Management of families

[Nic M.]

After a few months with revit I find myself constantly updating and modifying families.

example:
I'm working in a certain project, find the need to add a parameter to a family. So I open the family in the editor, do the necesary things, save, close and load it back in the project. Easy

But actualy I should also update my templates, other families where this particular family is nested in, check al the families that are derived from this family (windows with mullions/ doors and handles / ....)
...
All this to have a lean and mean family library (the thing that makes the work fly)
So I would like to have a tool or white paper to assist me in this.
Current I'm the only one working in Revit but my head spins if I think of a whole office creating, modifying families.
How do any of you manage this?
Do you appoint a familie manager (DAD)?
Is there any reading material on this subject? (did a quick search...)
Do we need a tool to "update all instances of this family"

A € cent for your thoughts

[beegee]

I don't think this issue has been adequately addressed before and it is a big issue for us also.

I think the answer is a new tool to update all instances of the modified family. That will be a programmers nightmare, since the families are not globally databased but reside separately in each project. But that's why we have programmers, right.

Having a "Dad" to manage families in an office environment is getting back to the bad old days of the CAD manager syndrome, which I've happily leave to the autocad , or sim, offices.

[Vincent Valentijn]

management is indeed a big problem.. the constant 'improvements' I make to content brings me a consistency problem.
CAD drawers should constantly be kept posted about changed families... but that doesn't really work since, are they supposed to change former projects in hindsight? And you just can't rely on everyone being 100% alert all the time, that's an illusion.
But maybe an idea for you Nic > I am now using journals as some sort of automated 'replace families' scrips, it works pretty good though it isn't always flawless (depends, for instance; if one replace action doesn't comply since the replacing object isn't in the project, the journal crashes) and I must say, for the amount of projects we run it takes up quite some time. Still faster then manually though.
Wouldn't it be nice to have functionality like Acad2004? Notification Centre to keep links up to date and Standards Notification to make sure everyone's up to date with office standards. Of course.. we'd like XRef's first :wink: ..

[Nic M.]

It's ironic that a almost perfect BIM aplication fails to manage its own family.
The use of journals is no solution to me, I had my share of *.bat bashing, don't want to bring such a thing back in a production environment.
More than once it happend to me that when modifying a family, load it back in the project, the thing shifts position (due to the kind of modifications where made in the family). If such things happend "automatic" ... brrr

The "dad" thing is'nt appealing to me neither.

I'm thinking of a sort of scheduling for used families in a project. Every familie has a version number and date stamp, that should at least gives us the opportunity to check used family against existing ones on a hard disk.
Also a warning (one more couldent hurt) if a family's "origin" has changed, so you would be warned if a family shifts position in a project.
....

I would like to read much more opinions on this family managinng thing.
The more a think about it the greater that can of worm is getting (almost a barrel now)

[beegee]

I'm thinking of a sort of scheduling for used families in a project. Every familie has a version number and date stamp, that should at least gives us the opportunity to check used family against existing ones on a hard disk.

I'm wondering if families could all be kept in a central database and the project reads them from there, but doesn't physically load them. It Xrefs them ( did I say that ? ). Then when you change a family, all projects that use it update when opened. After a warning message of course, giving you the choice to retain the older version which exists as a backup in the family folder anyway.

[Steve_Stafford]

You are describing Bentley's "shared cells"...library controlled cells that update across a project of office when changed. In truth, they are seldom used (at least true for us) and you don't want sealed projects etc to change and so...

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't the 'Transfer Project Standards' command tailor made for this function?
It's inevitable that as work progresses on a project some tweaking is done on families. I think it's the project managers responsibility to stress the importance of keeping things consistent throughout. I'm not sure that 'legacy' drawings are as important an issue. Once a project is complete, as long as it is consistent within itself, all families are stored internally and are current at the time the project is finished right?
I like to maintain an office standards file that is kept up to date with revised families and it can then be opened side by side with any current project and just transferred wholesale to the new job. As long as family naming conventions are kept consistent there are generally few problems. I usually add a project specific prefix to family names if a particular family is modififed just for that project. The global update approach scares me unless it is restricted to things like title blocks and the like. Unless you can be sure that a family with a specific name is used for exactly the same purpose from one project to the next you could make changes that are not applicable to a past job.

