Loren Cook Fan Company provides Revit Families of all of their fans use with Revit MEP 2009. I have a couple of questions regarding this.
1. How can I open these files Microstation or a Bentley Building Product?
2. If I can't open these files now, will I be able to in the future? Is this in Bentley's Plans?
3. My final question is for discussion. What is the best course of action for the community/Bentley to take? I know I keep harping on this issue, but the availability of Revit families from manufacturer's continues to increase and the availability of PAZ/BXC/CEL/DGN files continues to stay the same (from what I am seeing). I believe manufacturer data is incredibly important in the future of BIM/VDC. Are we as Bentley users responsible to continue to push our manufacturers into generating Bentley files? Is Bentley responsible to make conversions between Bentley and Revit "Just Work"? Is there a combination or middle ground?
There will come a time when using BIM tools as an "easier" way to extract 2D drawings will no longer be acceptable. There will be an expectation from Owners/Architects/Engineers/Facility Managers/General Contractors/Subcontractors to see the Rooftop Unit from the Manufacturer in their building. I hope we aren't headed towards a dead end...
Everyone,
I have been informed by Bentley there is an avenue to request manufacturer data. I was unaware of it prior to posting. If you go to http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Corporate/Bentley+Partner+Program/Content+Partners/Infrastructure+Partners.htm , there is a form which allows you to request Bentley contact manufacturers about producing content.
It is very good to see that Bentley is being proactive in this regard.
Thanks,
Jordan
Although I didn't check a lot of the available info on this site, it seems to only be PDF files??
John K.
JordanH: It is very good to see that Bentley is being proactive in this regard.
Jordan,
As John already mentioned, this is the Heavacomp PDF library containing marketing material you could get directly from any of the listed manufacturers or from several building information providers on the web. Many of these manufacturers provide DWG CAD-files which are not part of the Heavacomp library. (Why?, Why not also as DGN?)
The Heavacomp merits are that they have made a comprehensive collection of these materials. However the information is provided as it comes from the diverse manufacturers. However, there are information providers on the web which have harmonized and standardized such information, so that it is directly compareable and even more valuable.
Although it might have been a good move of Bentley to buy Heavacomp it is far away from showing anything "proactive" in providing product libraries to their customers.
What we need are 100% compatible object libraries for our daily work, which can easily be adjusted to comply with our company or client CAD-standards.
Regards
Gunnar
Roadblock ahead?
Ideally, BA, BBMS etc should be able to import Revit files / families as components so that Bentley users can 'ride the market'. Not sure if Bentley's recent agreement with AutoDesk gives Bentley access to Revits' libraries as well as DWG.
But, even if importing was possible, there needs to a way to retain the intelligence contained in the incoming objects. The object attributes / tag information can probably be translated realtively easily but what about the parametric behaviour? No point knowing that the pipe is 100mm in diameter if there is no link between this attribute and the CAD elements and other linked / dependent data. Changing the attribute should change the CAD element and vice versa, ie the CAD element should not imported as 'zombie / dead' data.
Bentley needs to come up with a computational design platform that supersets Revit's methods. Maybe like what they are starting to do with OpenPlant's use of ISO 15926.
As AD starts adding intelligence to DWG, such as Dynamic blocks (ACAD2006) and constraints modeling (2010) and other vertical app objects, it will be interesting to see if Benltey can develop its own 'design intelligence' model while accommodating (or in the worst case, reverse engineering) AutoDesk's model. This must be a huge overhead that will slow development down. Hopefully, we won't end up in a situation where AD starts to set the 'parametric' or 'design intel' agenda because Bentley and the other vendors are always too busy trying to reverse engineer their model for interoperability requirements.
Though I don't know anything about plant, and ISO 15926 - for me it seems that there is the big difference between plant and building.
Why don't we have an ISO-standard for parametric design in the building industry? As long as everyone tries to do things on its own, the building industry won't get any much further. That applies to everyone, regardless if the name of the company is Bentley, Autodesk, Nemetschek, Tekla or Graphisoft.
The IFC format may be a beginning, but it's far from enough.
Maybe Bentley could open source the PCS format?