Revit LT 2014 - Editing In-Place families has been removed!!!!

[john]

Okay, I think this is inappropriate.  I understand that LT versions cannot have all the functionality of full versions.  But lacking ability to do models in place?  That is taking it too far.  In-place models are BASIC FUNCTIONALITY of Revit and SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN REVIT LT.   Lets look at  a few things, just off the top of my head that Revit LT does not have, which, I agree, is fair, and makes sence:  

Rendering

Energy modeling

API Customization

Exporting to 3d files

Worksharing

These are all heavy hitters, and I was in a Revit environment, where worksharing was crucial to our office.  But that was a large office, with many employees, and we could afford to buy the complete Revit version, also in networking licenses, which further allowed us to spread the cost of the full version around the large office.

HOWEVER, now I am at a small firm, and I am the only one here using Revit.  I want to show everyone here the great opportunities and functionality there is with using revit.  However, what do you think these people are going to say when I go to model a countertop around a column enclosure, and I have to make a countertop family with a notch taken out of it?  No good.  This is just rediculous.

IN-PLACE FAMILIES are BASIC FUNCTIONALITY AND BELONGS AS PART OF REVIT LT.

CARL BASS, I KNOW YOU HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS.

 I AM ADVISING MY FIRM TO MIGRATE OUTSIDE OF AUTODESK, UNLESS THIS ACTION IS REVERSED.

[Alfredo_Medina]

Of course some features had to be missing out in a version of Revit that costs 1/4th or 1/5th of the full price. You still have the power of the Family Editor, with all its potential, at your hands. Model-in-place is not a great feature anyway. A series of model in place objects increase the size of your project more than the same objects made as an actual family, and a model-in-place object cannot be loaded into another project. Every time you need that countertop again, you would need to do it again, or do copy-paste from this project into another one. Is it not better to use the family editor instead? On top of that, it was clear from the beginning that Revit LT did not include that feature. It's not like they removed it afterwards without notice.

[Alfredo_Medina]

By the way, the list of things not included is much longer than you think. And it is good to know it, to avoid more surprises:

• Worksharing.
• Parts & Assemblies.
• Stair by Sketch.
• Beam System
  
• Truss & Reinforcement.
• Conceptual massing & Adaptive components.
• In-place modeling
• Rendering and the Raytrace and Realistic View Styles. (Cloud rendering still available.)
• Interference Checking and Copy/Monitor.
• Copy/Paste Elements from Links.
• Customizing the Visibility of Linked Models.
• Point Cloud Imports.
• No Decals.
• No export of SAT, ADSK, gbXML, IFC, ODBC, or Family Types.
• Autodesk 360 Energy Analysis for Autodesk Revit.
• No Third party Applications.

[damo3]

There was a time when AutoCAD was in a similar situation. Pre 2008, AutoCAD LT was good for students and thats's about it. Even then, some missing commands made it difficult. 

If memory serves correctly, 2010 came along with sheet set manager in it, now things got interesting. Now with AutoCAD LT 2014.... I reckon its a hard sell to go full version in many offices. We had 12 full licences, when our office grew to 20 for a few years, we used LT licences. no problems. (except I admit no profiles can be a pain). 

Unless your company has a number of Autolisp routines running your standards, AutoCAD LT is a VERY viable solution these days. 

So, might not be any consolation, but given time, Revit will be the same. Revit LT was designed to give small business & sole traders a whiff of what was going on, without emptying their pockets. It's in their interests to not let small business get left too far behind. Hence the more affordable option. 

As for your sample problem, i would have to agree with the previous post... I rarely use in-place families, they just bloat things and you can't pull them up from the component list or new projects. in fact, the project I am working on now, I haven't used any yet. Make a good family, with suitable parameters and it should cater for your needs better than an in-place ever could. In-fact, I think that limitation forces good practice and very valuable family training.  my two cents worth. 

[jsbrunt]

In place families are very useful. And do things a parametric family would be overly complicated to achieve. The example of a counter-top is a prime one. In many situations a parametric counter-top does not even come close to the the bevels, angles and curves needed to represent a real counter-top situation.

[john]

Thank you jsbrunt.

When I wrote that original message, as you can see, I was frustrated, and for that, to the autodesk community, I apologize.  To explain, I had upgraded a project from LT 2013 to LT 2014.  I had done about a half day's worth of work, only to find out that they removed the functionality of editing in-place families.  I was not going to proceed with finishing my project without this functionality, so I abandoned the file and started over from the beginning of the day.  Thankfully, I archived the file prior to upgrading to 2014!

Note:  in LT 2013 you can edit in-place families.  You cannot create them however.  But this is okay, just so long as you have a project with an in-place familiy created by a full version, then you can open the project in LT 2013 and edit the in-place, change family type, copy and paste the families as many times as you want, and copy them between projects, in order to get an in-place family in there to edit/ modify.

I agree whole-heatedly about the need for in-place families.  There is a time and place for 75% to 95%,  or possibly even more, like 99%, of the content to be created with parametric families, etc.  Depending on the complexity of a project, there are just some very specific situations, and very fundamental situations, which merit the use of in-place families. 

To reiterate what I said above, if you are building a box, everything is square, the ceilings are flat, and you have painted walls, vinyl base, and carpet tile, flush wood doors in hollow metal frames, blah blah blah, then yes you can have a project that is 100% parametric families.  This is an exaggeration, of course.  But even in that situation, I would be willing to make a bet that you might find a situation where an in-place family would be appropriate.

I guess i could upload a jpeg of where I typically would use an in-place familiy, but do I really need to?  A perfect example:  There is a restaurant with several bars, all are custom.  I am building the bars as in-place families.  There would never be a situation where I would put any of this in parametric form.  The only parameters that I use are material parameters for different materials, which can be done with in-place families just fine.  But nothing else in the bar really has a variable parameter.  This is a perfect solution where an in-place familiy should be used.

