File Sharing Piracy Risk?

[cek]

Here’s the scenario:

I’m need to share my Revit Project file with the Structural Engineer.

My Revit Project file contains proprietary families that the SE does not need yet has
access to and can save, modify, use and distribute if they so desire.
I’m looking for a way to do a “save as” or “export only” that limits the data in the Project File that the Consultant receives.

Something like an categories menu that has on-off-shadow controls I can configure for each consultant and is retained for future projects. One for the SE, EE and ME. The shadow control would only provide a graphical representation of the family without actually
giving up the family.

We all invest a lot of time in creating families and the last thing we want to see is our files being shared without our permission.

Does such a capability or methodology exist that is not overly time consuming?

Thanks

[twiceroadsfool]

I think short of doing a 3D DWG export and sending over the giant "blob" of geometry, youll find that this isnt a topic with any hardcore solution. I know weve shared some models that weve "stripped out" schedules, data, and the like from... But theres not much you can do to weed out families and such, of they are geometry thats needed for the consultants work.

Maybe try a collaborative medium, such as JetStream navisworks? Possibly 3D DWF? I havent had many opportunities to play with 3D DWF, but if youre looking in to a venture of sharing geometry without your family files, its something to consider...

[David Haynes]

Carl,
The structural engineers are saying the same thing about sharing their model with the architect. They worry that the architect will somehow use their families that they have worked so hard to create. This leads to a great question "is the value in the families?".

My answer always is "who created those 2D toilet blocks in AutoCAD?"

As stated earlier, there is no fast and easy answer.

[Andre Baros]

We've played around with swapping out each custom family with dumb family or only using type catalogs for intelligence so that without the excel table which is driving the family they're just dumb blocks, but have so far found it to be too much work. Instead we just take families from the consultants and call it even.

The talk in the office right now is for "open source" families. A creative commons license for family creation and open source standards... if EVERYONE was sharing their families we would have more than we ever needed over-night.

[ford347]

Man, do I sense the AutoCad world creeping up here. I didn't use Autocad for that long, but when I did, I remember everyone was so secretive. Didn't want to give anything away! What's been nice about Revit, is everyone who uses it is so proactive about helping others out and sharing what they can as they realize it is difficult to create content, so if they give a little, they're probably going to get some back. Everyone is going to spend time building families, they have to, so we're all in the same boat. Doing a little trading here and there isn't going to put you out of business in my opinion.


if EVERYONE was sharing their families we would have more than we ever needed over-night.
Good advise. Eventually mfg's are going to be creating all their content anyway, so the stuff you're working so hard on won't be so important anymore. I like Andrew's approach here, if you can't keep them from using your content, take a little of theirs and call it even. :lol: It might even turn into a good experience if you're open about it too!;)

Just my 2 cents.

Josh

[patricks]

I'm with Josh. We have pretty good relationships with our consultants that we use on pretty much all our projects, and they're starting to get on Revit now solely because of us. We have no problem sharing families with them, and they with us.

In fact, back when we were on version 8.1, our structural engineer sent me his Revit Structures file for a project for me to review. The file had some really nice open-web joist families that I did not have (they came with RS, and have since been included with RB9 and later), and so I saved them to our directory. Our previous joist families were unable to follow roof slopes unless they were set to a reference plane, and the new ones I saved allowed the face of the roof to host the joists, which made everything so much easier.

Of course that was stock Revit content that I was saving to our directory, but still, I don't think anyone around here has any problems sharing families.

[truevis]

If you trust your structural engineers enough to keep your building from falling down, why are you so worried that they'll boost your families? Aren't you intimately working together to get a building built?

Check http://sourceforge.net/ if you want to see where sharing learned in kindergarten may lead.

[cek]

I don't have a problem sharing but that requires me or anyone else to make a conscious choice to give up our content freely and I've posted a multitude of content and tutorials to our local Revit User Group's Buzz saw site.

Also the issue is not particularly with this structural engineer. This being the first time I've interface with the consultant, this way, only brought up the question of piracy. Not that I'm particularly concerned with this engineer.

Some content is client proprietary, patented or copyrighted and if you have ever signed a non-disclosure form you have to be sensitive to who has access to your files. In some cases you have an obligation to protect the content and thus the client.

The other issue with Revit content is that it can contain a multitude of data that can save the end user hours of time. Let's say you created a dynamic family for a kitchen hood that allowed a wide array of sizes, configurations and contained electrical, airflow and specification data. And lets say it took 8 hours or more of your time to create. How would you feel if after the first project it found it's way to the content exchange.

Right now those that wish to control their content have no good choice. Why not give them that choice and for those that wish to share they can choose not to implement those protections or post their content to the exchange.

This would be a win win situation for everybody.

[DaveP]

We've got the same concern.

We have our Principals' signatures as a family one the Titleblock that gets turned on only for CD issue. I'm pretty nervous about sharing a Project with that in it.

[iru69]

This would be a win win situation for everybody.
Seems like a lose lose situation for everybody. You basically want DRM. DRM sucks. NDA? Huh? What does a revit family have to do with an NDA? Maybe you shouldn't allow the consultants to see the drawings?

Hey folks, you are issuing a set of "blueprints" on how to build something. That's the whole point. This is not an IP issue. People try to mix it up with a bunch of legalese, but what this always boils down to is that someone else might get a free ride for something you spent time on. It's kind of sad that people spend so much time worrying about that in this world.

p.s.: anyone with access to a printed stamped and signed sheet can scan a "stamp" off of it and make a family out of it... with a signature no less... so I'd say sharing a family is the least of your problems... what you need to do is stop working with people who would misappropriate a stamp and falsify documents with it.

[cek]

So what I'm hearing from the people that don't want any mechanism to prevent your families from being taken out of your projects, is that it's ok for anybody to take your families and that you don't have any problem with it and that you would not have a problem taking them out of someone else's project.

Why would you object to giving someone a choice to protect their work? You can still go to the exchange or even contact a colleague if you need a specific object and whatever happen to asking someone for a family file? I'm just not convinced your argument is valid and there is such a thing as Ethics in the practice of Architecture.

[iru69]

It's just a different philosophy and way of looking at things. Some people believe that the more we lock things up, the more we monetize things, the more we stress ownership of everything, the more contracts and attorneys involved, the more IP, patents, and copyright we have, the greater the world is for it. Some people believe that the less of that we have, the greater the world is for it.

I'm not somehow "above" ownership, respecting property, or copyrights. I'd just rather not encourage it on every level of everything we do. You're suggesting that it's about "choice". I'd suggest that, in the larger scheme of things, it's about eliminating choice.

[whittendesigns]

I personally have no concerns allowing anyone access to families, but I'm not paying employees to make really great families either. I can see your reason for concern.

There must be a way to secretly put some type of watermark or itty bitty text in a hidden spot of the family to signify it belongs to you. If you ever come across it again and it seems like it's too familiar, you can check it out and then decide what to do from there.

[truevis]

...
Why would you object to giving someone a choice to protect their work? ...
I think you have a choice. You could swap out your families with simple placeholders or delete your proprietary families altogether and purge before giving out a project to dodgy consultants. 'Select all Instances' is a splendid tool for helping with that. Or make dumb families with the same names as your fancy ones and load them in -- that could be even faster. Or just stick with ACAD exports for sharing.

cek, are you really wishing for a DRM scheme for Revit families?

I remember <harp music> when someone thought they were clever protecting a DWG by making it into a block insert and scaling it by .9999 in one axis in the days when you could not explode non-uniform blocks. I hacked that one in about a minute just for fun.