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Bet you’re tired of hearing about door libraries, yeah? Imagine doing them.
Picture it: You’ve just finished editing a parameter 300x to find something that isn’t correctly locked to a reference plane in half the families you just edited. Go.
I’ve gotten everything to a point – exploring additional options, and as I’m writing this – the topic to handle today is how to push this out into the world to make it useful to everyone who wants it.
I started all this because I had a couple of side projects, and pet projects that I was developing – to play with ideas & maybe help pay the rent. I found out something while doing that.
All of the Revit content that I have, was built on the fly, for specific uses. Precious little was saved in a central library.
Now, my mental filing system is good enough to recall things that I’ve built – and big wins in the Revit game. Very few people in any office get excited when you make a thing, that does these 14 things, can get scheduled and elevated. I do. I have fun doing it. Its problem-solving, and I love a good puzzle. It makes you feel accomplished with a definitive end goal.
I throw Easter Eggs in my stuff to make it entertaining. If its interesting or you have fun doing it – it’s less like work and that tends to stick in the grey matter longer.
I also got scolded for doing that sort of stuff, but that’s another story entirely.
SO, I’m in a situation where I need a ______ (specialty door, desk, file cabinet, etc.) and the only way for me to access what I had, was 1) recall that I’d done it. 2) dig thru the archives of projects, 3) find a version before that item got VE’d out, 4) and go get it. Either that OR go to the depository I’d started by exporting all families in projects into folders, for later filing, that I never had the time for.
If that doesn’t work, 5) I’ve always got the know-how and determination to build it again – which is usually the better path anyway. Killing a day looking for a widget, when it’ll take a few hours to make a new one is just a more efficient use of time. (Unless you have a library of them).
In this ‘great digital reorganization of stuff’ that I was uncovering a problem with parts of the past. There’s no universal language. Unless something I made for a hotel, there’s no commonality between objects.
Stated Problem:
Hardly new, hardly revolutionary, BUT
I need a system, saved in a single location, that contains all the parts and pieces necessary to build and maintain a proper door library. It must be specific enough to represent door types in a design model, while containing the tools necessary to work all the way thru to Construction Documents.
Graphically accurate with Flexibility AND Functionality.
At some point – I got so wiped out doing this that I wrote down all the making decisions into a style guide so 1) I’d remember 2) When I finally passed out only having gotten thru half the library – I’d know which half to fix and why when I woke up. So its a list of heavy lifting, decisions and the results of decisions.
On the list of pets named peeve (band name?), inconsistency is higher up the list, and in the last 6 years – I was at a firm that retooled the standards every year or so, while injecting tools into the multiple offices without much information. They were making progress, sure – but one of the problems doing that is that we had some projects, like the Mall of America, that are lifetime kinds of clients. The partner in charge of that one was working on it for 20+ years.
So even at a minimum, you’ve got projects that take a year or more in development, while you’re redoing templates and retooling door libraries for mass distribution every 6-8 months, while operating on a lag for response to hair-on-fire kind of emergencies…
Its a problem I could help solve, but not one that I envied. I hesitated raising my hand to officially be on that team every time a position was announced – even though I was already a non-official member.
So 1-2x a year, something changes. Not just simple criteria, some changes were ‘Hey my schedule won’t work anymore’ level changes. My favorite ones came out of things I’d done for my projects, that were taken, broken, and put into the template for everyone to use. Non-functional finish schedules were a fun fix on repeat, as well as my occupancy/code schedule.
I digress. What I have access to as ‘cool stuff that I did’ had to fit within a project, for that project, & in that time. So god knows what criteria it needed to meet. Multiple offices, all of whom had their own style guide for putting a project together, and a pretty fluid understanding of what the standards were that month.
That’s the long way of saying that most of my stuff, while geometrically relevant – doesn’t speak the same language (again – unless its part of the brand hotel collections that I did on my own).
SO, there’s a lot of things that I have that contain anomalies. Outliers. Weird stuff that won’t work anywhere else but on that project because that year they were scheduling door openings by overall width – frame thickness to = door panel, and not the reverse.
I did have suggestions to combat all this that I repeated every few months or so… who knows if it would’ve worked or not.
The idea was akin to pouring the sidewalks a year after the school opens. Let the users tell you where they want to go & solidify that.
My concept, was that each team get a person on that team with the knowledge to make stuff that was needed for that project. Trained, complete with a style guide & in charge of the Revit support on that team(s). The project would generate content, with a consistent language in place, based on common sense.
So you don’t get families that require a secret decoder ring to understand. Call it what it is, not “PX346_23 Set_Formula 17” Nobody knows what that is or what it does.
Now, at phases in the project or 4x a year, all the completed projects would do a brain dump. A 1-2 day cleanup of the as-built model, complete with fixing and exporting all the stuff that was made for that project. Up to and including details, not tied to a live view.
This information would get passed along to the Revit/IT staff for review, cleanup, organization into region, etc. Once thru that process – it would get shelved back into a detail and component library to feed the rest of the company, to maintain & grow the database of information across all offices. Again – named by what it was, and not some convoluted over-thought system only 2 people understand.
In a firm with 1500 employees who did many multiples of project types every single year, it wouldn’t take long at all to develop a bulletproof library of information based on constructed details and stuff that actually functions.
Keeps the doers doing the doing, the makers doing the making – and it feeds the machine. Covering everything from standard details to specialty objects and branded standards. “Pull” type rather than “push”. Sure you can retool the standard templates and organize things a little better – but you’re building it all on tested criteria and not broken parts that all start with the company name as a naming prefix. (another pet called peeve)
That brings us to now.