I agree with those that say that because it is the LT version then there should be limited functionality, however I disagree with them for saying that in-place families should be excluded from the LT version, and to just simply leave it at that.  I feel that this is a question of how the software is intended to be used, practically.  They removed a bunch of stuff, such as worksharing, rendering, add-ons,  among other things that I might not even "realize" , or know about.

It does not make sense to me why this function has been removed for the LT version.  It is clear that this was a major item on the agenda of the programmers at Autodesk, coming straight down from management above.  "how can we limit further the LT version for the small firms, the small guys, to limit their capability."  For a firm to buy a full license it costs nearly 10 grand, including network license, subscription, etc..  This is impossible for a small firm to outlay this much.  For the small guy, all we can offord is the LT version for the time being.  Perhaps I will find a project where it would merit outlaying 10 grand for a piece of software, but this is not happening at the moment.  Autodesk is just pushing it too far.  I realize they need to make moeny, they gotta pay the programmers, and the CEO's, pensions, parachutes and all. I understand, but sometimes, they just go a little to far, my opinion.

I am not upgrading to the LT 2014 im going to ride out the 2013 version.

[damo3]

This is an interesting topic actually, and in both comments I feel there is a simple question to be asked. Why do families have to be parametric? 

The bar example is a good one actually. An in place family would do the job. But I would argue a generic model family would do it better. Here are my reasons for why I think so: 

• What better environement to model something such as a bar than the isolated environment of a generic model family. no need to hide the building components surrounding it, just you and your bar. 
• Reference planes & reference lines helping in this isolated environement work a treat. not to mention elevation views already setup to help you model away! You can even lay down a few setout dimensions if you dare. 
• Materials you say! fantastic, why deal with an in place family with varying materials that can only be changed in edit mode, when you have the luxury of instance parameters. If this parametric behaviour is too complex, then don't use it. editing the family to change the materials isn't that far removed from editing in-place really. (unless your a user latching on to seconds in time saving).

The best example of in-place family use I have heard to date is ramps, stair treads and floors with varying slopes (I won't go into the details). 

Another 2 cents... 

[Alfredo_Medina]

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@jsbrunt wrote:

In place families are very useful. And do things a parametric family would be overly complicated to achieve. The example of a counter-top is a prime one. In many situations a parametric counter-top does not even come close to the the bevels, angles and curves needed to represent a real counter-top situation.

---

Can you provide an example that explains in what cases an in-place family can "do things a parametric family would be overly complicated to achieve"? As far as I understand, the main difference is that when you create a model in-place you are making an object inside the project, as opposed to doing it in the family editor, but it's not that you have more tools in one place than the other.

There seems to a confusion in this thread about model in-place and family editor, thinking that being "parametric" is the difference. That is not true. You can make a parametric model in-place inside the project, and you can make a non parametric object in the family editor.

The model in-place has the disadvantage that it increases the size of the project in a greater deal than the same object loaded as a family. This becomes  critical if you copy a model in-place several times in the project. The other disadavantage is that you have to deal with all the objects of the project while you are doing the model in-place, instead of working on the isolated space of the family editor.

[john]

Example:  Back bar situation.  See image. 

We had a tight space and the staircase had to cut into the space.  The millwork is created with a sweep, which follows the profile of the underside of ceiling, above.  The ceiling is a single layer of drywall, sloped, placed at the underside of the staircase.  The profile of the back bar follows the slope of the ceiling. This angle would, in my mind, be difficult to reporduce in the isolated family environment (however not impossible I suppose).  Also visible in this view there is an opening beyond which follows the slope of the staircase.  This trim is a sweep created in place, using the same profile as the standard door casing.

My opinion is that creating a separate family for each of these unique instances is a little cumbersome, difficult to match the exact slope of the staircase and ceiling, the slope of which is usually not a nice whole number.

Anyway, I do understand now that creating the separate family is a little better.  I didnt know that the in-place families greatly increased project size over having a multitude of separate families for each instance.

Another example to follow.

[krzystoff]

I think, from Autodesk's sales\marketing position, Revit LT is a budget program for businesses just starting out, not really for 'small businesses'. For the price, LT is brilliant, in spite of its shortcomings.  If it no longer meets your needs, then you clearly should buy the full Revit suite.

They don't want you to have every feature of the full version, or you would have no reason to upgrade to it.  I wonder what other popular but non-essential features would you leave out, instead of in-place families?  Personally, I have used almost conceivable type of in-place family and after years of using Revit, at this point in time I wish IPF wasn't in the full version -- they are a poor drafting tool like masking regions and the paint brush; a marginally quicker but vastly dirtier alternative to using the family editor.  As for that, you don't need to make everything parametric, usually just making your custom\one-off families resizeable length\width so they can be quickly adjusted from within the project; beyond the (Menu>New>Family... LoadIntoProject) the process of creating an IPF is almost identical to making a new family.

Revit 2015\LT 2015 should be out in a couple of months, so perhaps some new features of those will entice you to upgrade.

[bitter]

Can somebody let me know if anybody has experienced problems inserting dwg file to trace over into revit lt 2015 ?
I can't do that... It crashes ...

[bitter]

It is a free trial version ...trying to convince my boss to go from autocad lt to revit lt
Could I have installed a bad copy?

[amy.pennington]

Realistic and other view styles are still available, but I can only access them through the properties palette | graphic display options. They don't pop up when I hit the icon in the ribbon bar at the bottom. Really???

[sherrishorten]

the generic models are a great way to test design ideas. 

The family editor is too time consuming and too cookie cutter.

Revit is becoming an ever increasingly pragmatic design tool- not really serving design industry very well.