2019 Revit Library

[Octavis Uberstine]

iam not sure if this is the correct forum to post this issue. if not, can someone direct me to a proper forum.

i am acting BIM Manager and we are at a cross-road with limitation on access to our company revit library. the i have as the one managing the revit library is, everyone has access to each family. meaning, someone can edit/ make changes to one of our standard families (title blocks, doors, windows, etc.) and save over the top of our standard family. with this happening and the manager not knowing about it, others are using said family and wondering why it is different than the last project they used said family in.

i feel that there should be some limitation on how much control the users have with the library. i would like to get everyones thoughts on how they manage their revit content (family) library?

Honestly, my first thought upon reading your post was why everybody and their brother's uncle is messing with the families without governance. Sounds like the wild west. I would think the first thing you want to do is to restrict access and regain control of the company assets. If the families were built properly before, then why are people needing to reconstruct them? And why is that an individual prerogative?

an example of what is happening is the title block for instance. I made some company approved changes to our title block and some of the projects were still using the previous title block. someone felt they needed a project specific change to their title block. unfortunately, people don't think before they act or they just don't care so they hit save after they made their changes and it saved back to the library. this sort of thing happens to our doors and windows as well

Unfortunately, if your people don't care enough to follow best practices, you've got bigger issues than maintaining a library. Even with good people, this will happen occasionally. Families sometimes need to be modified for a project but they shouldn't be saved to the standard library without pre-authorization. Having a copy of the library in a secure location is probably the easiest way to fix mistakes. Make it clear to everyone that any unauthorized changes to any families will be lost when the modified copy is replaced with the approved version. That usually makes them think before saving.

You'll want to start exploring content management systems that are designed to solve this specific issue. Have a look at for the leading Revit content management system. It even will let you store your system families such as walls, floors, duct, pipe, conduit, etc. In addition, you can manage other types of Revit content such as schedules, materials, and drafting views. For the cost, it is well worth it.

Since the Asset Library shows in the taskbar, that suggests the window should be open somewhere. Is there a chance you had the Asset window dragged to a second monitor that is no longer connected? If you hit alt-tab to cycle through open windows, can you see a preview of the Asset window?

Here is what Alt Tab shows for the Enscape asset library; it has a blank black window, but it wont appear if i click on it. This happens on both computers, so im thinking its not a specific computer issue, its an Enscape bug issue.

As another mentioned prior, the window for the asset browser was on another monitor but far off the screen. I noticed a tiny sliver of a window at the bottom edge trying to hide, i was able to drag it up and boom.... it was the asset browser.

According to the Autodesk Forums the file should be located on the C drive in \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\. However if i look into this folder there's like 100 files down there.

Ahmed Muharram, B.Sc, AEE, ACI, ACP

BIM Manager

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i know your question and obviously i have the same question like you, about how material library's pattern working on another Revit Project. But thinks more carefully, the fill patern that u want to showup in another project by import your material library, basicly it's JUST belong to the first project that you create material Library throught it. So that's mean if you want all that fill pattern showup in your new project, you must transfer the Fill pattern from the fist to the new project. But beside, You can totally transfer all the materials too, not only the fill patern. So no need to transfer Fill pattern to only get that pattern. And that's why i think in Revit Material Library, the Fill pattern doesnt work anymore to bring it into another project.

I'm working with Revit 2024. After your explanation, I see how to do this. My question expands on this. I sometimes have projects with a lot of specialized materials. Adding them to the new library one-by-one will take quite a bit of time as well as require a whole lot of mouse clicking.

Is there a way to export all of the materials at one time? I've tried to hold down the shift key and, alternatively, the CTRL key, to see if I could select more than one material at a time (and then drag them to the new library) but I have so far been unable to select more than one material at a time.

Instead of right clicking each material and 'adding' them to the library you can also simply drag the materials to the new library at the bottom of the window. This is quite a lot faster but still requires you to add each material individually.

Hi everyone - I've been experimenting with the process of nesting Enscape assets into Revit family components and I think there's lots of advantages. For example, nesting light sources in an Enscape asset (like this SUV) and prepping furniture / casework with books and other entourage. The visibility of nested assets can be controlled with a Family Type parameter. Step by step process and thread over here on Twitter as well as download links of sample files:

Not sure why but when I nested an Enscape light onto a new revit lighting fixture family to apply a light source and loaded it into my project, Enscape rendered the asset all white and won't show the materials.

Awesome, this is a great idea. It'd help a lot speeding up the "polish" stage of my enscape outputs. It's hard to justify to clients why placing books around bookcases, stuff on tables, or shelves being decorated is worth the time spent. Especially since doing this manually one by one is a very slow process with how Enscape loads in assets to revit (though the use of an offline library has helped speed this up a lot).

Hi, I know this has been discussed a million times, but having searched for answers I come up blank reg. some specific comparisons.

I am trying to move my firm to one of the two programs, I believe that although Revit marketshare is larger, Archicad can create more detailed and nuanced 2d deliverables with an easier workflow.

However - one thing which I think is super important and a deal-breaker possibly , is the ability to create custom parametric objects/families. I understand the way revit works in this regard, but I am trying to find out if Archicad has the same capablities, specifically:

Archicad can do all of these things however from my knowledge you would likely need a little bit of GDL education or know-how to do some of the things in your list. They do have the paramo tool that may work for some of the items you're after however I don't use that item I strictly code all of my objects so that they do exactly as I need.

You can nest objects inside other objects as well and call them into parent objects. The stair tool allows you to create custom treads to map to the stairs as well as custom railing parts for the railing.

When I was looking to switch from AutoCAD I learned Revit and then someone showed me Archicad that was on version 15 and Revit was no comparison in terms of 3D manipulation. To my knowledge as of now Archicad is still King when it comes to modifying elements in 3D. For example I do zoom meetings with all my clients and we do all the design in real time so they get to see it come to life in 3D and have direct input on the designs direction.

Im curious to the workload your firm will have and what you are currently using. Right now, I am in a commercial projects firm and our use case with Archicad achieves all our needs albeit not around anything being too 'tricksy' by which I mean, with hyper accurate modelling. Where I live in Australia, the majority of the market suppliers/fabricators will provide assets for Revit and if there is an Archicad equivalent more often than not it is subpar or out of date.

At the moment we are in the process of converting some revit objects, simplifying and making them into Archicad objects, which also involves training the junior staff into how to do it. I am by no means very good with programming at all but after reading the forums and talking to experienced users have been able to get by fairly well and able to train someone quickly.

1. If you want custom parametric objects for re-use a GDL scripted object is much better for long term usage only if you can program and keep it up to date. The question is around how much of this you intend to do, we are able to use the standard library, a few purchased one (whilst being frugal) and making one or two to get by quite comfortably. It is a common thing to see ppl dig into minutia when there is a simpler way.

2. Custom linework is an interesting one, I think if you need to do that, its asking a lot of any software. We don't tend to rely on that high level of control, from a business point of view, the pressure to document means that we are balancing a visual drafting outcome with a commercial one. The objects we use most often only need to be a set lineweight for the scale they are intended. With more traditional details we will then dive deeper and apply traditional drafting techniques. Using the standard tools (not objects) but slabs, walls beams, etc we create rich enough documentation that communicates our Architectural intent, use the software as its meant is easier than forcing it to do something else. I remember a reseller trying to espouse ditching 2D from our documentation and do it all in 3D.... it's just a question of time and effort.

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