Revit and Manufacturers Content

I've said it time and time again: Content is King in Autodesk Revit.  The more content we have in the form of Revit Families, the better.  While Revit comes with a nice collection out-of-the-box, it's not nearly enough to cover all the bases.

Most resort to trying to track down content from Revitcity.com or a handful of other sites that are beginning to pop up.  Or they post on the Revit Forums at AUGI.com, asking if anyone is willing to share.  A growing number of Revit users are starting to create their own families, using either the shipped content or something they've downloaded as a starting point, while many others are comfortable enough with the family editor to start families from scratch!  The key to content, in my opinion, is to get the manufacturers to build and supply families of their products for our use!

Manufacturers have for years supplied simple 2D DWG's of their products for use in our CAD based projects.  How do we get them to start supplying Revit families?  Tell them!  We must collectively as the Revit Community, let manufacturers know that we want to see content come from them in the form of intelligent, parametric families.  They will continue to supply 2D DWGs to us, because it is still considered the "standard" in our industry.

Well, times are changing!  The Revit community has grown to the point now where we can really start influencing the manufacturers!  Nearly every product website I have been to has a "feedback" link either to a form or an email.  The next time you find yourself searching for content on a manufacturers site, take 30 seconds to fill out that form and let them know how important it is to see them provide Revit Families.  I would even suggest writing your own form letter and saving it on your local machine.  A quick cut-n-paste from your saved letter to their online form, and you're done!