u/Drift_Kraken8

I left my previous engineering firm about eight months ago for a much better position. While I was there I basically built their entire mechanical Revit library from scratch because their standards were a complete mess. I spent hundreds of hours of my own time over three years perfecting these families and creating custom scripts to automate the workflow. When I left I kept a copy of my personal library which is pretty standard in the industry since most of the complex logic was my own intellectual property developed outside of billable hours. Yesterday a guy I used to work with reached out to me. We werent exactly friends but we got along okay. He moved to a different startup firm last month and is now realizing he has zero assets to work with. He basically asked if I could "zip up" my main templates and families and send them over so he doesnt have to reinvent the wheel. He even framed it as a favor between professionals and hinted that he is under a lot of pressure from his new boss to deliver results quickly.

The thing is these assets are my competitive advantage. I spent years of trial and error getting the pipe tagging and pressure loss calculations to work perfectly without glitches. Sending them to him feels like I am just giving away thousands of dollars worth of specialized labor for free. I also know for a fact that his new firm would be using my work to win contracts and make money while I get absolutely nothing out of it. I told him I would have to check if I am even allowed to share them due to my current contract which was a bit of a lie just to buy time. He replied saying "come on man we used these for years together it is not a big deal" and now I feel like the jerk for gatekeeping something that would help a "colleague" in a tough spot. I am tempted to just tell him that if his firm wants professional grade BIM assets they should hire a consultant or pay me for a license but I know that will burn the bridge completely. My wife thinks I should just send a "lite" version to be nice but honestly even the lite version is better than anything he can build himself in a month. So would I be the asshole if I just tell him no and let him figure it out on his own?

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