And speaking of sharing...

[Scott Hopkins]

Using LimeWire to share Revit families sounds like a great idea! Has anyone used LimeWire Pro? Is it worth the $18.00 - or is the free version more than adequate?

[sbrown]

While I love peer to peer for music, for families it would basically be the same as uploading your families somewhere. I doubt most firms will just let you open up your server and allow searches for rfa's. So to make it happen each firm participating would need a "dump server" where all families get dumped and then are allowed to be searched and downloaded. I can't see this going over too well with the IT guys.

Now if you check out how tape traders do it, ie etree.org they are very organized, by band, by venue, by date, by setlist, etc. For it to work properly the file names must be designated properly, some standard would have to be in place for searching to work unless revit allows meta-data to be extracted from the families automatically, then it would be easy.

[nrenfro]

I ran a search on limeware and found your stuff John, cool! I will post somethings of my own. their is somthing refreshing about the simplisity of this, but of course it is not perfect. for now it will have to do.

[hj]

hey guys,

just ran across this thread today...sorry it took so long Let me just say that we're doing our darndest to make the changes you want to see at RC.

As for the "maze", it can be completely avoided if you know what you're looking for using the search tool.

We're looking into making the downloading process faster as well with less clicks...

as far as an option to download the entire collection...It wouldn't be as easy as you might think. I would like to know if it's worth my time to work that out. I don't think it would be an option that people would use enough to justify doing it. What do you all think?

Keep the suggestions coming and we'll try to accommodate.

[gregcashen]

There are too many places to look for stuff in this world. Make it easy and quick and I will use a service. Make it a hassle and I will go to great lengths to avoid it. I think you should try to focus on:

1. making the content easily searchable - allow us to run boolean and/or sql searches on the content database and have it display the links to all of the families that we have searched for. I prefer sql to boolean anyday, but that's just me.

2. making the families batch-downloadable based on the search above. If I query all families of category "structural" with post date later than January 5, 2004, I should get a list of links to all of those families...on top of that there should be a batch-download option to download all of those families without having to click on each of them individually. Like I said, I like to work offline.

3. adding more intelligent information to the families, whether in the name or in the meta-data of the family (as Windows allows) so that the version of the family can be determined as well as any other pertinent details.

I would use this

[ita]

HJ + et al

HJ, these posts are touching on the issues that I made in my email directly to you @ Revitcity - however my request was a little more parochial than this discussion. BTW thankyou for your response it was appreciated that you took the time.

I find in most of the share and download sites that I spend a lot of time sifting and not finding much glitter far less gold or silver!! Periodically I find things but mainly I set about to make my own objects or families - they are more in my style of drawing and suit local conditions better plus it is less time consuming. I can focus on what I want - rather than searching and hoping that there might be something there.

So what am I saying? A Boolean search approach would be great - however I agree we require some structure to file nomenclature so we don't end up where we started.

A naming structure format from (or devised by) Revit may be helpful as that format may (hope wish!! ) eventually be included in some future family or table naming structure incorporated into the app. I know others have suggested something similar - but it would make the process consistent and perhaps little easier. Then Boolean query engines would not be so necessary!!

[Wesley]

If people want me too I will reopen my old Hotline server and place material there - it is not peer to peer, but is a central repository instead - I have the complete contents of RUGI as of about 2 months ago. Anyone would be able to upload and download, and you can do searches as well.
Opinions?
Wes

[hj]

The reason I think that a file naming convention has not been devised is because it is rediculously difficult. I am having a hard enough time trying to decide how we should structure the different kinds of families...not to mention the different countries and languages involved. It's frying my brain!

We should come up with a naming convention for the familes but I don't really think I am the one to do it. I'd be glad to throw in my 2 cents though!

As for a more advanced search tool... we'll see what we can do.

[John K.]

Just a head-count check. Is anyone else sharing vie gnutella? I've repeated searches periodically today only to come up with a bunch of hits for the "Battlefield"(?) wargame...

jk

[jbalding48677]

1. RUGI will be back up within 2 days. There was an issue with Earthlink (again) and it has been squared away (again).

2. AUGI, we are ramping up again to get the exchange going, should be a great tool and most of what you will want. I say most because you guys are hard to please.

3. Naming standard??? HJ is right it is a very difficult issue. We will have a naming convention for families submitted to AUGI but I am not sure you will want to use it in your everyday use of families. It is comma delimited formula driven.

Edited: Here's a LINK to the thread that has the proposed AUGI family structure PDF file. Q