Nested Families

[kate_vanhout]

I am trying to create an Island family with cabinet components nested into the island family.  I have included both a 3D view of what I want the island to look like and a floor plan of what I have right now.  I want to be able to adjust the size of each of these cabinets with a parameter.  But I am not sure how to get them to stay lined up like they are right now.  If I change the size to a larger size the center cabinet overlaps the cabinet on the right.  but if I add another reference plane to the right side of the center cabinet, when I try to adjust the size I get an error message saying "Constraints are not satisfied".  What am I doing wrong? Or how would I go about doing this?

[alan.quinn]

See the attached example. This is one frame work option for doing what you want. Perhaps other users may want to chime in with other ideas. Load the family in a project, click on it, click Edit-Type in the Properties Box and change the Cabinet Width. 

Hope this helps and thanks for posting.

[kate_vanhout]

I tried what you suggested but this did not work either. I have attached a few pictures to help show what is happening.  The first image is a picture of what happens when I try to lock the front of the middle cabinet with the reference line.  I was able to lock the sides of all the cabinets and the front of both side cabinets, but it will not allow me to lock the front of the middle one.  The second picture is an image of what happens if that middle cabinet is not locked to that reference line.  Am I doing something wrong?

[alan.quinn · Accepted solution]

Go to this link for file http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11938886/Cabinet_Unit.rfa.rvt. I had a few Detail Line in the family while I was testing it. My guess is you were locking an aligning to them and that was causing the error. In any event I completed the family. Let me know if you have any questions on what I did and how/why it works etc.

Thank you,

[kate_vanhout]

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me! 🙂 I really appreciate it.  But I am afraid the dropbox link did not work... would you be able to send it again?

[alan.quinn]

Hmmm. Cut and paste the link into IE and it should work. I tested and got it, if it fails again I get to you via another method.

[kate_vanhout]

It does not work in IE either, I also tried on another computer as well and that did not work either.

[rosskirby]

There are two problems with the link.  First, there is an extra period at the end.  If you delete that from the address, then the link works, and the file downloads.  Second, the file has a double-extension.  It shouldn't be named xxx.rfa.rvt.  It should only be one or the other.  Perhaps, Alan, you can re-save as one or the other and then reload to dropbox?

[kate_vanhout]

Deleting the period actually work. Thank you!