Controlling Reference Lines

[Keith_Wilkinson]

Hi all,

Please see attached family.  I'm trying to understand how the reference lines are connected to allow them to move in the manner they do.  Any time I try creating a similar layout and add in a rotation parameter everything just falls apart.  I'm sure I must be missing something obvious but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is.  I've looked for locks etc but nothing is really showing up but it just seems to work... 

Can someone point me in the right direction please?

Cheers

K.

[chrisplyler]

Align and lock the endpoints of reference lines to appropriate reference planes.

For that bi-fold to work, the hinge side endpoints will be locked to both the horizontal plane and the vertical plane (as seen in the plan view). The fold point lines will be locked to each other, so that they can move anywhere but must remain connected, and the latch side (figuratively speaking, since I assume that particular door won't have a latch) will have the two appropriate lines locked only to the horizontal plane, so that they can slide along it.

And all the lines will be constrained appropriately to keep them parallel, an appropriate distance apart, and keep their ends connected. Or maybe they're drawn as rectangles

Note: That's just logistical theory from me. If I had to build that family it would take me a couple of hours futzing around figuring out how to make it work. I'm no expert at family making.

[Keith_Wilkinson]

Thanks Chris,

Yes, what you have outlined works as expected.

What I'm really struggling to understand though is how the lines of each 'leaf' of reference lines are linked / locked to each other though so that they rotate and moves as a single unit ... I'm finding it most perplexing as I can't see anything locking the angle of them to keep everything at 90deg... does that make sense? 

[Keith_Wilkinson]

Okay, so I started again and provided I build things up in the right sequence it seems to work fine.  I'll put some notes on here later when I get back on a machine with Snagit.

[chrisplyler]

Cool. I haven't tried it myself, so I'm wondering if reference line rectangles drawn using the actual rectangle tool will retain that rectangular relationship between the four lines without any user defined constraints.

If they will, then I imagine that bi-fold can work just by align/locking the hinge side of the first leaf to the jamb, the folding point hinge of the second leaf to the appropriate corner of the first leaf, and finally the "latch side" corner of the second leaf to the plane that defines the sliding path. Also I imagine the dimensions of the leaf rectangles would have to be pinned down with some locked dimensions.

If that all works as I imagine, then it follows that only a single angle parameter between the two leafs will successfully flex the whole bi-folding operation.

[L.Maas]

In many of the cases where you get a lot of 'movement' I always consider to make nested families. In the end this normally makes it easier to control.

For example you could make a single panel with a rotation parameter. In your host family you then can make it a lot easier to chain those panels.

A quick example of what I mean. More work has to be done to get it to work properly.

In this case the door is controlled by two rotational parameters

[Keith_Wilkinson · Accepted solution]

Chris, using rectangles doesn't seem to work.  The video in the link below gives a brief overview of how I got this working - it seems to revolve around Revit detecting 90deg angles and end points... but at no point does it actually show what is 'locked'.  In this example nothing is aligned and locked at all yet it all just seems to work.

Bifold doors - reference lines