Searching by Family Name/Type Name
Let’s go over how to search for content in UNIFI. To do this, click on the magnifying glass in the top left corner of the screen.
From here, you’ll see a search bar where you can type in your family name. In this case, let’s search for “30000 BTU”.
The platform defaults to the most-recently searched library; however, you can easily edit default search libraries and channel subscriptions by selecting the grey box to the left of the search bar and indicating where you’d like to search.
Channel subscriptions are sets of additional content provided through the UNIFI subscription outside of your company libraries.
UNIFI will be looking for content by its File Name, Family Type Name, Family Category, Material Class, and Tags. If you want to limit the fields it searches, then select Search Fields and uncheck the fields that you don’t want to search by.
You can also search for a specific parameter value or find all content where a specific parameter exists.
To do this, select Search Revit Parameters just below the search bar and enter the parameter values that you’d like to search.
Once you’ve confirmed the library selection and your search criteria, you can then press Enter to view your results or click on the magnifying glass to the right of the search bar.
If you click on the view icon in the upper right side of the screen, you can change how your search results appear. You can display your results in a Grid, Row, or Detail layout. In a Grid or Row display, you can view the metadata for your content results.
This gives you some additional info such as tags, which libraries it belongs to, and more. You’ll notice to the left of the image are stars. The stars represent the rating users have given this family. If you see a heart next to the photo, that means that you have indicated that this is a favorite content of yours to use (we’ll show you how to do this later). If you need more information on this family, you can click on the name to view more.
You can click on the tabs to view the different family types and their parameter data before bringing it into your project or even opening it in Revit.
The Actions tab in the upper right corner of the screen gives you a few additional options:
- Upload New Revision allows you to upload a new version of the file
- Download will download the family to your computer. Note: You are able to specify the specific version year
- Request Update takes you to the Content Request page where you can request that an updated version of this content be added
- Copy URL will give you a URL link to this specific family
- Load into Revit loads the content into your open Revit project where you can then place the item
- Open in Family Editor is only applicable with an editable Revit family. This command will allow you to edit the Revit family in the family editor.
- Capture Preview Image is similar to the Windows Snipping Tool, this allows you to take a screenshot to upload a custom image
- Upload Preview Image loads a saved image file to the content for a custom view
How to Load the Family into a Project
Once you’ve confirmed that this is the family that you want in this project, you can click on the thumbnail image. UNIFI then downloads that family from the cloud and loads it into your current Revit project.
It immediately puts you into the placement view in Revit to allow you to place the family into your project. You can use your cursor to select where you want that family in your project.
Once you are done, you can hit escape twice to return back to your search window.
Search by Tag Name
Another way to find content is to search by tag name. For example, let’s search for the Base Cabinets tag. To search by tag, you’ll want to type the name in the search bar. Let’s go ahead and search for “Base Cabinets.” In our example, our results are sorted by File Name as well as Tag Name. You’ll see that this base cabinet in the search results has the tags “Base Cabinets,” “Project X,” and “Solid Wood.”
From here, you can click on the Base Cabinets tag to find all content that share the same tag.
And now you can view all data with the “Base Cabinets” tag.
Using Filters
There’s also a helpful filter function that allows you to filter content by family category, star rating, and more.
In our next example, we are looking for Pipe Fittings.
To access Filters, click on the filter icon in the upper right side of the screen.
You can then type in additional search words in the Filter Name section. For example, you could type in “cross” and the results will narrow even more.
But what if that narrowed a little too much? You can type in an additional name (in this case, let’s type “elbow”) and now UNIFI will find content that has either cross OR elbow in it.
You can also filter by family category. You can click on Family Category and either scroll down to find the specific family category you want or even start typing what you’re looking for.
Let’s say, for instance, that you are looking for drafting views related to our piping search. You can begin typing “Drafting Views”
And now you’ve modified your search to look within only Drafting Views.
Let’s say that you only want to view content with four stars or more. You can select Any Stars under the Minimum Star Rating section and select 4+ stars.
Or if you only want to view content that you’ve favorited, you can select the “Favorites Only” box to view your favorite content within those search parameters. Favorites are viewable only to yourself as a user and are not seen by other users in your company.
Combining Search Techniques
You can also add additional search words within your Search Bar. If you type in “door” after “Base Cabinets,” it’ll search for content that contains both Base Cabinets and the word “door” in any of the search fields selected, such as file name, type name, tag, Revit category, and more.
Browsing For Content
Another way to find content is by using the Browse feature. To do this, click on the folder icon in the upper left-hand corner
From here, you can see different libraries that your company has uploaded content into. Let’s go to libraries and click on the “Architecture” library.
The main benefit of the browse feature is that content is automatically grouped by Revit category, so there are no subfolders to sift through.
As you probably noticed, we store multiple file types here, so if it’s a different file type other than a Revit family, we group them by file extension such as 3DS, Doc, DWG, or PDF.
Let’s take a closer look at the “Materials” category.
You’ll see here that the materials are grouped by material class.
Let’s click on Wood for our project.
There are quite a few materials in that class. You can use the star ratings and tags to help you determine if this is the material you want.
You can also click on the name of one item and view even more information. You can view material properties such as surface patterns and cut patterns, appearance, and even some physical and thermal properties.
To add this material to your project, you simply click on the thumbnail image. UNIFI will launch the Paint command for you in Revit to place the material you’ve chosen.
