BIM Family Toolkit Now Available on Autodesk Labs

When Principal Engineer, Alison Davis, contacted me about a technology preview on Labs called BIM Family Toolkit, I couldn't help but think of Sly and the Family Stone. For the uninitiated, Sly and the Family Stone was a 70's group with hits such as "Family Affair," "Dance To The Music," "and "I Want To Take You Higher." I guess I could have entitled this blog posting Sly and the BIM Family Toolkit but very few of you would have gotten it.

Simply put, the BIM Family Toolkit allows you to share parametric family information from Inventor to Revit. You then use this family information in Revit to create geometry whose attributes match what was imported from Inventor. In other words, what you create in Revit reflects what you created in Inventor. For example, the doors and windows in your Revit models match the doors and windows you have in Inventor. To get started, you download a zip file from Labs. This file has separate installers for both Inventor and Revit.

Download BIM Family Toolkit via Autodesk Labs

Inventor 2011 and Revit 2011 do not have to be on the same machine, but you do have to install both parts - one for Inventor and the other for Revit.

To get you started on how it works, there are some YouTube videos. For those without YouTube access, you can download the videos.

Video	YouTube	non-YouTube
	Watch Create Family	Download Create Family
	Watch Refresh Family	Download Refresh Family

The Autodesk Labs page has some sample files if you wish to experiment with this technology preview. What would really allow you to dance to the music would be if you would try it with your own data and let us know how that works at labs.iv.bim@autodesk.com. We want to see if this technology preview does indeed take you higher.

Showing it's a family affair is alive in the lab.