As Revit users, we have all encountered situations where we can't quite do what we want. Revit will let something happen in one instance, but in another, it is like, "Yeah.. Nah".
Reference planes in families are an excellent example of this. You can create reference planes in 3d families, detail item families, and others. One notable exception to this is annotation families.
Well, sadly, there is no way to create them directly. Even with Dynamo/ the Revit API.
Also, you cannot copy the existing ones.
But…
But first, a little background. I used to work at an Architecture firm managing our template. While working in families, I noticed that a certain annotation family allowed for a bit of functionality I had never seen before.
This family was our view title family, of course (pictured below is the out-of-the-box one with the same “glitch” in it).
While working with the family, I noticed that a control copy was completely possible! 🤯
At first, I contemplated doing a save-as of this family to use as a new template for all annotations. But, I thought, “Why not try to copy and paste this into the other family that I wanted reference planes in? This other family was our title block family.
It also enabled the control copy functionality I wanted.
But why?
Well, with reference planes embedded in a title block family, you can have hover snaps now when placing a viewport!
Pretty neat, huh? The one downside to this method is that when you use an annotation family in this way in a “model space” view that is not a 1-to-1 scale, the reference planes can go wild. Resulting in the family getting scaled crazily. But it works great for title blocks or other families that need references.
If you want a video overview of this process, check out the video below!
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