Custom Parametric Door Constraints

[Anonymous]

Hi there!

I've been making a custom family for the first time and have run into a few problems. I've sorted most of them out, but there are a few I just don't know how to deal with and I've tried some workarounds with reporting parameters and they don't work either. 

So my 2 main issues are:

1. How can I make my door panel move with the door stopper when the wall thickness is changed? The door stopper already moves with the wall because it's constrained to the sides (I think). Because these are extrusions there are some negative values to create the necessary thickness but I don't think that's a problem. I tried making them a group and constraining them to some reference planes and even recalculating the extrusion start and end based on values deriving the thickness of the wall etc. and it just didn't work. I had to ungroup them or they wouldn't update properly when flexing the height and width of the door. Would placing the constraints inside the group fix that or is there another solution? 

2. I did at least get to constrain the base of the door handle to stay in place on that side of the door even when it's resized, I can't figure how to constrain the rest of the handle to the base. 

3... Other tips and methods to basically 'clean up' the file. Is there a way to unify the void and solids so that the void parts disappear and I don't have to worry about them afterwards? I'm thinking that might make the file work faster and have less problems when imported into rendering programs. 

The reason everything is modelled in separate parts is because I need them this way to apply materials accurately in my rendering program, and Split Surface doesn't carry over outside of Revit. 

Just note, while the Width and Height both flex properly, I cannot - for some reason - enter values for the Height either directly onto the dimension or in the Properties panel, so the reference plane must be dragged manually. I can't figure out the reason for that either, and there are some constraints to set the sizes of jambs and their spacing at the top which could probably be simplified in some way - I think it's affecting that Height dimension but removing it didn't fix that. 

I thought about starting the Family over from scratch but I just don't really know where I've gone wrong. 

If anyone here can spot what's wrong I'd be eternally grateful! It's starting to give me a real headache - and my door isn't even that complicated compared to some other models! 

The file version is 2017 and metric. The forum wouldn't let me upload it, saying the file extension doesn't match the content type. Here it is: Link

[barthbradley]

I took a peek at your family. The best advice I could give you, would be to create your door panel in a separate family and nest it into the family with the frame.  It'll be much easier to do what you want to do that way. Promise. I see you were thinking along those lines, because I see a "Panel" Group, as well as other Groups. It's always better to nest families into families and avoid grouping in a family altogether -- especially a parametric family such as a door that's going to be flexing left, right, up, down -- and now, in and out.  

Got a question for you. Are your doors normally going to be shown in 1:5 views?  Reason I ask, is because you got an awful lot of linework that would turn into one big blob of black "ink" at our typical scale of 1:48 -- with Thin Lines turned off.   

[Anonymous]

Thanks for taking a look! I had thought about nested families but I've never done that before. What family template would I use for the components like the door handle and frame? For example Metric Detail Item / Casework / Generic Model and should these be stand-alone or using the wall-based templates? 

About the linework and dimensions, that was just for setting out constraints and I was just planning to hide them later on, since constraining to the other 3d models seemed less straightforward. This was not really for construction drawings since the doors come in standard sizes and the frames are all made the same. This is more an exercise in Archviz, which means adding a lot more modelling detail than is necessary for simple concept drawings. 

Also about the profiles for the door panel and the trim, do you think I should create these separately in a Metric Profile family or leave them in-place? The reason being is that I had to set dimensions within the edit-mode of the profile sweep to constrain the exterior trim to the wall movement - as suggested in another forum post - while the original on the interior side moved with the wall fine with Pick 3d Edges. I think creating the profile as a Family would create the same problem on the exterior side but without a way to constrain it in the same way? 

Or should I make the trim as a separate family and nest it, leaving the base family to only consist of the jambs, wall and wall opening?