Monday, March 01, 2010

Book Review: Revit 2010 Family Standards and Best Practices


Revit 2010 Family Standards and Best Practices (Take the Dysfunction Out of Your Families)
By Shawn Zirbes & Integrated Content Solutions, Inc.
205 pages
$79.99
Right on the front cover the book states that ICS is a Premier member for Autodesk Seek. I don't want to start off negative but as of today the content on Autodesk Seek is not something to brag about. http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=108569&highlight=Autodesk+Seek
Autodesk Seek is a good framework for the distribution of content. That's why it's so disappointing that many of the families are useless. But this isn't a review of Autodesk Seek.

This book has lots of good tips, tricks and best practices. The more unique tips are highlighted in red. The MEP connectors section is quite well developed. There are good naming conventions proposed throughout. Family testing methods are explained (makes me wonder if they're used at Autodesk Seek?). In the beginning of the book there are some nice graphic scenarios on Sketch Mode and Masking Regions. It seems that this tales off and some chapters are very sparse. I was looking forward to the formulas chapter but was disappointed to find that it was virtually just cut and pasted from the Revit Families Guide with no extra examples, tips or otherwise. Overall I would say that this book takes the best segments from the Revit Families Guide and Revit Model Content Guide, adds a few extra tips and organizes them into a tidy little pocket guide.

Here's a link to the Amazon page:

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I have been using Revit since 2001- before Revit was acquired by Autodesk when it was still Revit Technologies. I have been creating families ever since. I consider myself a power Revit user.



I purchased this book off Amazon and have read it in its entirety, and can say that it is extremely useful. I have looked at other content/familiy creation books and this is by far the most thorough and helpful content creation book I have found. I have recommended this book to colleagues who are CAD Manager and Revit users alike. I am glad that a member of the Autodesk Content Network has stepped up to the plate and created such a helpful manual- even for experienced content creators like me.