Adding a roof to a Family

[heiserdrafting]

Hello everyone,

Pretty new to Revit, with only a couple months experience.

What I am trying to do is, make a new family with a roof in it. I have a shed roof over the garage doors. I would LOVE to stop making this 27 more times (Duplex house with 9 elevations).

Here is a picture of what I am doing, any help would be appreciated. thanks!

[Redrunner92 · Accepted solution]

When you say you are making "a new family", do you mean you are making a new project? Roofs belong to a family category called System Families and as such cannot be part of a custom family (meaning a family created in the Family Editor). Other System Families are walls, floors, and ceilings; you won't find options for these in the New > Family menu nor the categories in the Family Editor.

As for repeating roof assemblies (by "roof assembly" I simply mean all the parts to your roof such as the supports and decorations, not just the Roof element itself), you could try making one roof assembly a Group, then copy that Group across as many times as you need it. Groups are nice for such a situation as this because you only need to create the modeled elements once, then Group the pieces together and they act as a single element when copied to other locations. Also, when you edit one instance of a Group, all instances change to match the edited instance. Try this out, I am confident it will lighten your load. Let me know if this isn't what you are looking to do.

[heiserdrafting]

Its not what I wanted to hear, but it is the answer I thought.

Thanks for replying! 

[Redrunner92]

Out of curiosity, what is the answer you desired to receive?

[heiserdrafting]

I wanted to hear a way to attach a roof to a new family. This same roof system will be going into multiply homes and elevations and it would have been easier to just pop it in. My old company used a program that would allow it, so I was hoping. 

[Redrunner92]

If the roof part of the assembly does not need to have the family category of "Roof" (since like I said, Roofs cannot be in custom families), then you certainly can do this. You could make a family (whether line-based or non-line-based, hoted or non-hosted) with all the parts you want, then you could indeed "just pop it in." You will need to learn about creating Revit families since there will be several constraints and locked alignments which will need to happen, but that is the topic of another discussion. In short, yes you can create such a family. Note that the roof part of the family would not appear in any Roof schedules since it would not have the category "Roof."

What is the name of the program your old company used? I'm curious now.

[heiserdrafting]

the program was call Vertex BD.

A lot like Rivet. With a add on you could have different options for elevations, rooms, etc. Collect BIM and roll it out to another program through XML files. Really neat program... not very many people have heard of it.

[Redrunner92]

It looks interesting, I might learn more about it. Thanks for elaborating on what you were looking for.

[Anonymous]

really interesting, but

[admin6GQHC]

Hi there, hijacking this old thread to ask a related question: is there a way I can assign a U-value/other thermal properties to a "grouped" roof like you've mentioned?

I've used structural beam systems to create a rafter-and-batten roof, with the associated rafter insulation, membranes, tile finish etc. I've grouped them all which allows me to duplicate it and then edit the boundaries to fit any size of roof, however we want to use Revit to analyze thermal performance of the buildings we design. So I'm wondering if there is a way to assign 'user defined' thermal properties to a given m2 of surface of a grouped roof buildup?

Thanks in advance.

[Redrunner92]

I advise creating and using a Shared Parameter for the U-Value since I'm thinking you'll want the thermal properties shown in a Schedule and possibly in Tags.

That said, since Roofs is a System Family Category, you cannot use a formula to help you automatically fill in a Shared Parameter's value based on the built-in Area parameter of Roofs. As such I would not use Shared Parameters for thermal properties which use the Area parameter, or any parameter for that matter, as part of calculating their values. Instead, if you only need to show the other thermal properties on a schedule, I advise you use a Calculated Value. This is not a parameter which would show up in the Properties Palette of any one Roof instance, but it would be visible in a schedule and would allow you to calculate thermal properties using the Area built-in parameter.

[studentatc02]

I May Have a Solution For You, I Have Created a Building as just a test room But Liked it so I selected entire building added to clipboard, with a family template open, I then placed the entire building in my project to use as a cabin and did alterations to it, once set on elevation or level. now I can load in to any project I want because it is now a family component. Hope this may help.