Confused About Shape Handle Behavior

[aramonS5GTG]

I'm trying to make a detail family of a u-shaped counter with an island in the middle for laying out kitchens. Pretty straightforward, but I'm getting inconsistent behavior with the shape handles on the left and right side of the island, which control the distance between the island and the counter.

- Counter depths and island width+depth are all type parameters. 

- Length of counter and counter arms, and space between counter and island are all instance parameters with associated shape handles.

- When pulling the left shape handles on either the island or the counter, it drags that entire "object" while keeping the other stationary. While pulling the right  shape handles on either object, it moves the entire family.

I can imagine this is because there's some sort of hard reference line missing and as a result the family is being pulled all together, but as far as I can tell the left and right sides are constrained and referenced identically so I don't understand why this preference occurs. Even if I delete one or the other of the constraints the behavior is the same.

Any help with or explanation would be incredibly helpful, this is one of those things I've struggled with for a while but have trouble searching for answers online with the correct language.

[j0hnp]

A couple of questions:

- What do you expect to happen when you cross over the island in the middle with a shape handle?

- Do you ever want the island to move, or just adjust widths?

I can mock up how I would handle this with reference lines and a few more reference planes, but it might be quite different from what you have already.

[aramonS5GTG]

Hi John, thanks for the response. Honestly these are meant for internal use at very early stages of design, so I wasn't too worried about safeguarding against crossing, but if the lack of consideration there is what's causing this unexpected behavior then I'm happy to have it constrained.

My idea was that you set counter depths and island dimensions, and then can adjust overall counter length/width and move the island within that space. So island moves, but dimensions of the island are per type.

My thought with constraining the detail lines (which I would normally never do. I almost exclusively lock geometry/lines to reference plans/lines and then constrain those) Is that the shape handles are centered on the line they're pulling, which was a lot easier to read with this many inputs. But I suppose reference lines could produce that same behavior, right?

Totally open to any suggestions you have, even if they're very different than what I have! I have a good grasp on family constraints, but still get anomalies like this from time to time that confuse me so open to learning!

[j0hnp · Accepted solution]

Here is a video going through some of what I would change about this family:

and the new version that I modified is attached below

[aramonS5GTG]

John, truly cannot thank you enough for this incredible breakdown. I gave myself a pretty good intro to families using one of Chris Aubin's long-form tutorials a couple of years ago and have been riding that knowledge since (we don't have a BIM coordinator in my office so I'm one of the more advanced Revit users despite my lack of formal training in it). Your video has filled in so many gaps that I've just left up to Revit "magic" in lieu of finding a succinct tutorial. I was about to just make this a nested family with the island as a flexed box and a center reference plane but it felt a little ridiculous for this case and you've shown me so many good ways to approach this and similar problems in the future.

- Assigning to reference line workplanes is something I've never even seen before! So incredibly useful in this case.

- Keeping dimensioning in the sketch is one of those areas I never understood the benefits of but to my understanding it helps to both clean up the view, but also avoid automatic sketch dimensions that may otherwise affect your object, right?

- Using the different reference plane strengths to remove grip handles, and using model lines to constrain grip handles to the correct locations is so elegant and makes so much more sense.

Really, thank you for your time and attention here - I'll be referring to this video and sending others towards it for a long time.

- 

[j0hnp]

So glad to hear it helped out!

AFAIK, constraining within a sketch does help avoid some of the "auto-locking" that can happen. But, more than anything it's a bit of a habit I have developed over the years. Some folks frown upon it, but it really does help when you have individual objects in the family.