Friday, February 03, 2017

Autodesk Seek is Dead - Long Live BIMobject

I've been busy, experiencing angst or lazy, you pick. Then again dear reader you may not have noticed that I haven't been posting as much lately. Apparently some readers are still hoping to be able to rely on me to try to stay current with things. At least that's what a few emails asking about this semi-recent change suggests to me. I do apologize if my reticence to post more often is disappointing. I have been busy as well as going through another spell of "What's it all about Alfie?". Oh I've given it away...or have I? (imagine Craig Ferguson was speaking).

Get on with it Mr. OpEd... At the moment the only place other than Autodesk sites that I recall reading information about this change is the Revit Add-Ons post on the day it happened, so well done Tim.

Specifically, you may have been, or will be, greeted by a message when attempting to search Autodesk Seek via Revit's Insert ribbon? The message begins with something like (I didn't capture the screen the first time) ..."As of January 18, 2017 Autodesk Seek has been transferred to BIMobject. At least I think the naming is BIMobject. It could be bimobjects because that's also on the site. I digress...yet again.

They've provided a transfer FAQ you can read but it's not really responding to any questions I have, as a user...UNLESS you are then careful to click the small link for User FAQ on the left side (link next paragraph).

I see they've set up a hotline for Autodesk Seek transition so look for that information there (via separate FAQ sections for User and BPM) too, it's the same telephone number for either category, user or BPM (Building Product Manufacturer).

I know nothing about BIM Object yet. I can say after arriving at their site via Revit once that the UI presented to us is a sight better than Seek. My first impression is that their customers are product manufacturers, selling the service of creating and hosting content for manufacturers, the same as for Autodesk Seek.

Assuming the somewhat jaundiced view of a Revit user, the user is the product they are selling to their customers, like Facebook for example. However attempting to be fair, users need good quality content to make quality building models so if these guys do well we BIM users ought to be winning.

Regarding my overall experience with Autodesk Seek, prompted by a post at RFO, I wrote this reply there a couple days ago, responding to Philip...(a bit more of the Opinion part of OpEd)

My own experience with Autodesk Seek began with hmm promising, let's see how this goes and ended with what's the point. If you consider RevitCity's content quality is ravaged pretty consistently by fellow Revit users, as such lately I have had the same dread reaction to resorting to searching Autodesk Seek. I even went there a couple times to pull down bad examples of content to show people I was mentoring on the subject...not a good recommendation eh? Inspiration for blog posts is one upside? Okay, getting snarkastic sorry.

My feelings changed sharply a short while after the Family Style Guide was published related to Seek. A great idea and initial effort but it was a bit plain to see the market/revenue generating bias of it toward Seek. ...and it too has died on the vine.

Overall, very disappointing. Especially considering I've heard it was no small investment of time and money by companies to get their content hosted by Seek. But then that's the secret about content it takes time and both involve money even if we don't look.

Back to BIMobject, I'm going to keep an open mind, more open than my obviously skeptical comments above suggests is possible. Let's see how this goes. Oh, I'll answer the question that's probably on any user's mind for them (from their User FAQ):

Do I have to pay for the BIM objects I download?

bimobject.com is a free of charge web service for architects, engineers, specifiers and all other disciplines in the AEC and Infrastructure industries.


They offer a free Revit app to directly integrate their content search and access into Revit too.

Feel free to use comments to share your observations and experience with Autodesk Seek (in the past) or BIMobject if you've been a using their content already.

3 comments:

Graham said...

once again, you speak the truth...It's all so true.

One of my biggest complaints, so far, is the limited search functions...at least for me. I type in what I think are obvious search terms, only to receive limited or misdirected results. I hope it gets better, because the ultimate success of {Revit] BIM is relying on access to more (and better) content.

Thanks for stirring from your reverie.

Eduardo M.I. said...

I like BIM object so far. However the search engine is not as good. And I really miss the 3D-interactive preview gadget we had in Seek.

Unknown said...

autodesk seek: provided detailed product and (revit family) information.
BIMobject: provides less of that information (it's still there, in the revit family, but you have to download it, in order to see it),... not to mention that a great deal of revit families on BIMobject are created from CAD-imports.

now I don't know what the issue is since revit 2014,.. but here is my experience with families created from CAD_imports:

revit 2014: 1mb family + 1mb Project = 2mb Total project
revit 2015: 1mb family + 1mb Project = 3mb Total project
revit 2016: 1mb family + 1mb Project = 3mb Total project

since 2015, the CAD-import families, dbl up in size,... this can significantly increase project size, upload speeds, save speeds,.....pretty much,.. hamper PRODUCTIVITY