Looking for Revit "Warehouse"

[buttonsrtoys]

Is there a go-to equivalent of the Sketchup Warehouse for Revit? I'm finding a lot of places on when web were generous users have posted templates, etc., including this forum, but is there a central place that searchable, where people can review/rate templates, families, etc.? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. At the moment I'm looking for a concrete pier library.

[iankids]

Hi Buttonsrtoys,

There is no centralised warehouse as such, probably the closest is http://seek.autodesk.com/ followed by http://www.revitcity.com/index.php .

There quite a number of smaller sites (some with excellent families) but I suspect you will find what you are after at one of the two above.

Ian

[buttonsrtoys]

Thanks!.........

[patricks]

I use Revit City first and fore-most. ADSK Seek is generally a steaming pile of junk.

[twiceroadsfool]

SO is Revit City, IMHO. I search the forums here (if i really need something i cant build myself) and find something built by a reputable member. Theres a ton of garbage on Revit City...

[cporter.207875]

When I just need something quick as a placeholder, I usually go to Revit City first. However, Aaron is right that there is a lot of junk on Revit City. I always prefer to build it myself if I have time. Or take something from Revit City and "rebuild" it after download.

[t1.shep]

There is a lot of junk on Revit City, and Seek as well, but other things that are perfectly acceptable. With Autodesk recently coming out with a MFGR's Revit content and ADSK format, I hope we will be seeing better and more consistent content available. However, I think that everyone and every firm has had a graphical way of showing things that is never consistent from person to person or firm to firm. As more and more MFGR's provide Revit content, I think that it makes sense that if you're putting their product in your file, you should leave it and accept it the way that they show it. As the AEC industry continues to embrace the digital realm, how things look on paper will become less relevant anyway, and the digital information of the objects will be what rules the "drawing"...Unfortunately, we're just not there yet...
You can also check out Turbosquid, as they have a Revit Marketplace now, and have guidelines for what they accept, some are for sale, but there are some free objects as well.

[ron.sanpedro]

I just took a look at a school locker from "Smart"BIM. The @$#% lock hasp is modeled! With the hole! And the vents? And the weld holes in the lock mount plate? Not much "smart" about it, unless you sell RAM to us sucker architects that are going to need 32Gb machines to do anything with all this "smart" content.
Fun. But at least it isn't 3D DWG **** like you still see via SEEK. So you can go edit it to get to something more reasonable. Actually something quiet good once you simplify it appropriately.
And in the end, the manufacturers are never going to spend the time to actually tweak their content to what we need, and why should they? The quality of their Revit files is NOT the determining factor in their profits. We regularly spec items from companies who can't be bothered to provide anything more than a ****** PDF of a scan of a cut sheet. But the widget they sell is either the one we want, or the one the client wants, or the cheapest, or something more compelling than a good RFA file.
Not to mention if you ask 100 of us what we need, you get 105 answers. We are our own worst enemy when it comes to standards, quality or anything seemingly "quantifiable". The key is we need to abandon any fantasy of "ready to use" content and have an in-house process in place to take on-line content and make it workable. Not sure that isn't a good idea anyway. It means the folks on the team may have a better understanding of the objects they are slapping willy nilly into their building. ;)

Gordon

[patricks]

I prefer Revit City because it's MUCH easier to search and find ONLY Revit content, as opposed to Seek which seems to search through tons of different file types, and you get lots of matches that have no Revit content. Unless I'm doing it wrong.... :roll:

But yeah, I usually get something off RevitCity and revise it and "fix" it, unless I get lucky and get something nice to begin with.

I just recently got a pretty nice emergency eye wash family off RC, and I didn't have to really do anything to it. It's pretty detailed, so I didn't want to touch it that much anyway.

[t1.shep]

I prefer Revit City because it's MUCH easier to search and find ONLY Revit content, as opposed to Seek which seems to search through tons of different file types, and you get lots of matches that have no Revit content. Unless I'm doing it wrong.... :roll:

But yeah, I usually get something off RevitCity and revise it and "fix" it, unless I get lucky and get something nice to begin with.

I just recently got a pretty nice emergency eye wash family off RC, and I didn't have to really do anything to it. It's pretty detailed, so I didn't want to touch it that much anyway.

With Seek, if you search directly from Revit, it will typically pull up products with Revit content. Otherwise, when you search, you can tell it what file type you're looking for, .RFA or .RVT.
Actually, I just did a search and see that they changed the file types to just be Revit, or AutoCAD, or Sketchup, etc.

[tcatana]

isn't half a good model better than no model?
If it is easy enough to build from scratch - then do it, but why reinvent the wheel. I usually take something built and modify it to our standards. If I can't find it, I build it from scratch. Most times, other peoples models have some good ideas and techniques. I think of them as templates.

[ron.sanpedro]

isn't half a good model better than no model?
If it is easy enough to build from scratch - then do it, but why reinvent the wheel. I usually take something built and modify it to our standards. If I can't find it, I build it from scratch. Most times, other peoples models have some good ideas and techniques. I think of them as templates.

Indeed, half is better than none as a starting point, but more often than not it is also an ending point when a user with a deadline is the one searching. ;) Given that SEEK is autodesk, there is a sense that the quality is such that you can just use the content right off the bat, and instead I have seen projects that are gimped, if not quite crippled, by a couple of pieces of furniture that are just stupid in their over-modeled glory. In the long term I imagine a lot of effort going into getting an office library so well stocked with content that SEEK and the rest can be mostly ignored. In the mean time, we try to keep track of and clean up newly downloaded content, and mostly do OK. But offices getting into Revit should NOT think that there is ANY guarantee of quality or appropriateness in anything they get from SEEK, or the OOTB libraries, or any other online source. All resources other than your own library should be held suspect and some effort made to make things work the way you want them to. Perhaps not on a pilot project, but long term. Just EXACTLY like block libraries with autocad. On that front, nothing has changed, autodesk marketing efforts to the contrary.

Gordon

[twiceroadsfool]

isn't half a good model better than no model?
If it is easy enough to build from scratch - then do it, but why reinvent the wheel. I usually take something built and modify it to our standards. If I can't find it, I build it from scratch. Most times, other peoples models have some good ideas and techniques. I think of them as templates.

In my humble opinion, its worse.

1. Its time. First someone is investing time digging through wherever theyre searching deciding which "halg a good model" they want to use. Sometimes this even entails downloading two or three until theyre happy.

2. Time to repair or make it work. Depending on what theyre downloading, there are a ton of issues. If its a door (or anything that gets scheduled) does it have the right parameters? Depending on your office templates and libraries, are there Shared Parameters you need to add in?

3. Does it work the way everyone on the team expects? This team member is used to WIDTH being OD or Exterior dimension, but in this family its ID (inside of frame, or something). Its not just the time while they get acclimated, its the time to fix everything that goes wrong downstream as a result.

Dont get me wrong, im not really naysaying on downloading content... But these things all factor in. Often, were downloading trying to save ten minutes, and we cost ourselves 2 hours. At least starting from scratch (or better yet, from a set of Family Templates created in house with all the appropriate parameters already in place) the team members can be sure theyre getting something consistantly workable, every time out.