Structural Beam Sub-Category

[djn]

Does anyone know how a structural steel beam gets it's Sub-category assign to the member? Since in the family the steel beam is set to none, it seems to gets the Sub-category assigned from the usage that you pick, Girder, Joist etc. Is this true, and if so why when you add a sub-category it doesn't show up in the usage list? And can you have this ability with other elements for instance concrete beams., because they seem to behave differently.

Concrete beams seem to be set up the same way in the family, with the sub-category set to none, but it doesn't matter what usage you pick they all fall under the structural category with no sub-category assigned.

[bog]

It is now 2012-13 and I think this is still an issue. I have tried and failed to modify structural usage, not for reasons of analysis but just so that I can display the single-line representation different for each type of member (wood beams, steel beams, concrete beams, ect.) This may be a deal breaker for our small firm as I need to re-create our legacy drawing styles and this is not possible at the moment in Revit as far as I can tell.

[bjur]

In the beam family there are a couple things you can try.  The first is modifying the visibility settings of the beam extrusion.  See attached picture.  You can tell revit to not show parts of the family depending on what detail level is shown.  The other idea has to do with telling revit who will draw the Symbolic Representation.  See picture.  You can set this to "From Family" and draw your own stick respresentation for the beam.  Maybe post a picture of what you are trying to accomplish.

[kirbybeegles4894]

Great suggestion.

We also got around this issue by setting up a filter in our plan views that shows steel beams on a heavier lineweight by default.  I believe we had to have multiple filters, for WF, HSS, C, etc. since we set it to grab everything of a specific family name.