Revit family management is one of the biggest productivity challenges in AEC firms today. Content is scattered across local drives, shared servers, old project folders, and various websites, turning every search into a time-consuming scavenger hunt. In our recent webinar “Better BIM Content Management”, we explored why this happens and what leading organizations are doing to fix it.
The hidden cost of poor Revit family management
Most BIM professionals don’t realize how much time they lose to content searches. It’s five minutes here, twenty minutes there, an email thread to ask a colleague for the right window family, another one to confirm which version is current. It adds up fast.
Based on data shared during the webinar, BIM modelers spend between 3 to 6 hours per week just searching for or recreating content. That’s potentially a full working day lost every week, per person, to a problem that’s largely invisible to management.
The root causes are familiar to anyone who’s worked in Revit: unclear naming conventions, low-quality or missing thumbnails, no metadata to filter by, and content spread across multiple locations with no single point of access. Add to this the complexity of Revit content itself (loadable families, system families, in-place families, schedule templates, materials, drafting views) and you have a recipe for daily frustration.
Why shared folders fail for Revit family management
Setting up a shared folder on a network drive or SharePoint is usually the first step teams take toward organizing their BIM library. It’s a reasonable starting point, but it hits limitations quickly.
The core issue is that Revit content is deeply technical. System families like walls, roofs, and floors can’t even be opened outside of Revit. There’s no way to preview a family’s 3D geometry, check its parameters, or verify its types from a file explorer. You end up opening files one by one in Revit just to figure out if they’re what you need.
Poll results from our webinar attendees confirmed this: the majority manage libraries of over 500 elements, and their top frustration is wasting time searching for the right family within their own library. Not finding new content — finding what they already have.
How a centralized library transforms Revit family management
The webinar included a live demonstration of how a cloud-based Revit library works in practice, using the Onfly plugin directly inside Revit. Here are the key capabilities that change the daily workflow:
Search by keyword, classification, or parameter. Instead of browsing folders, you type what you need. Looking for all families with a fire rating of 180? Search by that parameter value and get instant results.
Preview before you download. A built-in 3D viewer lets you inspect geometry, dimensions, and all parameter data (including instance and family parameters) without loading anything into your project.
Drag-and-drop insertion. Once you’ve found the right family, you drag it directly into your Revit project. No download step, no file management.
System families handled natively. Walls, floors, and other system families that normally require template projects can be managed and inserted from the same library, using the same drag-and-drop workflow.
Collections and tags for context-based organization. Group families by project type, room type, discipline, or any custom criteria. A hospital-focused architecture firm, for example, can define complete sets organized by room type.
Linked documentation. Each family can carry associated PDF documentation, technical sheets, and user guides, accessible directly from the Revit plugin without switching applications.
How global firms handle Revit family management at scale
The webinar featured two case studies from major engineering firms that illustrate different approaches to BIM content strategy.
Egis (20,000+ employees) faced a classic silo problem: every department and regional office had its own library, its own Revit standards, and its own way of working. Their solution was to implement centralized standards with decentralized management. A central BIM team sets the rules and framework, while local teams manage their specific project needs within that structure. The result: a library that works as an active engine for efficiency rather than a static storage unit.
Systra had a different challenge focused on data lifecycle. They were managing technical requirements through disconnected Excel spreadsheets that didn’t connect to their Revit models. Their approach was dynamic data injection: ensuring that the information inside each Revit family is correct and evolves at every project phase, from initial design through to operations and maintenance.
Both firms moved from treating their BIM library as a storage problem to treating it as a strategic asset.
Three tips to improve your Revit family management today
If you’re thinking about improving your approach, the webinar closed with practical advice that applies regardless of your organization’s size:
Start small. Pick a focused scope, your most commonly used families like doors, windows, or curtain walls. Establish the right methodology and demonstrate value before scaling up.
Evolve project by project. Don’t try to reorganize everything at once. Let your library grow gradually, and involve your teams early so that adoption happens naturally.
Create an end-of-project ritual. After each project, take time to capture new families, improvements, and lessons learned while they’re still fresh. Over time, this creates a compounding effect: each new project starts with a richer, more complete library.
One important myth to dispel: you don’t need to clean your entire library before centralizing it. That’s the best way to never start. Move your current content first, then improve it incrementally.
Watch the full webinar replay
Want to see the live demo and the full case studies? The complete webinar replay is available now.
Duration: ~55 minutes, including live Revit demonstration, case studies from Egis and Systra, and Q&A session. session.