Adesk SEEK scoreboard

[gwnelson]

Faucets = 688
Sinks = 0

WTF?

[jun.shim]

Hi Glen,

Thanks for checking out Autodesk Seek! My name is Jun Shim and I am a Product Manager for Seek.

Are you getting the below search results page when you search for "sinks" with RFA filter in Seek? I see about a dozen of sinks (not including the generic ones) by American Standard, Blickman, Bradley, Jado Porcher, etc. and they all are accompanied by at least one RFA.

http://seek.autodesk.com/search.htm#query=search%5Enew%5Equery%253Dsinks%253Bcategory%253D%253Bfilters%253Dlinkfiletype%253Arfa%253BsortKey%253D%253BsortDir%253Dasc%253BstartAt%253D0%253BmaxResults%253D20%253BviewMode%253D0%253Bsource%253DSearchBox

I wish we have more sinks available (we have a lot more faucets!) and are working diligently with manufacturers and partners to onboard more comprehensive set of sinks on Seek!

Please let me know if the above link is not the same as the search results you got when you searched for sinks!

Cheers,

Jun Shim

Senior Product Manager
Autodesk Content Network

jun.shim at autodesk dot com

[mruehr]

Welcome Jun Shim
May i take the liberty to give you a feedback to most of the faucet models found on Seek.
they are utterly useless and a waste of your server space.
It would be much more useful to have 2D Families of Faucets and other Bathroom related
Families than a 3d Family that is so bad i would fire any Family Maker who would make one like this in our company.
Dont you think the Families on Seek should be up to scrach...

[jun.shim]

Hi there,

I am sorry that you find most of the faucet models to be useless.

Do you have any specific requests for these models that would make them more useful for you? I'd definitely like to communicate your requests back to the manufacturers and to the service providers that create these models for architects and designers.

Thanks in advance!
Jun

[mruehr]

Well Jun
I could rant on for hours i think you have some Internal Family Guidelines at Autodesk.
How useful will a Faucet Family be with 1.9mb and an reused 3D Autocad File.
There was already a good Discussion here http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=100029&highlight=seek
my guess is If Autodesk wants Seek to fly there needs to be a dedicated place for suggestions where you feel your input does some good.
There is overlap between Mep and Architecture Families which needs to be discussed in detail.I am not sure if AUGI is the right place for it as our Wish List Items where not implemented in years.

[arqt49]

Well Jun
How useful will a Faucet Family be with 1.9mb and an reused 3D Autocad File.


What a ugly faucet example!

[sbrown]

Yes just taking Mesh data from acad and dumping it into revit is not going to give us good results. If they must do this then at least have the 3d data turned off in plan and elevation adn replaced with symbol lines and masking regions.

[david.metcalf]

We have had this same issues with meshes on toilet fixtures coming from various manufactures sites. We went ahead and used these for an architectural firm with the understanding these were to be not displayed and off for the most part. These were provided in the families so that clearances can be verified with Interference Checker in Revit or Clash detection in Navisworks. Now the firm is required to provide renderings of the fixtures in toilet rooms (som kind of CA regulation for hospitals). Now the firm wants better looking fixtures without all the meshes. How to duplicate the form of the manufactures casting so that the meshes are not visible? We had a competitor claim to be able to duplicate manufacturer's solid form in 20 min or less. I doubt that can be done at least not in Revit.

I'll go see if Inventor has a way to duplicate the meshed form without the tons of meshes.

[jpolding]

Seek is a great idea. Seek now needs to be done right so it's useful to Revit users.

Let's talk about lights. One of the many, many examples...

Indoor Wall Sconce, 5", 3 Arch, Wall Mount, CB5180

This is a dwg imported into a light family template. It renders as a matte grey material. It does not shine light.

[sbrown]

Actually if you do a rendering the meshes are fine. Its just in shaded with edges views and hidden line they are a problem. Just make sure the meshes are on unique layers so you can assign materials to those layers and render. Most vehicles I use in renderings are 3d meshes but they render very well.

[Andre Baros]

Welcome Jun,

FWIW, here's my thoughts on content using a faucet as an example.

We have two usage scenarios:
Scenario 1 is the symbol for the faucet. We need to place something in plan which can be scheduled correctly, and which our MEP team can connect to without duplicating efforts. It should show correctly in plan regardless of the other items with it sink, vanity, countertop, etc. It should also display correctly in elevation because we generally dimension it's height in elevation... and even if we only dimension one instance of it, we don't want to keep track of different families for this purpose. We should be able to pick any faucet and use it as our typical for dimensions, standard Type and Instance rules apply, the Revit way.