[beegee]

When using transfer project standards existing family types are not overwritten. For example, if the target project includes "Wall Type 18" and you try to import a wall type with the same name, the existing type is not overwritten.

Or are you saying that this facility exists, so could be adapted for the purpose in a new release ?

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Begee,
When transferring project standards the dialogue gives you the option to Overwrite or Transfer New Only. If you choose overwrite styles change and the new ones take effect.
On the other note...

Or are you saying that this facility exists, so could be adapted for the purpose in a new release ?
If only I had that kind of inside information.

[beegee]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. You may want to overwrite only specific families if you are updating an existing project. You don't have that selective ability at present. Its all or nuttin'.

I think its possible that the transfer project information could be regeared to give greater flexibility to update families.

[ita]

If the dialog box asking "copy"or "overwrite" was changed to a interactive box with radio buttons in two columns named "copy"& "overwrite" would help.
However I agree that if there could be object numbers (with subset capabilities) and date + time stamps so a variation of an office standard can be inserted into the project without having to create a new family for the revised object - would be benficial.
Quite often i find i need to adapt a family from my standard family folder and I don't want the revised family to becomethe default. At present I copy the standard item into a revision subfolder (with the project number as a suffix to know what it was created for) and make the changes.
This all could be obviated with a change of an ID subset number in the properties for the family.

[aggockel50321]

Maybe if, whenever a project is opened, Revit would check the dates of loaded family fiiles against the library family files, & report out "The following families have been updated since this project was last openend", and then give you the option to choose which families to update.

[gregcashen]

I think families and files in general should have some extra intelligence associated with the file header such that Revit -- or preferably a separate family editor so they could be run side by side without having a separate session of Revit going all the time -- would know just from looking at the file that it is the version that was created on XX by XX and is currently loaded into XX. Or something like that. Essentially, the same thing that MP3s have in Real, MusicMatch, etc. Metadata. It doesn't have to be in the family name....which would make it difficult to manage families in windows explorer, but if a separate utility was developed for this, it would be quite handy.

[christopher.zoog51272]

Essentially, the same thing that MP3s have in Real, MusicMatch, etc. Metadata. It doesn't have to be in the family name....which would make it difficult to manage families in windows explorer, but if a separate utility was developed for this, it would be quite handy.

good idea greg, I'd vote for that :beer:

[Chad Smith]

Essentially, the same thing that MP3s have in Real, MusicMatch, etc. Metadata. It doesn't have to be in the family name....which would make it difficult to manage families in windows explorer, but if a separate utility was developed for this, it would be quite handy.
This would be a great idea.
All families and their relationships would be stored in a relational database. The Family Database Manager (FDM) could actively watch selected directories and sub-directories. When you make a change in a family done through Revit, the FDM would then alert you if you would like to update all families in other related families without opening the files.

Now if only we had an API. :wink:

[Nic M.]

Me vote to :beer:

It could be named MAMA (italian pronounced)
It could also be fantastic for managing nested family's

There's still five days (120 hour's), I see no problem to include it in 6.0 :wink:

[bmadsen]

I don't mean to trivialize this topic, because there are some good points being raised, but isn't this like managing a block library or a detail library in [that other software]? No,we do not have a CAD Manager--we all take responsibility for the team.

In our office there is the "standard" library that gets updated when there is an improved item for the library. All future projects use the new standard and all old/closed projects keep the standard they had -- we do not try to change history. It was rare that a standard object needed to be changed in many places in a single project in the old software and it is easy in Revit.

So, lucky for me, my can of worms is pretty small when I look at the practical aspects of this issue.

That said, there are probably large, multi-firm projects or large multi-site projects that will need some kind of control like this.

