A lot of people in the office have been encouraging us to convert most of our wall-based and ceiling-based families into "face-based" families beacause they can host onto a much wider range of surfaces.
My biggest issue with face-based families is their scheduling capabilities. Most wall-based and ceiling-based families are automatically referenced to whatever level their host is on, but face-based families do not do this. Instead, face-based families have an instance parameter called "Schedule Level" and it has to be manually assigned.
This is a huge problem when I have face-based families in model groups that are on multiple levels. I had a face-based urinal in a model group of a Men's Restroom, and that restroom was on 20 different levels. But when I assigned the "Schedule Level" of one of those fixtures to be on Level 1, all of those fixtures on every level scheduled to Level 1.
In order to resolve this, I converted the urinal back to a wall-based family. Afterwards, the urinals all scheduled to their correct levels.
Attached are the properties of the Face-Based Urinal versus its Wall-Based version. Notice that the Wall-Based urinal has a "Level" parameter in the Constraints catergory that automatically detects what level its host is on, but the Face-Based Urinal does not. Instead, it uses that "Schedule Level" parameter.
Has anyone figured out a way to schedule face-based families without using the "Schedule Level" parameter?
Hi Maciej,
Thanks for the response, this is very helpful. The problem, though, is that not all of our rooms and spaces have been properly assigned yet, and ultimately the scheduling of the plumbing fixtures are to verify if we meet minimum IBC requirements (which is calculated on a "per level" basis).
Attached is a copy of our typical plumbing fixture schedule. Essentially, we've used formulas from the IBC code to determine the minimum number of plumbing fixtures required on a particular floor (in this case, the Ground Floor) and then we show how many fixtures we currently have on that floor. The portion circled in red is what calculates the fixtures in the model. Before, when my plumbing fixtures were face-based, the Count was registering numbers in the hundreds because the Schedule Level on all the fixtures read "Ground Floor". Now that I've changed them to wall-based, I'm getting the correct count.
In order for your room suggestion to work, I'm going to have to start assigning rooms to spaces, and then come up with a formula that sums up all of the fixtures in all of the rooms on a level to get my Count. Do you have any suggestions?