Maintain Annotation Orientation in all family catagories
I´m not sure if I requested this before.
But could you add Maintain Annotation Orientation to all Family Categories? The workaround described in a previous post is not working properly and it gives us an bunch of challenges.
Sometimes we want to show a symbol on a light fixture family, etc. Allow the option for an annotation in all families. Nested workarounds cause other issues within the projects.
This is one of my most desired things in Revit! I get around the issue by using floor hosted families instead of wall hosted families and on sloped ceilings I use reference lines so it is not attached to the sloped ceiling so that my generic annotation symbols work. Please add maintain annotation orientation for all categories.
It's still not possible to display an annotation within a family in both horizontal and vertical orientation of the family within a project on a Floor Plan.
Lighting Fixtures and Electrical Equipment, I am looking at you!
Anonymous
08-31-201708:29 AM
08-31-201708:29 AM
Allow Mechanical wall hosted families to host to linked Architectural walls. Or add maintain annotation orientation to mechanical face hosted families.
This will allow to nest annotation symbols to mechanical families in an easy way for any wall devices.
But there's still no solution for this? Recently we had a project where we have a lot of sloped floors. When placing lichting fixtures on the sloped floors the annotations of the lighting fixtures wont get displayed in the floorplan, because they are not parallel to the floorplan. In this case we had to separatly tag all the fixtures again.
Also, maintain annotation does not work when your family is nested inside another family. For example: we have maintain annotation on for our electrical fixtures. If we nest the electrical fixture inside a Workstation family, the annotation is no longer showing up. If we mount it in exactly the same location but inside the project (instead of nesting it inside the family) it works fine.
Some family categories have an option to show annotation regardless of the hosting orientation, some don't. It would be very helpful if they all did. There are crazy workarounds to show some annotation, but they are convoluted and take extra time and bring in extra content into a project that can cause confusion and extra objects within schedules, etc.
This was already an Idea, multiple in fact, but they were combined and then archived for lack of support. I still feel that it would be a welcomed addition and I don't really feel like it would be that difficult of a thing to implement.
I understand the temptation of reposting the same idea, but it's probably a better approach to rally support in other ways. We might end up with a never-ending reposting battle otherwise
Also, there's a bug right now with maintain annotation: it does not work when you nest your family inside another family (shared). Very problematic for things like electrical outlets that are often nested inside something else (a workstation for example).
Gah! The archived messages are still there from @sasha.crotty.
Sasha, any way we can clean up the original post and also remove the archived messages? It made me think it was archived and I'm sure it also probably deters folks from "wasting" their votes on an old/archived Idea.
I'm fine with removing this post or merging them again, whatever needs to happen. This is just something that is always reappearing and just a nuisance that shouldn't exist in the software.
I think I'm running up against this same issue--seems like the electrical fixtures (light switches in my case) simply do not have that check box, even now, in Revit 2020?!? Pretty annoying after I built a fancy highly parametric light switch family, only to have the three-way/ four-way/ motion-sensor labels be upside-down...
@rhughes, typically you'd want to make a switch with the Lighting Devices category, which does actually support the Maintain Annotation Orientation checkbox. You should be able to just change the category of your family, then toggle that checkbox on. Hopefully that resolves your upside down issue.
Creating a shared nested family is not the best way around this. Mainly because some of the users inserts this nested family in the projects. And the nested family appears in the quantity schedules fore the contractor. Ist causing a lot of troubles.
@ViviNyehuusAndersen Could you explain a little bit on why "creating a shared nested family is not the bets way around this"? and do you mean you would like to support the "Maintain Annotation Orientation" on additional categories, and you may don't use the annotation in nest family? and what categories do you use most for "Maintain Annotation Orientation"? Thanks again!
I just don't see why it is necessary to do the workaround for showing an annotation for an object. I can give you a couple of examples where we are forced to use a nested shared component and how it causes issues/ more work.
For our Thermostats, Humanists, mechanical sensors, etc. we use the Mechanical Equipment category. But because the mech equipment category doesn't have the maintain anno orientation option, we have to use the workaround to show the annotation symbol for them.
As mentioned before, ceiling based items like light fixtures or sprinklers might be on a sloped ceiling. The annotation symbol doesn't show up and instead the 3D element shows. This can become confusing and cause coordination issues.
For site lighting or any exterior lighting that we might want to show on a site plan, we are also forced to use this workaround. Site plans are typically scaled down much more than 1/8" = 1'-0", which means any dimensionally accurate light fixture would be way too tiny on that plan. So we use the workaround to make sure they show up and are visible at smaller scales.
Because the workaround requires the nested families to be Shared, those families then appear in the projects/templates. I try and name them in a way that they will not be used for actual design, but sometimes they do get used and confusion ensues.
Also, because the nested elements are also being placed as a shared component, they show up in schedules. For all families that I create this way, I apply a specific value within their Type Comments, then I setup our standard schedules to filter that out. There are times where folks will remove these filters and then have issues with the extra line items within their schedules.
Finally, with electrical items, mostly lighting fixtures, it can be difficult to connect and power the proper fixture when you are also dealing with the nested shared items.
All of this work could easily be avoided if we could just toggle on the box for Maintain Annotation Orientation for any/all categories. Let us make the decision if something should show as it's annotation or not. We're big boys and girls, we can deal with the consequences
Come on Autodesk! Why do your customers need to beg for such a straightforward improvement that would help thousands of customers? Its going on for !5! years! Nonsense
Hi all - thanks for your input... we're marking this request as 'Accepted'. Feel free to request access to our preview release to see additional info and track progress of this request. We'd love to get your input on the in-progress work. Just drop an email to revit dot preview dot access at autodesk dot com
I am testing this feature in 2022, but the generic annotation still it's not showing after setting its parameter "Maintain Annotation Orientation" to Yes, for instances of the family placed on a slanted ceiling.
Hi, @gsucci, could you elaborate more how you created the model? I'm not seeing the same issue on lighting fixture on Revit 2022, maybe some details are missing.
@gsucci Thanks for sharing. I looked into the sample and have no idea yet why this family is special. I'd explore more.
In the improvement we have extended the existing behavior into additional categories. You may try out some other lighting fixture families and see if those work. In my experience, the face-based and workplane-based families work well.
@gsucci Hi, just some "new" information I found in Revit Help, it looks only the "face hosted-based, and for work plane-based families with Always Vertical disabled" are supported. So ceiling based family is out of scope.