Cadpro’s Revit family service advances aquaBUBBLER to a new tier of business

The Challenge

aquaBUBBLER designs and manufactures hydration stations, including modern drinking fountains and a water-bottle refill station. These Australian-made fountains are used in schools, sports facilities, workplaces and public amenities across New Zealand and Australia to keep people hydrated and reduce the need for disposable plastic water bottles.

The product range is regularly specified by architects, but with eight different models – each with multiple configurations – the aquaBUBBLER 2D CAD files were making it complicated for project documentation.

‘Architects are time-poor,’ says Brendan Lynch, founder and director of aquaBUBBLER. ‘When specifying and incorporating an architectural product into their projects, the process needs to be as simple as possible. If they're using software, everything must be logical and easy to manipulate.’

‘We needed a set of Revit families to make it easy for specifiers to pick up a 3D object and drop it into the BIM model, all set up with the right configuration and features.’

Project goals

With Autodesk Revit, the industry-standard BIM software, aquaBUBBLER needed to create a Revit family for their flagship products. ‘Architects kept asking for them, so we consulted with our CAD provider, and he recommended Cadpro. Creating Revit families is a highly specialised skill, and they were able to build the kind of files we required.’

‘Revit families are intelligent 3D objects containing all of the product data,’ says Cadpro's senior technical consultant, Gary Page. ‘Different users will have different requirements for the Revit files – understanding these requirements helps us incorporate the right information from the get-go, ensuring families are as useful as possible in a project.’

Autodesk Revit families also offered an excellent marketing tool for aquaBUBBLER. Not only do they streamline the design and documentation processes, but the detailed digital representations also showcase the quality and functionality of the products.

Solution

Cadpro is expert at creating custom family content for Revit, using a product's CAD drawings and specification information to create the 3D models. These files contain all the necessary data a customer may require when specifying the product, as well as interactive components that allow feedback from those who download the file.

‘The first thing Cadpro did was ask us about our needs and the requirements of the target audience – the architects,’ says Brendan. ‘For example, the files must be easy to email and simple to use. If they're too cumbersome or hard to download, architects will simply move on to another product, or worse, spend their time creating the 3D models.’

‘It can be tempting to over-model objects in Revit, but it's important to remember that the more detail you create, the bigger the file becomes,’ notes Gary. ‘It's unrealistic to tailor family files to each user's individual needs; it is important to decide what information you think most customers will require.’

For aquaBUBBLER, working with Cadpro involved a high level of engagement, from analysing the products to be modelled, to optimising the finished files based on regular consultation.

‘Cadpro looked at our products really closely and contributed to making the Revit files better than we could have,’ says Brendan. ‘The feedback from Gary and the team was “try this, add this, take this out”. They took a duty of care to make sure everything was right.’ Because Revit content is used to promote products, gain visibility and establish ease of doing business in the market, files must embody simplicity and ease of use.