Forums >> General Discussion >> Revit ROI >> Furniture families 'survey'.

Sgdunn

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Thanks for taking a moment to read this post.  What I am hoping to get out of it is some feedback on how Revit is used in the industry and if its worth my company's time and expense to develop revit families, BIM content, of our furniture lines.  I work for a company that houses four brands of furniture lines:  Carolina Business Furniture - healthcare related; OFS - mid-high end office furniture, conference rooms, reception stations, etc.; First Office - mid lines with open plan as well as casegoods; Loewenstein - seating lines (lounge, modular, etc).

Recently we started a new department focusing on the technology needs of our customers.  Revit families get requested once in a while so we are trying to guage a few things about how we should approach this. I am hoping to get some feedback from this community.

1) Do you use Autodesk Seek to find families?

2) Would you use seek to find healthcare furniture, seating, desks, etc., build your own, or go to a specific manufacturers website? Note: Today there are only 2 major office furniture manufacturers on seek.

3) Specific to A&D: Would you use the furniture for renderings, space planning, etc?  Specifically would you like to see casegoods (desks, credenzas, hutches, etc.), conference room (tables, cabinets), seating, healthcare casegoods (cabinets, countertops, etc) available for use in Revit, or do you simply create your own or use 'generic' items?

Mainly we're trying to gauge whether to venture deeply into BIM Content or to put out a light offering.  Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated.  We currently have a phase 1 list of items we're considering putting out in the community, but before we spend the time and money with a BIM content creator we wanted to get an idea of what will and will not be used.

I hope that you'll take a few minutes to give us some insight into the needs of the Revit community.

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ArchAddict

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Personally,

1) Yes

2) Yes, If I know a specific Manufacturer at the time of drawings I will goto their website, then seek, then revitcity. But often brands are not determined at SD/DD and we'll go searching by generic term like "Bollard" instead of "Hubbel BOLR" so having things in seek is probably more of a Marketing effort than efficiency. people will discover your brands, and then next time goto your site directly.

3)If we are doing Photorealistic renderings we also try and use the actual model from the actual manufacturer if they are known. But if we didn't know the manf. at the time of SD, we'd put generic cabinets in, and if there was no rendering down the road we probably wouldn't have a reason to change. We'd just put manf. into the specs.

Hope it helps

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Sgdunn

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Thank you ArchAddict - it does help.

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rbcameron2

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I've been wondering this myself.  See my post:

http://www.revitcity.com/forums.php?action=viewthread&thread_id=30883

1) Yes, but rarely.

2)  Seek has been around for a long long time and has tons of models not a lot of usable content is available.  Coming from someone who freelances this stuff for big companies, the trend is to shift away from ultra photo-realistic models that are big files, to pretty generic layouts/models that convey more information that can plug into FM and VDC programs.

3) For the most part, if its not too complicated, I see alot of users generating this themselves.

I have a link below my signature that can take you to a fraction of the models I've created and had time to post online.  Most users aren't looking to get this deep and just need a lighter touch.  That being said, I think you can have the best of both worlds, but there's a lot of BIM managers that disagree. 

Keep researching AND also think outside the box a little bit and really ask why people are asking for BIM models.  You might find they just need a 2D block with a cut sheet, or they need photorealistic renderings, or they just need a placeholder, etc...  What can you provide additionally that can support their needs?

-----------------------------------

RB Cameron

3D Medical Equipment

Download Revit Healthcare Models Now

Download Other Revit + 3dsMax Models Here

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muction

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