Sorry if I simplify too much, but I hope that you get the main point. And you have some variants of the above in Vectorworks, Bentley and BricsCAD, to name a few.There is no reference to an outside file, but you can replace the embedded definition from an external file. Components in SketchUp react similar to AutoCAD blocks: they can be created and embedded directly inside a project file or stored as external SKP files.In AutoCAD, you have Blocks, which can be stored as DWG files, but are in fact inserted and embedded in your main DWG file.The distinction between Instance and Type parameters and the availability of a Family Type is specific to Revit.

You also have in-place families, which also remain inside the project file. In Revit, you have the loadable families, which are stored as an RFA file and the System families, which are embedded directly inside a Revit Project.It is possible to also embed a file directly inside the project, but this is mostly useful for project-specific objects. ARCHICAD projects only reference these objects and maintain the instance values in the project file. In ARCHICAD, objects are programmed in the GDL-language and stored as a GSM-file.Different software - different approachesīut first, take a quick look at how different BIM software applications use slightly different approaches for object definitions: In BIM object libraries, individual object definition files are used and imported whenever a specific object or element needs to be inserted (the object instance). In many projects and standardisation workgroups, we discuss object naming.

Archicad bim object full 2019