FB folders don't bother me. Set them up once and they are done. If you add or change content anywhere that it monitors it automatically gets added/updated in the appropriate place. Searching by name isn't usually an issue for me unless something has a terrible name- which does happen occasionally /facepalm

For pretty much everything that isn't Revit I use Voidtools Search Everything. A bit old-school, but it is crazy fast and supports boolean, regex, wildcards, etc. I'm a bit of a luddite and generally don't like dealing with tags, mostly because I hate setting them up in the first place. Mentally I prefer a folder structure (maybe it is the visual aspect?).

There are a few considerations people often overlook, when comparing content browsers.

1. Primary navigation method: Search, vs Predefined Browsing. Opinions vary on this (obviously) but we dont all agree that "searching or tagging" is King, and because of that, there are only "clear winners" if you agree on the primary navigation method that the browser in question uses. I find (personally) "search" should be a greaet BACKUP, but the "user story" every content management platform shows me, where some architect types "door" every time they want a door, makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a rusty spoon. Folks must have nothing better to do than type "Door" 287 times in a day.

2. Local vs Cloud Storage, and which Storage. This one can also be a "deal breaker" or a "decision maker" since they all dont allow for both options. If you want on prem storage, that eliminates some options. If you want the CMS to HOST the content, that eliminates some other options. If you want your OWN cloud hosting but for the CMS to leverage it, that also eliminates some different options.

3. The "feature sets:" Since the CMS's all started coming out (2010, 2011), they have all been racing to add features to "make themselves more valuable." You have to decide on your own, what features are valuable. I actually think most of the features in most of them are worthless, so i intentionally seek out a much simpler browser, that serves one particular function well.

All of those things said, i have seen implementations of every CMS that were awesome, and ive also seen implementations of every CMS that absolutely sucked.

BUT, when i hear "ehhhh id rather not have to organize my stuff becuz work, so its better if it can work some other way," ill tell you that alarm bells go off right away. I know a company that functioned that exact way, and their library was a total ****show. The "browser" wont mater, if you arent curating whats in the actual library, well. And if its partially in the cloud, partially on a desktop (wtf!?), youll end up with the same thing that multi-million dollar massive architecture firm with more budget than sense ended up with: 5 redundant Fire Extinguisher Cabinets, all broken in different ways, and 4 Structural Columns that are all OOTB but named differently. Itll suck.

An addon cant solve poor planning and content curation.

This. A purpose built tool that is well designed will be infinitely better than a tool that does a bunch of things in a maybe it kind of works way. There's a reason there are so many different blade styles for kitchen knives. Can you do everything with a 10" Chef's knife? Yes- but not as effectively as you can by using a filet knife, or cleaver, or paring knife.

To clarify what I said about the tags- it isn't the work of doing it that bugs me, it is the overthinking / ADD side of me that hates it. Simplicity is king, and I do stupid stuff like create tags that read: Brick, Red Brick, Red, Running Bond, Masonry- but all applied to different objects, because I do them at different times, and then I can't find what I want. If they are all in a folder for Masonry, I can at least find it. My content library is reasonably well configured; all by CSI section (with one or two exceptions such as cabinets), and other than occasionally forgetting what division something is in it is easy to access and use.

It's not really that I don't want to organize my stuff, after all I've done that for years, it is that we use the Revit OOTB families a lot, both in original form and modified. With a folder based solution like FB, every time we upgrade Revit I had to manually set up a new structure again as the same objects are sorted under Architectural and MEP (but not identically) and we use both. Alternatively there would be a lot of unnecessary clicking through folders. We also have our own families in the same folder structure. I could of course just reuse previous years OOTB families but when loose eventual improvements and new ones from Autodesk.

FB (at least R2) also didn't show the families in the root folder for some reason, adding another step to create a separate folder and moving these. If I remember correctly special conditions also applied for a folder to be 'live',

What I liked with Avail is that it uses a funneling system for search. You can have your own organized folder structure and when you open AVAIL you start by seeing everything, and in the bottom of the screen you have all your categories, sub categories, tags, and so on. If you want a door you could start clicking the door category, then residential, then perhaps style, and perhaps type (pocket, sliding, etc) and what is remaining is a number of candidates that fits your interest. I could also easily select some or all of these and give them a new tag, like craftsman, that could then be added and show up among styles. This way it wouldn't be an endless number of scattered tags, but they could be used to set up their own categories. Really smart in my view.

