I think it is perfectly possible to use Revit without 3rd party add-ins. What 3rd party add-ins will really do for you is remove inefficiencies within Revit itself by automating tasks to save time. In some cases they can save so much time, if used regularly, that they more than pay for themselves in gained productivity.

Others perform functions Revit still does not natively support, such as importing an excel file to look like a schedule view. While you can still produce the appearance of a schedule, or use a key schedule, to recreate the information within Revit the tool itself could cost 3 hours of salary and save days in lost productivity. So it tends to come down to, if you do want to deploy add-ins, that they should be studied to figure out how much they will be used and how much they will save.

I would suggest the best rule is to be very intentional and considered in your thinking about addins. Much like the content on SEEK, 95% of addins are pure junk. See the recent conversation about FreezeDrawing. But some Addins are very useful, such as Phillip's FamilyBrowser. The key is that Management needs to evaluate and make decisions on addins, NOT users discovering something full of marketing promises and getting it installed without solid testing for stability and utility within the workflow you plan to use. If you follow that process, I suspect you will find that you have very few addins, and fewer still that cannot be installed and managed on a network share. But the few addins you decide on will have define and measurable value.

Gordon

Absolutely 100% true.

I would list all of the addins ive tested, and what i think about them, but i think that would come of as very rude. I can tell you truthfully, these are the only addins currently deployed to all users in our organization:

1. Kiwicodes Family Browser (pays itself off in ten minutes of use)
2. COBie data parameter populater
3. Siteworks
4. eTransmit (Autodesk)
5. Globe Link (Autodesk)
6. Navis exporter (Autodesk)
7. Innovaya Exporter (Innovaya)
8. Two small data ones written in house.

That seems like a lot, but really only 1,2, and 3 do anything. The rest are convenience tools. Everything else ive tested has been so frought with peril, it wasnt work trying to give it to the users.

Using revit with zero addins is perfectly doable- in fact- i recommended just that until the API really opened up. If we didnt need so much DATA out of the model for other applications, a bunch of those would go away.

I suppose I am itching to produce, but the amount of information out there is at times overwhelming,...I think that I will follow your advice and not employ addins. Wrapping my head around what is there is more important to me than trying to make the 'Perfect' template at this point.

-Chuck

The key to that sentence is "at this point." You will learn so much about Revit and how your office COULD WORK, rather than HAS WORKED, over the next year, that you will almost certainly toss this year's template and start anew and better next year. Keep things simple as you roll out, and plan on adding complexity and utility over time. The only thing worse than trying to roll out too much too fast and overwhelming staff is expecting to nail your Revit use philosophy from the get go and never change how you work again. Staff will fight the constant learning curve, but long term a trotting pace of change is ideal I think.

Gordon

Thanks Gordon,

I have worked on 5 previous BIM projects with Archicad, I feel very confident that Revit is so much more in tune to BIM coming strickly from a modeling standpoint. A trotting pace is where I want to be, at times I crawl,.....but always steady. I am confident however that I will be able to help others the way this forum has helped me.

-Chuck

Some of the add-ins address simple things that should be in the default UI like renumbering views on a sheet, renumbering doors & rooms or changing text case. There are dozens of those available of varying quality and price. The RFO add-in has a good set of tools in it imo and is worth picking up. Julien really likes the Whitefeet tools and has a few posts on how to leverage them for more efficiency. I have them installed but haven't worked with them enough.

The ones I use most:

RFO tools
Keynote Manager (revolution design)
Work Flow (revolution design)
Family Browser - I have this but don't use it anywhere near as much as I should. I really need to spend an afternoon getting it setup and working how I want.

I have a few others installed but rarely use them. There are a dozen more that I need to completely get rid of. :hide:

Employ the Family Browser. Its worth it, on day one. I didnt employ it on day one because it didnt exist.