I have a library of parts, to which additional items can be added to easily. I have additional filtering categories built into everything, and multiple ways to deliver said items.
In defense of my own mental health and well-being, I’m thinking about doing this in a couple of ways.
Under this, the options would have to be limited, otherwise I’d be doing doors and frames for the rest of my natural life and still never hit the end.
One single door with multiple hardware types, frame types and door panel types can have literally 5,000 possible permutations of assembled components. There’s no way to cover them all, and I’d still miss one because someone somewhere will have a company standard that they use that’s based on a manufacturer that does things a certain way. The kit of parts is adaptable.
Best I can do in this case is cover the base-level and take stuff on order for single items to try and help the best I can.
Doors, like everything else in a drawing set, is a graphical placeholder to convey information, tied to specifications & details about an object and its installation. That’s it. Everything beyond that is design-side.
In the stand-alone Egress Version, there are three subtypes. Each subtype has on/off variables for further delineation of use. Simple Lever sets, Push, or Egress (Push-bar Lever Sets)
The deadbolt, kick plates and closer are all on/off instance-based.
The Accessible Clearances are all on/off instance based and I threw in a graphics setting to go with linework or a shaded region depending on preference.
Hardware groups are “J.F.L.” (Just for looks) and not really tied to scheduling. Its a design-model walk around ‘extra’. In other families, like branded guest room hotel entry doors, there’s a myriad of additional hardware that does carry schedule information (even at that it’s covered in a schedule entry so no real need to do that) – but that would be forthcoming.
If you’re at all interested in playing with one of these sample doors – hit the button to download the Single Flush Egress Type Here:
Under this option, the family is variable. To get ALL the extras to work within Revit, the variables are based on a door type. You get to call the overall collection of parts whatever your heart desires.
“OfficeDoor_24_Sidelight” for example. Crack open that door type, pick your own panel, hardware and frame type. Good? Good.
Again – the permutations on this run into the thousands, so creating a type list of every possible configuration would be daunting. However, with that said, making a type catalog would help limit the model size when you load the doors that you need into the model. Hence some of the configurator add-ons.
There’s no cross-over between families. So the door from the stairs isn’t going to suck in information from the double egress door in the hallway…
There’s a drawback with this one. Overall model size. Every door in your model would now contain all possible parts for that type. Used or not. Unless you limit what gets loaded with a list.
Solving that problem leads to the final option.
This is the one that I’ve been referencing as the ‘so super it causes brain freeze’ option. Frames are shared. Panels are shared. Every door in your project now becomes a placeholder that grabs from the loaded door panels and door frames in the project. Anything goes.
I’m still playing with this to decipher what happens when parts get shared. Is my pocket door panel suddenly going to appear in the stairs because someone scrolled a selection? Some break, some don’t. Still figuring that bit out. I don’t want to create a pile of problems while solving a different pile.
Again, you can do this by instance with zero organization or by type, with things contained in a framework.
I’ve built a parameter in to deal with each item appearing in the door schedule so that panels & frames can be filtered out. (That’s universal).
Couple of issues with this though:.
All of that above, wrapped in a nice little package for use in my own workflows is great. I can share with whoever wants to hire me to work with them, and that’s fine too – but its still a limited audience.
I usually tell people that in the annals of history I will be looked at as the second guy to have invented the wheel.
This isn’t new. This isn’t rare. You can go on google right now and find 100 other people out there selling the same wares, with variations.
Typically, its done with a few different sales models:
More than anything, the last thing that I want to do is have to compete in the marketplace of ideas with people that I consider mentors in the Revit maker space. Portions of the AEC sphere are incredible. Jon & Aaron at Parallax, Revit Pure, Jeff at BIMAfterDark, Marcello Sgambelluri, Paul F. Aubin’s courses… all amazing sources of information and great people.
I wish to be a part of that conversation and in that realm. I’ve been half-in and half-out of the formal title for my entire career. I want to help people who are struggling with late adoption, an underperforming bag of goodies, or simply don’t have the staff or the resources to make any of this happen. I’ve worked in offices of 2 people. I know what that’s like. I’ve worked in offices of thousands that ‘partner’ with smaller firms to absorb a regional client base, which results in a melting pot of drawing standards. I’m familiar with that struggle.
So, as I decide on which path to pursue, and retool things to work in multiple environments, the thing that I most need and can’t seem to find much of is input. A sounding board in which to bounce this stuff off of. A ‘first follower’ if you will.
The honest to god truth in all of this is that some of these efforts need to generate income. Being a social media ghost these many years isn’t aiding my efforts in marketing. Being that quiet secret in large firms that I’ve been in isn’t helping me either.
Eventually – these offerings are going to have to help support my family. I did all this because of the time/money problem. It never exists at the same time. Busy is 60+ hour work weeks hitting fees and deadlines so there’s no time to build out a collection of tools. Not busy means struggling to get by and no funds to purchase tools – which is why ‘How’ is in question.
SO, as much as I’d love to hit the buy button on a door configurator on the latest version of whatever, or become a partner of some of the other places offering these type of tools – I really can’t justify using the grocery budget to do it.
As always – If you want to offer some feedback on the sample, want beta access to more stuff – or just want to engage in some conversation about whatever, hit me up on social media or email.
(I finally fixed my aggressive spam filter on the email account that was eating everything).
Otherwise, I’ll be over here – making stuff.
Cheers!
John.
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