"The market demands Revit families, and preferably up-to-date. "
VSH Fittings was founded in 1931 and is part of the Aalberts Industries Group. VSH is a leading Dutch manufacturer of piping systems and fittings. The solutions can be found in residential and non-residential construction, fire protection, shipbuilding and industry. With the widest range of products in the market, VSH offers real choice.
At VSH, ease of installation, security and top quality are paramount. VSH manufactures complete product ranges in high-quality production processes and meets the highest criteria. The products are provided with all important national and international quality marks and quality marks. VSH wants to optimally connect to the daily way of working. In everything VSH does. VSH wants to continuously innovate and offer the right solutions time and time again.
Up-to-date Revit families are essential
VSH Fittings, like other parties in the construction chain, has to deal with BIM. In this case, it concerns installers and installation consultants who want to use VSH Fittings' products in their BIM model. Up-to-date Revit families of the product range are therefore essential.
In practice, this is not so easy. Thanks to developments such as the Uniform Object Library (UNETO-VNI) and Cadac Group's Content LAB, VSH Fittings now has full control over its available product information.
Thanks to the Content LAB, we can better manage, maintain and keep our product information up-to-date. As a result, Revit modellers are more likely to use our products than those of the competitor. The alternative to expensive content websites and product libraries.
Casper van Zoelen
Head of product marketing - VSH Fittings
Making information available
According to the BIM concept, information is added to the BIM model earlier and earlier in the design process. In order to connect to this development and to support modellers in this, it is important for us to make our product information or 2D and 3D models available, says Caspar van Zoelen, Head of Product Marketing at VSH Fittings.
The market demands Revit families
"The market demands Revit families, and preferably up-to-date. The problem we encounter is that we market several thousand products in many forms, article numbers, assortments and different languages. Correct and up-to-date sizing is very important to our customers. Product changes affect the installation and therefore also directly affect the drawings. Especially in projects where prefab construction is carried out, correct dimensions are essential, to the millimetre. Keeping, maintaining and localising all this information manageable for different regions and also keeping it up-to-date after every change is therefore very complex."
Connection of product information to ETIM
In the past, the development department of VSH Fittings created CAD files of its products and published them on its website. "This took up a lot of internal resources. Especially when the demand for 2D, and later 3D models increased. In the search for a solution for managing and controlling our product information, we quickly came across ETIM, the standard article classification for the installation sector.
We then redefined all our product information based on ETIM and provided additional parameters where necessary. A relatively simple product is provided with more information than may seem necessary. However, in Revit and the further BIM process, this offers many advantages. Later, our added parameters turned out to fit seamlessly with the concept of the ETIM-based Uniform Objects Library, the new open BIM standard."
Open BIM standard
The initiative of the Uniform Objects Library (UOB) arose from the wish of UNETO-VNI, the interest group of installers. The Uniform Object Library was developed to offer product content and to take product libraries away from the software houses and back to the manufacturers, so that they are responsible for both the physical and the virtual product. The CAD models are not drawn for this, but the products are provided with the correct parameters so that smart software can generate models of them itself and platform-independently.
"The various content websites are a major challenge for us in terms of cost and time. We as a manufacturer pay for the membership, but often customers do too. If you only have one product or a few items, those costs are often manageable, but we have 8,000 products and about 30 product lines. An additional disadvantage is that content more or less obliges websites to purchase their own Revit plug-in from them, so that the operation is optimal. The so-called vendor lock-in."
At the touch of a button
Because VSH Fittings has enriched its product information with the correct (ETIM) parameters and is connected to the UOB, it was relatively easy to deploy the Content LAB. Caspar: "With the Content LAB (Library Access Button) we can offer our customers a button in Revit, which gives modellers direct access to our current product models and can place them directly in the Revit model."
The benefits
In practice, the Content LAB is very well received. "The button works on any Revit version (no vendor lock-in), products are easily interchangeable in the model, is quick to use (one push of a button) and offers clear insight into the product and product features. And perhaps most importantly, the user can be sure that he always has the latest information at his disposal.
Competitive advantage
The button is not only extremely useful for modellers, but also offers VSH many advantages. "There is a considerably greater chance that our products will actually be chosen when developing the model. In practice, we see that modellers already make the choice for a product the moment they start drawing. In addition, we no longer spend time drawing models, because they are generated from the (ETIM) information we provide. Changing product data is also much easier now. All that needs to be done is adjust a number of parameters, and the Content LAB takes care of the rest."
"We want to make the product portfolio accessible to more users"
Now that the Content LAB is running satisfactorily after the pilot phase, we want to make the product portfolio accessible to more users, further expand and localise it for our sister companies throughout Europe. They too are increasingly seeing the benefits of this system to better manage, maintain and keep product information up-to-date."