The first question clients usually ask us is this: does it pay to outsource Revit families, or does it take more explaining than it delivers? Our answer is nuanced but short. It pays as soon as volume and repetition are involved, and it does not pay for a single one-off component your own modeller can finish in an afternoon.
Families are the kind of work that lends itself perfectly to outsourcing, because the assignment can be clearly defined. There is a list of components, there is a standard, and there is an expectation about parameters.
We can take that over without your own team having to stay on top of it every day. We do the drafting and modelling; we do not do engineering. Our team consists of drafters with more than ten years of experience, led by Sam, our team leader, who still works as an engineer himself. You keep one point of contact and pay no ongoing payroll costs. Below you can see what that looks like in practice.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
What a revision file taught us about outsourcing Revit families
For Firefly we received an as-built file that was in poor shape. The existing drawings had been printed incorrectly, parts had been marked up by hand and legibility was far from good. Some of the components kept recurring, just drawn slightly differently each time, varying by drafter and by year. We could have called the client about it every day. We did not, because that would only have shifted the work back to them. Instead, we sorted it out ourselves, took stock of the recurring components and still delivered a clean file.
The main lesson we took from it is this: repetitive components that nobody ever standardised cost a disproportionate amount of time in a revision round. Every drafter draws them again, slightly differently, and the next revision starts from scratch. That is exactly the problem families solve. We first take stock of which components actually recur, how often and in which variants. We then build them as parametric components, so a size variant is no longer a new drawing but a setting.
In that file, it saved a mountain of correction work further down the line. We see that pattern at more clients, especially in sets that have grown over several years and through several hands. If you only tidy up the drawing, you will have the same problem two years later. That is why we prefer to tackle the source, even if it takes a little more discussion about the required parameters at the start. That discussion pays for itself in the very next revision round.
Outsourcing Revit families: what we actually deliver
We build parametric Revit families, in other words smart components. Such a component adapts to a new situation or a different size. So the modeller does not have to make the component again each time, but simply places it and sets it. The material schedule updates along with it: if the component changes, the schedule changes automatically. That is often just as valuable for cost estimating as it is for the drawing itself. Besides individual families, we supply 2D drafting and, where needed, 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions, so a family assignment is not cut off from the drafting work around it.
In terms of output, that means floor plans, elevations, sections and detail drawings that come from the model, plus the components they are built from. We deliver in Revit formats and, where the workflow requires it, in DWG, DXF or STEP. In practice we handle every common CAD format. A concrete example from our work: companies in greenhouse construction draft a lot in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not smart at building components such as valves in piping systems. If you need a valve in 90 and in 110, you draw it by hand from scratch every time. With a smart family it is in place in a single action.
As a result, this kind of work goes at least seventy per cent faster. We build both new families and cleaned-up versions of an existing set. Which makes more sense depends on the state of that set, and we prefer to assess that first rather than make assumptions about it. That assessment usually takes us very little time.
No ongoing payroll costs and no idle staff once the peak is over. If one of our people is off sick or on holiday, we replace them and the work simply carries on.
What goes into the Revit families we deliver
With us, a delivered set is not just a collection of files that open without an error message. We make sure the parameters are named the way you name them in your own template, that the types are logically arranged and that the variants you use every day are actually there. The material data is attached to the component, so the schedule updates automatically rather than someone having to maintain it afterwards. We test the components in a model situation that resembles the work they are intended for, because a family that only looks tidy in an empty file tells you very little. The set then goes through our quality control. A second team member checks the drafter's work, Sam then checks the technical side as team leader, and Barry, our project manager, gives it a final check. Those three layers keep the number of errors low in practice, and you only really notice that further down the line.
Because that is where the gain lies: the family set is not an end product but a tool. Your own drafting team carries on with it in ongoing projects, places components in new models and takes quantities from it. That is why we deliver in parts and collect feedback along the way, so your modellers can tell us early on that a parameter should be named differently or that a variant is missing. Making changes at that point costs a fraction of what it costs later. On a larger project, we work with software you can log into to follow progress. That way you do not have to ask how far the set has got, and we see your comments the moment they are made.
CAD standards and layer structure when you outsource Revit families
We work to your standards and drawing conventions. We get them from you, and where they are not documented we derive them from the material supplied and explicitly present our assumptions. That sounds obvious, but with families in particular this is often where things go wrong. A component that is technically correct but gets the wrong subcategory will show in a different colour from the rest of the model in every view.
A parameter named slightly differently from the one in your template falls outside the schedules and causes a manual correction with every delivery. We deliberately spend time on this in the first phase.
We ask about the layer structure for DWG export, the naming of types and parameters, the units used and the way you organise your levels of detail. If several standards are in circulation, which regularly happens at firms that have grown over time, we choose one together and stick to it. We set our own preferences aside, because the set has to suit your firm, not us.
Discussion about this runs via email, phone and regular meetings, every two days on a tight project and weekly otherwise. We work in our own environment with our own licences and always with the latest versions. The intellectual property of what we build belongs to you, so the standard remains yours and so does the set. We do not hold back a library that you would have to pay for again later.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing Revit families
Let us handle your Revit families
Send us your documents and drawing conventions and we will let you know within one to two working days what we can take on and when.