How Equipment Suppliers Can Boost Sales With Revit Family Creation

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, many construction projects have taken a blow and have been slowed down. This resulted in sales drop for equipment manufacturers. Here’s when Revit Family Creation comes to the rescue. Equipment suppliers can use the Revit Family Editor to create digital twins of all their products. When construction activities resume to normal, design engineers can specify the equipment requirement much faster with digital models. This in turn will boost sales for manufacturers.

Revit family creation can also be used as a powerful marketing tool, since design professionals can add specific products to the building models. Many clients tend to opt for the approved design components even if other vendors offer equivalent equipment.

How to Use Revit Family Creation Effectively

In Revit modelling, the building elements are classified into 3 main family types, each with unique features:

1. System Families: They are a part of Revit’s internal database and contain general building elements like walls, roofs and floors. They also include elements used in construction documents like model views, annotations and dimensions.

1. Component Families: They are a family of custom elements created by the users. These elements are independent of a specific building model and can be loaded into multiple projects. Component families are also referred to as Loadable families.
   
2. In-place Families: They contain custom elements like component families, but are bound to a specific building model. Meaning they cannot be loaded in other projects.

Manufacturers can simplify the design process for architects and engineers by creating a virtual library of their products. This means architects and engineers would prefer working with manufacturers who offer Revit families of their products. This ultimately serves as an excellent marketing strategy, since many projects require modelled components.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, only high priority construction projects are allowed to continue. This means, suppliers have a great opportunity to focus on Revit family creation and offer a digital library of their products.

How Revit Families Help Engineers and Architects

Building modelling process becomes much simpler if the components are already modelled individually. Since the components added to the building model are specified by the supplier, which included dimensions and part shapes, the margin for error is greatly reduced. On the other hand, when design professionals create a piece of component with no existing model, the possibility of component clashes are more likely.

Revit family creation allows hosted and stand-alone families for using the right type of each product line.

• Hosted Families: They depend on other elements when added to the Revit model. For instance, windows that depend on walls.
• Stand-alone Families: They are not dependent on other elements of the building model and can be added individually.

Hosted families help prevent specification errors since the components are designed for specific applications. Stand-alone families promote design flexibility. Incorrect use of sensitive components can be prevented if suppliers use a combination of hostel and stand-alone families for improving flexibility.

Revit families coupled with prefabrication are make the construction projects faster.