A Revit library service stands or falls with the software the work is done in. We build these libraries in Revit, with AutoCAD and Rhino alongside for anything that belongs there instead. We use Inventor for components that come from a production environment, Grasshopper for shapes that are otherwise difficult to set up, and Dynamo and Vault to a limited extent.
We always work with the latest versions, so you never get a set back that is stuck in an older release.
We deliver in DXF, DWG, the Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format. The work is done in our own environment with our own licences, entirely remotely from our own office. We do the drafting and modelling. We leave engineering, calculations and structural advice to you. Everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of our team has around twenty-five years of experience combined.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who a Revit library service is for
Requests for a Revit library service come to us from engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly from companies with technical drafting work. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners. They rarely open the conversation about families or parameters, because the problem on their desk is capacity. There is too little time, too few drafters, or a peak their own team cannot handle alongside everything else. At an architectural practice this means everyone is working on ongoing projects and nobody gets round to building components that would then recur in every project.
At a manufacturer, something else is going on. They have long known that their product range belongs in smart components, but current order work takes priority every time. A contractor tends to run into it during project close-out, when a file has to be right while the drawing office has already started on the next project. In greenhouse construction we see a variant that costs a lot of time. Companies there often work in AutoCAD, which is not smart at building components such as valves in piping systems.
If you need such a valve in 90 and in 110, you draw it by hand from scratch every time, whereas a smart component places it in a single action. We save seventy per cent of the time or more on this work. What all these situations have in common is that the work is predictable and high in volume. It has to be done, and it ties up people who should be working on something else. That is the part we take over.
Three review layers on every family in the library
A library is exactly as reliable as the weakest component in it. That is why everything we do goes through at least three review layers before it leaves the building. A drafter builds the component, a second team member checks that work, Sam, our team leader, looks at the technical side and Barry, our project manager, gives it a final check. That may seem like a lot of attention for one component, but in a set a drawing office will use for years, every deviation adds up. We check not only whether the component is correct, but also whether it fits into the whole.
Is the naming consistent, is the category right, are the same parameters named the same everywhere, and does a component behave the same way as its neighbour from the same series. In practice, that last point is the biggest time-waster. A drafter who has to operate two almost identical components differently loses a minute every time and will eventually start working around the set. We also make sure no hard-coded dimensions are quietly left in a component, only to cause problems at the first variant. Because the work has been checked several times, the number of errors stays minimal in practice.
The same attitude shows in how we deal with messy source material. For Firefly we took on a file in which the drawings had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand, and we sorted it out ourselves instead of calling about it constantly. Anything that needs your decision, we collect and present in one go. That keeps the number of interruptions on your side to a minimum.
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.
The cost of a Revit library service
With a Revit library service, two things determine the cost. The number of components, and how much investigation each component needs. We can work by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we make that choice together. If there is a clear list of components and a complete package of source data, a fixed project price is easy to set. If a lot still needs to be worked out along the way because the existing set is inconsistent, an hourly basis is fairer for both sides. We only charge pure working hours. If a team member steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so nothing keeps running during a period without work.
There are no ongoing payroll costs either, because after the peak it simply stops. What keeps costs down most in practice is preparation on your side. An agreed parameter list, clear naming rules and a complete set of source data save more than anything else. It also pays to start with the components that recur most often, because that is where the return is. We estimate on the basis of what we see, not on an assumption, so we go through the existing set first. If the scope turns out to grow along the way, we tell you the moment we notice, not afterwards on the invoice. A small first assignment is a good way to test that estimate.
Outsourcing a library or hiring someone
The decision on the table is usually not which party to choose, but whether the work should be outsourced at all. A new permanent employee makes sense when the work is structural and comes back year after year. With building a library that is rarely the case, because the job has a clear beginning and end. If you hire someone for it, you are left after delivery with staff who have to find something else to do, while the payroll costs come back every month.
A single freelancer solves that, but brings a different risk. They work alone, so their work never gets a second pair of eyes, and if they fall ill or take on another assignment, the work stops.
With us, every component passes through several hands, and we replace someone who is ill or on holiday so the work carries on. With our large, variable team we also scale up or down for each project, and if it is urgent we add people straight away because the team is already in place. You have one fixed point of contact, so you do not have to coordinate with several freelancers at once.
What we are not is a substitute for your own expertise. The design decisions behind the components stay with you, and we get the standards we work to from you. The intellectual property of everything we make belongs to you. If you want to see how that works out, let us start with a small first assignment and then judge our speed and accuracy.
Frequently asked questions about our Revit library service
Let us build your Revit library
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.