Door Family Issue

[Jessicas]

Hi All,

I'm fairly new with families but I've been doing a lot of work with them and understand fairly well how they work (in my opinion). I created a new family from an existing one adding a sidelight to the existing door. For the most part it works correctly except we've noticed a few issues. The main thing is Model lines not appearing on either the front or rear of the door once put into the drawing and the model lines appear correctly when editing the family. I've attached a few photos to show the issue.

[Jessicas]

Here are also Front and Rear 3d views of the door and it all also appears how we want it.

[ToanDN]

Upload the family (note the Revit version you are using).

[Jessicas]

Here is the family file. We currently have Autodesk Revit 2015.

[ToanDN]

The problem is that the extrusions are not constrained to a reference plane as the door panel is.  You can see that from the screenshot below when I changed the wall thickness to 24".  The best practice is model the entire door as a separate panel family and nest it into your door family so that you only need to constrain one object instead of several extrucsions.  It is much easier to manage your families that way.  I don't have time to actually fix the model but you can read up on nested families if you need to.

[Jessicas]

We can try that. I guess the main issue is that the extrusions arent appearing or model lines aren't appearing. We do not always have the time to fix what to us currently is a large issue. If there is a quick fix that can be used for a little while until things slow down again that would be great (we are only 2 ladies running revit software designing buildings for 3 production lines. We dont often have a lot of time to spend fixing mistakes so we often get by with a temporary fix until we get a little bigger window of time to fix the issue.) 

The main fix we need is to get the model lines to show up as the grills in the one view where only the door grills are missing.

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Try this one.  I didn't see any model lines but I fixed the extrusion constraints regardless.

Still, I stand by on my suggestion regarding nested family approach.  Look into it and you will thank yourself later.

[Jessicas]

I agree making the door panel a complete and seperate family and inserting it into the door family is the best way we just dont have the time currently being short staffed one person to spend the time correcting all our families (we have quite a few doors that need fixing then) if we can find a temporary fix until we have the time. 

[ToanDN]

Quick dirty fix is to draw symbolic, not model lines, on the elevation of the family. But if you ever look at the doors in 3D, or in section, the unconstrained extrusions will stick out like a sore thumb.

[Jessicas]

ok well thank you very much. 🙂 

My co worker had a few minutes to spare so she just looked at the door family you fixed and its great! Would you be able to explain what you did? So when we get the chance we can do the same with the rest of our families that we find aren't working correctly. We are almost caught up in our actual work and may have some spare time soon to do family maintenece so if you would be able to explain what you did that would be very appreciated. 

Again thanks so much for fixing that family!

[ToanDN]

- Introduce reference planes for front of door panel, back of door panel, and center of door panel. Named them properly so they can be picked from the list later.
- Constrain the extrusions to the above reference plans: highlight the extrusion(s), edit work plane, and pick the designated reference plane from the name list, edit extrusion start and end so the thickness is correct
- Repeat until done
- Edit the host wall type and change its thickness to test if constraints work
- You didn't ask but I fixed the hardware as well: nested its thickness parameter to the door panel thickness parameter and locked it to one of the panel reference plane.

[chrisplyler]

That is a very messy door family. The door panel and the side panel are not built on the same workplane. Neither are the two glass panes, glass frames, extruded sub-panels, etc.

If you put an elevation view looking at your door from the inside, you will see that those subpanels DO show up. The door panel and side panel are moving relative to your wall thickness but those subpanels are not, so depending on what wall you stick the door into, they will either show on both side, on the outside only, or on the inside only. It's the same story with your model line mullions.

The quick fix is to just draw detail lines into your elevation views in the project as necessary. The long term fix is to re-work that family a lot.

[Jessicas]

I don't really care if its messy, as long as it does what we want it to. Now is it optimal how it is.. no probably not but. 

Now i only added the sidelight to this door family and i've never had any actual training on families so its self taught in like a week (or less).

One day maybe we will get training on how to make families properly but for now thats not an option. We do try and fix these things as we learn more about them but honestly we don't have time for that very often. 

I'm very thankful for the first poster for fixing the door and explaining what he did. My co worker did manage to fix 2 other families this afternoon but we have a long way to go until they are all looking proper. Right now we don't have the time to create or comepletely fix all our families. 

[chrisplyler]

Hope I didn't sound judgemental. I've certainly created my fair share of messy families. It's a very long learning curve. I was just trying to explain why you are getting the behavior you described.

In order for the model line mullions and the subpanel extrusions to always show up where they belong regardless of what wall the door is placed into, those things will have to be constrained in a like manner to a common reference, or at least to eachother in a logical cascade. What I mean by that last bit is that you might have the door panel constrained to a reference line at the wall surface, then have the glass constrained with a certain offset to the door panel face, then have the model line mullions build on the glass face, etc. Messier, but still logistically workable.

[Jessicas]

And I appoligize if I came across as cranky. My coworker and I are just swamped and as we realize that the families need a lot of update from when ever and whoever created them our superiors do not understand how difficult it is for us to create and fix these families without better training. 

As we have time we will definitely be putting your suggestions in place which will help out tremendously and we thank you for taking the time to reply.