This faucet only comes in a few types, wall mounted, deck mounted, 1 hole, 3 hole. This faucet should be bullet proof for scheduling what room it's in, for piping etc.

We generally make this symbol a very simply 3d object because it's faster and more reliable for things like visibility with multiple other objects, etc.

Scenario 2 is the 3D geometry. About half our work is high end residential or similar work which has showcase bathrooms and we need to accurately show the fixtures. Sometimes just in elaborate elevations, sometimes in renderings, and always tightly dimensionally coordinated with their context. This second family is a generic family added to the scenario 1 symbolic faucet when and where we need it. On a project by project bases you add the extra information.

The scenario 1 faucet is in our library, the scenario 2 faucet is built or downloaded for each project or taken from a seperate project library, not from the main library.

Autodesk should provide the scenario 1 family with a clear and consistant set of parameters and bullet proof functionality.

Manufacturers should AT A MINIMUM provide type catalogs to work with the standard symbolic fixture.

Manufactures should IDEALLY also provide 3D geometry with three levels of detail, Course, Medium, and Fine... the Revit way.

Revit should ship with the scenario 1 family (actaully at least 2, one wall hosted, one not)
Seek should look for the scenario 2 family and type catalogs, online and in old projects.

Thanks

[djn]

Last week we were looking for some of Revit's default templates. When you click on the "Web Library" button on Revit 2010 start up screen, which is by the window's fly out box says "Downloadable templates, families and sample file". It takes you the Seek web site which has no Revit templates on it. Looks like Autodesk got ride of the "Revit Web Content Library" from 2009 in favor of Seek, but forgot to move the content over.

[eviele]

I noticed that too djn....couldn't find the Revit Samples that were so helpful in 2009...

[Joef]

I noticed that too djn....couldn't find the Revit Samples that were so helpful in 2009...

http://revit.autodesk.com/library/html/

[djn]

Thanks.

I wonder since the web site is still active was the button in 2010 miss linked or does it WAD (Work as Designed).

[travismv702230]

Last week we were looking for some of Revit's default templates. When you click on the "Web Library" button on Revit 2010 start up screen, which is by the window's fly out box says "Downloadable templates, families and sample file". It takes you the Seek web site which has no Revit templates on it. Looks like Autodesk got ride of the "Revit Web Content Library" from 2009 in favor of Seek, but forgot to move the content over.

I haven't found any of it yet but supposedly some of the content is on the seek site. It's just hard to find. But, you can't (or at least I haven't found) things like the titleblocks or annotations, etc. on the Seek site. And why would I when it is supposed to be about manufacturers products?

But, if Autodesk did incorporate the "web library" into "seek" it would be nice if they had a Web Library button so we could find all of the Autodesk content separate from the manufacturer content.

[Joef]

This is where the Autodesk people come in and point out how to find the content using seek. (because obviously they know where this stuff is)

I guess they are not even pretending to be helpful anymore.

So here is how to find the Autodesk content using seek:
When you get to the seek http://seek.autodesk.com/ page select a
category. For instance : "chairs"
Then go to the bottom of the leftmost column and you will see "Product Libraries"
If there are Autodesk Library families in this category they will be listed there.

[jun.shim]

Hi Travis,

Thanks for your comment! We have heard on several occasions now that it'd be helpful to see Autodesk Library content distinctly on Seek - we decided to make that change.

Just heads up that we're currenlty working on providing quicklinks to better organize/expose Autodesk Library content per their product (i.e. Revit Architecture vs. Revit MEP) and their version (2008, 2009 and 2010). This feature will go live in a couple of weeks - stay tuned! :)

Thanks,
Jun

Senior Product Manager,
Autodesk Seek

jun.shim at autodesk dot com

[Scott D Davis]

I guess they are not even pretending to be helpful anymore.

Nope, guess not.....oh, hi Jun! Thanks for the info.

[rmejia]

Just heads up that we're currenlty working on providing quicklinks to better organize/expose Autodesk Library content per their product (i.e. Revit Architecture vs. Revit MEP) and their version (2008, 2009 and 2010). This feature will go live in a couple of weeks - stay tuned! :)

Sounds good, looking forward to it! :)

[Joef]

Well, there was a chance there to answer a question. A question that many people at Autodesk know the answer to and it went unanswered. Why?
There are only three regular voices from Autodesk here: yourself, Kyle and Jeff. I appreciate your efforts here, but there are many more experts at Autodesk that could add a great deal to the mix.