Can you change the global visibility of a nested detail item?

[kevincoffey]

All,

I am currently trying to achieve the following:

• I have a detail family of a red dot (filled region)
• This is nested into a door family
• The door family is placed in the main model

What I want is for two plan views in the main model:

• The regular plan with no dots
• Another 'diagram' plan with the dots showing

I have tried using subcategories - this works perfectly with annotation items (e.g. lines) but doesn't work with detail families.

I have tried using yes/no parameters but this would require turning them on/off on an instance basis across each view and using a view filter.

Am I missing something or is this just a limitation?

Thanks!

[Keith_Wilkinson]

I think this is just a limitation I'm afraid.  

I've wanted to do something similar for fire rating of doors (this might be what you are doing as well possibly?) but ultimately end up resorting to tags which would be fine if I could change the colour of a filed region based on the value of the tag.... 

[kevincoffey]

Thanks, Keith. I had a feeling this was the case after going through many threads.

I was thinking a few different tags - acoustic rating, fire rating, etc. - could all be controlled in this manner!

[Keith_Wilkinson]

I wouldn't be too quick to accept this as the solution - there are a lot of great minds on here who may have a different approach that might work... this is just my own experience.

it might be useful though if there was an option to have view specific content in a family - like a built in tag if you like but it would probably get too complicated and TBH I've no idea how it would really work... 

[kevincoffey]

I'll give you just the kudos for now so, Keith! I like to post these questions just in case somebody is trying to complete the same thing and arrives at the same result.

[Keith_Wilkinson]

haha, gladly accepted. 😉

[ToanDN]

Is there a reason you choosing Detail instead of Annotation family for the dot?

[ToanDN]

As a workaround, you can take advantage of the Family element's Detail Levels function.  The attached under the assumption that the diargrams in Coarse detail level.  If other floor plans can be in Medium or Fine, there is no further action needed.  If they need to be in Coarse, then you can override the Door category to be Medium or Fine and the dots shall dissapear.  There maybe some tweaks needed to get your door graphics look right across the detail levels but I think they can be done.

[kevincoffey]

Is there a reason you choosing Detail instead of Annotation family for the dot?
Not really - I was just trying out the concept first. Annotation family would work as well - though I would have to check my drawings to see if the scale could possibly obscure any information.

I tried the coarse/medium/fine and that worked! So, technically it would be possible to have three different versions of a door - coarse for fire, medium for acoustics and fine for regular. I feel that it isn't a very expandable idea but would be useful for a small project that I was working on by myself.

I also tried using annotation lines with the doors. This technically works by bunching lots of lines together so that they pretend to be a hatch. The only problem is that the result would be a single colour in the final model - i.e. you couldn't use if for fire doors colouring. If you were willing to move away from a 'colour approach' to a 'symbol approach', you might be able to find a way to incorporate this into a model.

Thanks for the help!

[kevincoffey]

Okay! I managed to get something working:

• I made a thin circular extrusion in the family
• Set the extrusion to a subcategory of doors, e.g. 'Fire diagram'
• Made a new material called FD30 and set to solid red hatch
• Set the thin circular extrusion to this new material.

Import into the main model and everything appears to work when you switch the Visibility Graphics.

I duplicated the above for another door and just used a different material. It seemed to work out!

What I don't like about the above it the needless creation of actual geometry.

[ToanDN]

No I did not mean using the symbolic lines (which you regarded as annotation lines) within the door family, but nesting a Generic Annotation family in.  You can create  a solid filled region in the Generic Annotation family, change it to a subcategory, say DoorDot, and nest it in your Door family.  Then, you can turn on/off the DoorDot annotation category using Visibility settings.

I think the extrusion or nested detail family can work, but Annotation family is more appropriate if your purpose is to furnish diagram drawings.

[kevincoffey]

Hi ToanDN,

I thought I had tried the method above following your previous post without much success. However, this is providing exactly the result I was looking for (fresh start to the week)!

Thank you very much

[kevincoffey]

Actually, I'm just reviewing this at the moment and possibly still not at the correct result. 

When I switch off the new subcategory under annotations, I only switch off the outline of the hatch (the hatch still remains). I have to switch off the entire generic annotations category for the hatch to disappear. The issue with this is that the colour of the generic annotation subcategory 'Door dot' is fixed per view - i.e. can't change colour. The hatches appear with their different colours though.

[ToanDN]

Yes you are correct. I have overlooked that.

[Keith_Wilkinson]

Have we established that the desired result isn't possible at present?

Oddly enough I have a very similar scenario at present that I'm struggling for a good 'BIM' solution to and that is Key Suiting.  if you look at the image below you will see what I'm trying to acheive in principle.  I can easily assign a parameter to the door which says what Key Suites it is a part of and this can easily be scheduled as well.  So far so good.  

However, understandably we'd like a GA plan that shows each door and suites, but for clarity we don't want the name of the suite we want it's associated colour.  One option is to add a family with filled regions that are turned on and off depending on the suite configuration however the problem with this is that it isn't linked to the parameters in the door which is what we really need.... 

Any suggestions?

[ToanDN]

You maybe able to achieve that with View filter rules. I've been using this approach to graphically identify doors with different fire ratings.

[kevincoffey]

Hi Keith,

I'll give a brief rundown of how I think I got your idea to work correctly

• Create new generic family (I'll call this generic key suite family)
• Create new extrusions
• Give them a material based on their key suite colour
• Create a shared parameter based on the key suite colour/legend
• Assign the visibility of each item to this shared parameter (imported)
• Create a subcategory called Key Suite in Generic Models
• Assign all extrusions to this subcategory
• Tick the box for a shared model (may not be necessary?)

• Open your door family
• Import the generic family created above
• Import the 'key suite' shared parameters again into this door family
• Click on the generic key suite family
• Assign each individual key suite parameter of the key suite family to the newly created and matching parameters in the door family. This can be a bit confusing as the names match!
• Tick box for a shared model again (may not be necessary?)

• Import into your main model
• Control visibility of all key suites through Visibility Graphics -> Generic Models -> Key Suite
• Control which key suites appear by selecting the yes/no setting for the door parameters
• Schedule accordingly

I have attached some documents which should help as well - Door Family (downloaded from Autodesk) & Key Suite Legend. My shared parameters are under Group "Key Suite" and are called "KS_Blue" as a Yes/No Parameter in Identity Data.

Image 1

Image 1.5:

Image 2:

Image 3

Image 4 - Result!

Image 5 - Schedule:

[Keith_Wilkinson]

@kevincoffey I doff my cap to you sir for taking the time to write all the out and it is most definitely an interesting solution.  What I'm not comfortable with is that fact that it needs to be modelled elements and therefore the size is set and won't change as the drawing scale changes - but as I say it's an interesting solution nonetheless. 

You have to feel though that there is a major shortfall here in terms of Revit functionality here - another one for the wish list but I suspect it will already be there... 

[kevincoffey]

I agree and I don't think it would take too much work to implement as the bones of the operation is all there!

I know what you mean about not scaling. For the moment, I'm fairly confident about calculating my scales in advance so that they won't vary by a factor of two, i.e. 1:100 sized symbols would still be legible at 1:50 and 1:200.

[chrisplyler]

Keith,

I've modified the label inside the OTB door tag to include the paramater Fire Rating and it will show up if any value has been placed in that parameter of the door type.