By request of our users, the deadline for our Revit Contest has been extended to March 31, 2009.
The contest is to create a Revit scene using as many of your published Revit families as you can. A “published” family is one that has been put up for sale at Revit Market.
1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes will be given in three categories: Corporate, Individual, Student. First prize in each category is $2500 cash!
A few of you have emailed me with an interesting question:
“I have some manufacturer content that I created myself for a project. Can I sell it at Revit Market?”
Yes, you can. However, it’s possible that the manufacturer is looking for the type of content you have so they can offer it for free at Autodesk Seek. Rather than pay the money to make it themselves, maybe the manufacturer wants to buy your content outright, and save themselves the trouble.
If you sell your family to the manufacturer, you’ll give up all rights to the content. On the other hand, you’ll have more cash in your pocket.
If you have manufacturer content you want to offer to the manufacturer, email the Seek team. In the meantime, publish the families for sale at Revit Market. You can always take them down if you make the sale to the manufacturer.
On Monday, January 26, Revit Market had its first webinar. The purpose was to encourage publishing by answering questions about Revit Market and its future.
After we went over survey results, certification, liability, and other topics, a lively discussion ensued about asset attributes. All agreed that publishers should be able to mark a family as 2D or 3D to help users find the right content.
Hatch patterns also introduced a different problem. Should they be published as PAT or RVT files? The verdict was PAT files, which are currently not an option at Revit Market. But my Dev guys tell me this will be easy to add.
The conversation was so lively that we decided to start a focus group for our publishers. We’ll get together every week or two to discuss how to improve Revit Market and generate sales.
If you want to come to the next Webinar on Wednesday, February 4, at 4pm EST, please click here to register. If you’d like to be part of the Publishers Focus Group, publish a few families at Revit Market, then come to the webinar. After that, send me an email to request entry.
We just got word that Symbolmachine will post 300 assets for sale at Revit Market. Exciting!
By my estimation, the marketplace needs about 10,000 pieces of content to become the “one-stop shop” for all Revit content needs. Want to join us?
Revit Market, being a new-fangled thing, is going through its early adoption phase. A few brave souls glimpse the future, and decide to participate in making it happen.
That’s how it is with Reved Up Families, a collection of 400 high-quality Revit families. Reved Up has decided to put their entire collection up for sale at Revit Market.
“We are extremely excited to be publishing our Revit content on Revit Market,” says Guillaume Belgique, co-owner of Reved Up Families. “We believe that Revit Market will become THE website that users will go to find quality Revit content. We’re excited to be a part of Revit Market’s growth and success, and know they’ll be an integral part of our growth and success as well.”
I’ve had several inquiries from libraries and users in this week alone who would agree. Revit Market was shown at three recent Revit user group meetings (and those are just the ones I know about). A recent AUGI article about our Revit user survey has gotten the word out even more.
Having lots of families published will be key to the success of Revit Market. If we build it, the people will come.
I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls from users recently. I like it. My Revit people, calling me to talk about Revit Market.
One of the big questions that comes up is about liability. If a downloaded family leads to structural or cost errors, who is responsible, the creator/uploader or the downloader/user?
The answer has to be the user. It’s the only way that makes sense. The user has the power to use the family any way he or she chooses, and to make changes to the family before using it.
Our End User License Agreement (EULA) specifically states that the purchaser, not the seller, is responsible for how a family is used in a design. The seller makes no warranty about the accuracy or usefulness of the family.
This is similar to the EULA you sign when you purchase software. The manufacturer actually states that they’re not responsible for whether the software works. If it doesn’t work, you would, of course, return it and expect a refund. What they’re really protecting themselves from is you using the software in a manner they didn’t intend or expect, or experiencing occasional software failure. (Imagine if you could sue Microsoft every time Windows crashed! What a different world this would be.)
Our EULA serves a similar purpose. We don’t guarantee that the item will be useful for any one user, or even that it will work. We give refunds on non-working models and families, but you (and we) are not liable if the user doesn’t bother to check a family’s integrity before using it for BIM or building instructions.
At TurboSquid, we’ve been doing this marketplace thing for 8 years, and we’ve worked out all the kinks in the EULA. We’ve never had a single problem with this issue. So, go ahead and publish your families with impunity!
One of our Revit Market publishers asked me an excellent question today.
“Are you in contact with manufacturers to create or get their content?”
The answer is No, for the simple reason that TurboSquid doesn’t deal with manufacturer content. Allow me to elaborate.
There are three types of RFA files:
Autodesk Seek does the second, Revit Market does the third.
In my early interviews with Revit users, some claimed that there was no need for user-generated content; the built-in families and manufacturer content were enough for all. After a bit more questioning, I found that every Revit user makes their own content sooner or later, or goes looking for downloadable families online. It’s just that no one wants to admit they’re doing it.
In fact, they’re doing it in droves. See my Survey Says post for the facts: 66% of Revit users need custom families for more than 50% of their projects.
What are these families that people have to make themselves? Everything from furniture to fixtures to construction vehicles. I’m conducting a new survey to find out what customers are looking for in user-generated Revit families. I’ll be sure to post the results here when they come in.
After a short hiatus for the holidays, I’m back to toot the Revit Market horn again.
Our publishing team has stayed busy over the holidays. Our most prolific contributor has been New Zealand-based RVT Pacifica, with a wide selection of doors and windows, and a smattering of other household items like gas ranges, refrigerators, and showers. To see their offerings, type in “RVT Pacifica” as the search term.
Another newsletter will be coming soon, so as always, you can email me to get on the list. I’d also be interested in finding out what kinds of topics you’d like to hear about in the newsletter.
