller · 468 weeks ago
Manuel Lopez · 469 weeks ago
to have the time to look in the internet for some components to fit in the project.
thanks
Manny Lopez
TheRevitKid 72p · 469 weeks ago
Mike · 469 weeks ago
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.
TheRevitKid 72p · 469 weeks ago
bimpeter 0p · 469 weeks ago
@spiroslamba · 469 weeks ago
Kris Weeks · 469 weeks ago
TheRevitKid 72p · 469 weeks ago
Mack · 343 weeks ago