Revit Family Library – a How-to Guide
One of the most significant factors influencing your experience in Revit is the quality of Revit Families at your disposal. Revit families serve as the fundamental building blocks of the BIM world, yet their importance is often underestimated. Quality families can save time, enhance file health, and elevate the appearance of your models. Conversely, a lack of quality families disrupts your design flow, inflates your model size, and wastes your time. Therefore, having a collection of excellent families is crucial for a productive and enjoyable Revit design experience.
Downloading free families from the internet is a tempting quick fix in a pinch but will ultimately poison your model. On the other hand, creating your own quality families from scratch is time consuming, complicated, and distracting. What then is a Revit user to do?
Below we will answer this question and more as well as provide you with the resources you need to get you on the path to building your own Revit Family library.
Why do I need a good Revit library?
Almost everything in Revit is a family, from annotations, to walls, to furniture. Some of these families, like walls and floors, are quick and easy to customize right from within a Revit project model. Others, however, like cabinets and light fixtures can be time consuming and difficult to create and work with. Not having the families you need, when you need them, and that function the way you need them to is one of the biggest determinants of how effective you are in Revit. To be efficient in Revit you will need a family library.
Some of the biggest benefits to having a good library are:
- Increased productivity
- Increased model usability
- Increased consistency
- Better graphical standards control
- Better model accuracy
- Faster workflows
- Faster design changes or alterations
- Improved collaboration
- Less model frustrations
- Better file performance
- Better renderings
How do I build a Revit family library?
When it comes to finding and collecting families, you have 4 general options, each with their own pros and cons:
- The “Out of the Box” (OOTB) families from Autodesk that can be downloaded when you install Revit.
- Free families that you find on the internet at manufacture’s websites or Revit community sites.
- Paid families that you find on the internet from dedicated family making companies like RevitFamily.biz or other 3D component marketplaces.
- Create your own families from scratch using the Revit family editor.
How much will a Revit family library cost?
We won’t sugar coat it; a good family library is expensive. Whether you make everything from scratch yourself or whether you buy everything from a third party, you will need to invest significant resources. There is no real way around it.
Creating all your own families from scratch may not cost money upfront (other than a seat of Revit) but learning the skills necessary to make quality families will take a lot of time, frustration, and practice in addition to the inordinate amount of time it will take to plan, model, test, and improve each family in your library.
On the other hand, the fastest way to build a library, and the best way to avoid typical family-related mistakes, would be to purchase already-made families or hire an experienced family creator. However, what you save in time, you will pay for in cash. Creating good families is not only time consuming, but requires a lot of skilled labor, thus quality families from a reseller will cost money. Even more so if you hire an experienced creator to make custom families specifically for your firm.
Look at what resources you have at your disposal. Maybe you have a lull in work which gives you a large pool of time to spend. Maybe you just won a big project and can use some of that budget to buy a bundle of families to add to your library. If you’re lucky, maybe you already have a Revit wiz on your team who can start building families for your library. Taking a catalogue of what you have at your disposal can help you pick a library building strategy that fits your situation.
What’s the best strategy for building my library?
There is never one answer that is best for everyone, but some things to keep in mind are:
- Don’t feel the need to have every family you will ever need right from the beginning. Start with the Autodesk out-of-the-box families and keep a running list of what families are causing you the most pain either from not having those families, or from having bad versions of those families.
- Prioritize and plan out what families would give you the most return on investment.
- Next work on collecting the families from your prioritized list.
- Unless you’re very experienced in building Revit families, making your own is probably not the most effective way to start. You will pay for it in inefficiencies, lost time, and file performance.
- Unless you’re flush with cash, commissioning all your families may not be the best route either. While you can hire a skilled modeler to make exactly what you need, this isn’t necessary because there are likely already quality families for sale that will do 80% to 90% of what you need but because they are being sold en mass, they will be cheaper than paying for a custom commission. Consider commissioning families only for very specialized elements you can’t build yourself or find anywhere else.
- Avoid the temptation that all Revit users feel to search all corners of the internet for free families. These families are low quality and not built with you in mind. Additionally, they will wreak havoc on your file performance, company standards, and eventually your sanity.
- When comparing the cost of buying a family or building it yourself, don’t make the newbie mistake of underestimating how much it will cost you to create your own families. A good parametric family that is well-thought out can take anywhere from 8 to 16 hours to create (or much more if it’s geometrically or parametrically complex). If you paid yourself or an intern just $15/hr (about $30K/yr), that is $120 to $240 for a single family. You can often buy a bundle of families for that.
- Keep in mind that purchased families from reputable creators will incorporate a lot of features and upgrades gleaned from that creator’s experience.
- Consider hybrid methods of family creation when you can’t affordable purchase what you need:
- Buy quality families that have 90% of the work done and then modify the remaining 10%. This will get you all the benefits of well-made paid families, plus the customization for your own use case. This will be cheaper than a custom commission.
- Start with a free family that is close to what you need then clean it out and modify it to suit your purpose. This can save time and money if you are careful.
- Once you have a library started, create processes and procedures for adding and editing families to safeguard your library and Revit projects.
Are all free families bad?
We talk a lot of trash on free families, but not all free families are created equally. Free families likely have a place in your library, but we recommend using them sparingly. When you need to use a free family we recommend you prioritize them using the following hierarchy:
- Autodesk created families – These may be overly generic or missing some parameters, but typically they were built by a professional who considered model health.
- Manufacturer made families – These are typically overbuilt with information or functionality that you don’t need. You may want to clean these up before adding them to a project.
- Community websites – This is the wild west of family creation. Some are good, some are bad. Everyone contributes to this arena. It’s both the good and the bad part of families found here. Review and clean up any files you find here before putting them into your projects.
Are all paid families good?
Just as all free families are not bad, so it is that not all paid families are good. If you are going to pay for families, do a little research to see if the site is reputable. Good creators will do their best to provide only the functionality you need and will not over make their models. They will be consistent in functionality, parameter naming conventions, and organization. We would recommend prioritizing paid family providers using the following hierarchy:
- Reputable custom commission creators or consulting firms – A good consultant can create exactly what you need without any added fluff, using their extensive experience to create features and functionality that work with your specific workflows. This would be difficult to find elsewhere.
- Reputable single brand creators – Brands like “RevitFamily.biz” will offer many products that work and look consistent across all their family product lines. They are used to serving many users and their families will incorporate best practices and popular features and workflows.
- Reputable creator marketplaces – These sites sell families from many different creators and thus lack consistency, and will vary in quality, but typically have undergone some level of quality control. What they lack in consistency and functionality, they make up for in price and variety.
Where can I find paid families?
Where can I find free families?
- BIM Object
- BIM Smith
- Polantis
- Revit City
- Individual manufacturer websites – Look under architect/designer resources or BIM resources. Herman Miller for example