What is not so smart is that the original indexing is done at import, so anything you change or if you add a new family it both has to be copied into your folder structure and then dragged and dropped into AVAIL for a 3-4 step import import process. This to me is a deal breaker.

1. In ANY setup (regardless of browser preference) if you are "clicking too much" its a bad setup, it isnt the tool. (No offense, of course)

2. FB has always shown families in Root Folders here. I know this because i specifically and intentionally dont use nested folders, because i hate the extra steps. R1, R2, R3 all worked with Root Folders.

3. What you describe (clicking through the additional search fields for a door) sounds awful (to me, but again, its just personal preference), but if you like that workflow, it sounds like you know what you are after, CMS wise. EVERY single time ive seen "Tagging" implemented, it ends up as "junk data" in under a year, because yes: People add all sorts of whacky tags.

But even if tagging and searching is your idea of a good system, in a perfect world when and how WOULD you want it to tag? Without an initial index or an initial tag setup, how is it ever getting tagged, except by rudimentary data?

FWIW, btw: We were off the FB for a couple of years, and using another browser that required "indexing," even though it was a predefined navigation style browser. Its aweful, because if you want to bulk add 50 families at once, someone has to sit there and let it run. And oh, the fun you get in to when TYPES in a Type Catalog are updated or changed, and you have to reindex thousands of types because of it.

We ended up leaving outdated versions in the browser, because we couldnt tolerate the constant need to index. Got off that browser as soon as FB worked with our IT setup, again.

Amazed me at my last firm that no one could see this. The answer to the poor content and complaints from staff was to sink who knows how much money and time into CMS research and run meetings to compare all the "features".

So now instead of a crap library they have a big bill and a fancy new UI that they have to train people how to use in order to get to the... same old crap library. Actually it's probably an even worse library now that the new "features" allow people to start mass harvesting from poorly documented projects and poorly modelled third party content. Like using gasoline to put out a fire.

It blows my mind how many companies dont see it, and think buying shiny tools negates the need to "do the work." I mean, certainly you can use the money and "pay someone to do the work," but if you look at a LOT of the feature sets of a LOT of the CMS tools, they are basically promoting them to BIM Management Staff who are just BEGGING for a way to not have to... do the work.

Whats funny about it, is curating a good library actually isnt that hard. But it requires a team what is:

1. Capable of building the stuff. Or finding the stuff.
2. Capable of deciding on their own "what is good and what is crap."
3. Willing to own the decisions of number 1 and number 2.

And that, my friends, is why they dont want to do it. If they simply buy an expensive tool with a "content rating selector" they can blame crap content on the users, and never have to ACTUALLY own a decision.

Is it just me or is R3 *extremely* buggy? I must be doing something wrong. I'm trying to test out the trial version on R23 with a random test library and it's... frustrating.

• The website/download page itself seems to constantly time out and throw error messages
• The ("retro") settings page seems to constantly log out and spit error messages
• The builder list isn't showing the same sub folders that are appearing in the family browser.
• Marking something as a "Sub Folder" shows a red cross, apparently it needs to actually be called "StandardSubFolder" (despite "Sub Folder" being the option in the drop down - see screenshot)
• The builder list is showing an entire library of window subfolders that I have never created nor seen before in my life... Where have these come from? (see screenshot)

Not sure if it's cause the trial version isn't optimised for R23, or maybe issues with the test library being on OneDrive? Have contacted them but curious if anyone else has run into issues.

Getting similar issues with R21 - files are showing duplicated in the builder, random "_notes" sub folders are appearing, a lot of folders in the builder expand to show no files at all :/

I know Phillip is in the middle of transitioning to some new Server Hosting, so the timeouts and such ARE happening here, and are annoying as heck.

Regarding the builder... They all worked fine here, and i just built a customers library in 2023, thats on Sharepoint. My guess is its a problem with your One Drive. But i cant say for sure.