New FREE product coming - Family Browser Labs

Family Browser Labs Project

Available First Week December 2013

The Family Browser Labs Project is a testing platform for new features and idea concepts for our full Family Browser product. It allows independent modular testing of ideas outside of the commercial Family Browser product without affecting its source code.

Once a new module has been fully developed (with an emphasis on the users feedback) it may either be integrated with the full Family Browser product or developed as a standalone product.

The initial Labs release is concentrating on these issues/ideas:1. Create a very simple way of finding families in your project or external library, and inserting them into the project.2. Provide a very powerful fast search engine to find the families that you want, whether that be family name, category, Parameter name or value.3. Provide an easy way of adding content to your external library (Revit families, drafting views, schedules, system families and groups)

As time goes on we will be adding and testing other features/ideas.

Try For FREE

To help us out join our testing team by clicking on this link HERE. It is FREE. The only thing we ask of you in return is honest feedback that will help keep Kiwi Codes Family Browser the best Revit Family Browser on the Market.

Product Teaser

FB 2014 - No Active View Error

If you have updated to our latest version of Family Browser for Revit 2014 and have chosen to display it in the new docked mode and you receive the below error when you drag and drop a family onto the Revit drawing there is a good reason for this.

There was a bug in the RTM version of the Revit 2014 API that disallowed drag and drop from a docked panel, but thankfully this was resolved in Revit Update 1.  You need to be running at least the below version of Revit to run Family Browser in the docked state.

Project Browser 2014 - News

For those using our Project Browser you don't have long to wait now before a new build that is Dockable to the Revit UI like Family Browser now is.  Keep an eye out here for news in the next few days.

FB 2014 - Inserting Hosted Families Fix.

Have you noticed before in Family Browser 2014, that when you insert a family from Family Browser that is Hosted ie, workplane/facebased that the icons to change host on insertion are disabled as shown below?

It turns out that because of the changes required in the Revit 2014 API with the way we interact with the Revit database from modal dialogues, the buttons become disabled.  After going back and forth with Autodesk support it was found that there is actually a limitation in the API to support this.

This is a major issue for a majority of our customers so after some testing I have found an unsupported way around this issue, until Autodesk includes this functionality in the API.  So now when you insert a hosted family from FB 2014 you will get the icons available as per below.  This is available in the current download of FB 2014 from our webpage - Downloads

Please let me know if you stumble across any issues with this.

Family Browser now fully Integrated into Autodesk Revit 2014

Autodesk Revit now has Family Browser Built In.

We are very proud to announce that from today Family Browser is now fully integrated into Autodesk Revit 2014 software.

Users now have the ability to run Family Browser in "Classic Mode", as per the existing Family Browser floating mode, or have it docked within the Autodesk Revit user interface.




Running Family Browser in the docked state integrates Family Browser seamlessly into the UI, which can then be docked left,right, top, bottom and as a tabbed item along with the Project Browser etc.

Family Browser will start-up automatically on Revit start and remember the previous position and state it was in.

Our studies have shown that users are far more likely to use an application if it is always open and even more so if they don't even realise they are using an external application.

We have had some reports from testers that their users are so happy that finally Revit has a built in Family Browser. :)

PLEASE NOTE:  Web Update 1 must be installed first for this feature to work.

To view this feature in action see video below.

New Builds of Family Browser Released

Yesterday we uploaded to our web site new builds of Family Browser 2013 & 2014.  These new builds addressed mainly feedback that we received during the RTC Conference in Auckland last month.

Floating Network Licenses:

We now offer Floating Network licenses  for both Family Browser 2013 & 2014 for orders over 10 users.  This can be ordered from our webpage by selecting the "Network Floating User" license type.

Current Project Family Group (FB 2014 Pro Version):

When Family Browser is now opened, automatically there will be a group created that shows the current families that are loaded in the project.  The user has some choices of what categories to show and whether  that should show as a tree view in one single tab are split up with tabs per each category.  To see this in action watch this video.

Family Already Loaded Icon (FB 2013 & 14):

When the user moves their mouse over a Family Browser icon a blue "P" will appear in the bottom left hand side of the icon if that family is already loaded into the current project.

Other Tweaks:

• Fixed an issue with trying to load a family with a numeric name ie.  100.rfa
• Added a default icon to the favorites tab if no favorites had been added.
• Optimized and speed up the advanced search database for very large family libraries.
• Advanced search now allows duplicate family names to show up.

The new builds have been uploaded to our website as trial versions and full versions from the members area.  http://www.kiwicodes.com

Keep the comments/suggestions and future ideas coming.  We have some seller ideas that we are currently working on at the moment for future releases.

RTC AUS Wrap Up.

Kiwi Codes has had a very successful time exhibiting at RTC AUS at the “Langman Hotel” in Auckland New Zealand , 16th to the 18th May. 

It was great to catch up with allot of our existing Australasian clients and get their feedback on how they are using our time saving Revit tools and also hearing their fantastic suggestions for future enhancements to our existing tools and also new ideas for other tools.  It was also great to showcase our tools to others who as yet are not our clients. 

Common questions that were asked by people were:

1. Do you offer Network/Floating licensing model for your tools?
2. It would be great if Family Browser showed the currently loaded families in the current project as a separate group like what KC Project Browser does.
3. How can we buy all of your products at once as a suite package?
4. Are you attending RTC NA this year?

The good news is that items 1 & 2 are going to be addressed in a new build of Family/Project Browser by the 31st of May 2013.  Keep an eye on our web site for the new build/features this Friday.

A suite license is something will address a little further down the track.  We need to change around our licensing a little to allow a single key to unlock selected features, but it is all possible.

The real exciting news is that, Yes we are attending RTC NA in Vancouver Canada on the 11th – 14th July 2013.  North America is our biggest customer base and we are really excited to meet face to face our existing customers.  If you are there make sure you find some time to visit us at Booth #21 for a catch up.

HOK implement Kiwi Codes Solutions firm wide.

We are very pleased to announce the strategic partnership between Kiwi Codes Solutions and the leading design, architecture, engineering and planning firm, HOK.  HOK have this week announced a global roll-out of Project Browser and Family Browser throughout their firm.

“HOK has been looking for a family and project browser management solution for a long time with very limited success.  Kiwicodes’ simple and elegant approach proved to be the most flexible and powerful compared to other tools.  ”  - Greg Schleusner – Firm wide buildingSMART Leader – HOK

“I have implemented Family Browser successfully at another practice and KiwiCodes have always been very responsive to our feedback. This factor alone was very important to HOK because we like to fine-tune everything to suit our needs. Couple this with the tool’s beautiful simplicity, and the decision was quite clear.” – David Baldacchino, buildingSMART Manager - Texas Region

With this alliance, Kiwi Codes will gain valuable insight into the complexities of Project and Family management across a global firm, while HOK gain instant productivity gains through Project and Family Management, like no other Revit Addin on the market does.

These developments mark the beginning of an exciting era for Kiwi Codes Project and Family Browsers. 

Sheet Counter 2013 - Video Tutorial

Over the last few weeks there has been a bit of a rush on our Sheet Counter product which has been fantastic.

Because of this I thought it would be timely to do up a tutorial video on how it actually works.

Let us know if you find this useful or have any other suggestions how we can improve this simple but useful tool.

Independent Review of Family Browser

Don't just take our word for it.  Family Browser IS FANTASTIC and saves you a ton of time.

Adam Simmons from Gensler reviewed Family Browser at the latest Autodesk University 2012 in Las Vegas  recently and below is the screen cast from his presentation regarding Family Browser.

Thank you Adam for taking the time to try and review Family Browser.