[Steve_Stafford]

On the surface it's what you describe...but beneath it's more about consistency of parameters, how are you supposed to use it, what sizes can it accomodate etc.

A quick sampling of RUGI families should quickly illustrate the issues, one window works in all the detail levels while other change little if at all. One family can adjust width and height "infinitely" while others can only adjust marginally. Try altering the roof ladders...

This is the essence of what standards hope to address.

[gregcashen]

Just a quick thought...If you have Windows XP (can't remember if it is the same in 2000), you can right-click select properties of any file, including a Revit family fiel, and add a bunch of meta-data to the file...you can even define the parameters to include, much like a shared parameters file! I think someone with a bit more knowledge of VB/C++/C#/.Net, etc. could write a utility that would update Revit files with this info and then manage them based on the parameters.

Like I said, just a thought, but if someone is really interested in this, stop dreaming of an open API that may never come and try this....then let me have it too! ;)

[jontramos]

This thread is old now, (it is Release 9 / 2006 at the time of this post) but nothing has been done to make family management any easier. It would be great if the team of programmers for Revit could create a library management application that could help with this.

Here are my thoughts on how I think it should work:
1) Should be a part of the family editor platform.
2) Should be pointed at the directory of the office library, where it would scan / monitor all the families within the network directory.
3) Would be able to view & edit lists (similar to a schedule) of all subcategory names, parameter names, etc.
4) Users could flag families that need to be modified, so the BIM manager can easily identify problematic families.
5) The BIM manager could filter, sort, group this master schedule of families to make it easy to identify similar subcategory names and consolidate them with one easy maneuver.
6) This master list would include a history of edits that have been made to the family, who made them, & when. This could also be used as a "rollback" feature.
7) Preview images would appear and allow the user to orbit / pan / zoom around the family file prior to loading it into their project.

Other suggestions?

[davidcobi]

As a first step maybe we can use schedules to manage loaded and system families. It looks as though system families are only visible in material take-off schedules and only if their material is not "By Category". Most loaded families are visible within multi-category schedules with the exception of titleblocks, annotations, detail items, profiles, and possibly others. So I guess the first step is getting all families visible in multi-category schedules. The second step we need to accomplish using schedules for managing families is the ability to add Project Parameters to ALL families including annotations and titleblocks which does not yet look possible. With Project Parameters we can tag problem families and describe their problems in revit schedules.

I like the features #3 and #4 mentioned by jontramos.

[studiodd]

other sugestions:
1. there is a dutch aec package called 'alpha' that in my opinion has some perfect library tools. I am not an experienced alpha user, but one thing that strikes me is that there are 3 types of libraries: standard, office and project. The standard library is the one delivered by 'nextgen' itself, like the revit one. The office library is a library typical blocks for a company, and resides in another (shared) directory on the network. The project library is often in a subdirectory of the current project, so you have one project library for every single project. And now comes the good part: whenever you start a new project and use a block from a (standard / office / project) library, the block is copied in the project library directory, and every time you load that project again, the program is searching for the block definitions, in the following order: projectdirectory - officedirectory - standard directory. This way it's possible to copy updated blocks to a directory, for instance adjusted office library files to a project library, and your project is updated. It's also nice to have all the used blocks of a project in a single directory. And there are also a lot of tools to replace blocks, create library previews, etc. I found the library system from 'nextgen' very straightforward and one of the best I 've seen.
2. automation tool to replace nested families in a serie of revit families
3. automation tool to replace categories in a serie of revit families (suppose I want to rename a category in a hundred files)
4. keep walls as 'external' revit files instead of 'drawing families' (half a year since I used revit's demo, don't remember the exact name'

One of the major reasons for not switching to revit yet (next to consistent import and export tools of 3d geometry, and the possibility to use them in revit) was the lack of a good library system, and the time we spent updating families.

StudioDD / Ivan Ivanovski

[studiodd]

What about a poll, since this topic has been read 688 times already?

Ivan