Folding wall - off-center allignment

[Intuos5]

I am trying to create a folding wall as a folding door. It consists of two hinges and sliding mechanism around three points as illustrated by the sketch:

However, the moment I try to constrain the second (right hand) reference line to the hinge point, revit refuses and tells me the sketch is overconstrained; the line cannot even be alligned by starting point to two reference planes! What is it that Revit has an issue with? Also, since it's a wall, it needs to be able to close shut , hence the angle location in the file. 

[barthbradley]

are you aligning and locking the TIPS of the Ref. Lines to Ref. Plane intersections (x and y)?  

...I can see issue. You don't need to (and cannot) drive the Ref. Line length. Drive the Ref. Planes and they will drive the Ref. Lines if they are Aligned and Locked as mentioned above.  

...or you can build trigonometric formulas to drive

https://www.revitforum.org/showthread.php/1046-Revit-Formulas-for-quot-everyday-quot-usage

[barthbradley]

...edited.

See  another approach attached.   

[ToanDN]

This family gives you a basic skeleton to work from.  

[Intuos5]

---

@barthbradley wrote:

...I can see issue. You don't need to (and cannot) drive the Ref. Line length. Drive the Ref. Planes and they will drive the Ref. Lines if they are Aligned and Locked as mentioned above.  

...or you can build trigonometric formulas to drive

https://www.revitforum.org/showthread.php/1046-Revit-Formulas-for-quot-everyday-quot-usage

---

@barthbradley I constrained the left line to the reference planes and it flexed just fine. However, the additional reference planes created at the center could not be used as base point to allign the second reference line to like I did before. After fiddling around with it for a couple hours, I drew in a rough estimate for on the forums, which is why the file may have gotten convoluted. Actually, I think I've used your bifold door family from a diferent forum post as reference when creating this one.

After deleting every reference line (again) the sketch was no longer constrained (which it wasn't since I didn't constrain that part to begin with). Anyways, I can get the flexing to works up until 5 degrees. I've thought of two means to get it to close, both are related to the Joint_Y dmension, which breaks at 0. One solution would be to move the dimension line down and add this distance so that it will always be above 0. The other is to arbitrarily constrain it to zero and a tiny bit by using if statements. In the end both break as the lines lose reference to their reference planes. What should I change here?

[barthbradley]

Seems like you are pretty close. Good job.  

Have you opened the family I posted?  If not, check it out. It's a 4-panel bifold created from two nested 2-panel bifolds.  Open the nested 2-panel bifold family and see how I got there.   

Here's the skeletal structure:

2018 2-panel bifold attached.

[Intuos5]

@barthbradley As mentioned, I already used the family you've posted as reference  😉

The difficulty for me is not to recreate that family, but rather the allignment of the joints, which requires more goniometric formulas to specify the joint locations and one of them failes... when it's set to 0 degrees.

Red cross is the joint location

Troublesome 0 angle

I already resolved the 0 dimension by offsetting the dimension to a reference plane that's twice the wall thickness, it will therefore always be below the joint and therefore be larger than 0.

Notice the joint location jumped

And here's the result.

[barthbradley]

Sorry @Intuos5, I'm not following. Is there a specific issue you are trying to resolve, or are you just sharing?  

[Intuos5]

@barthbradleyI can understand the confusion.

The issue with the family I posted is that it cannot close shut. Or in other words, it cannot flex to 0 degrees, that's when it jumps and the reference lines no longer adhere to the reference planes. Do you have any idea why the family breaks at this point?

Check my previous post and especially the small notes below the pictures, I hope this clarifies the issue.

[barthbradley]

look at these formulas

if(Swing_Angle < 0°, 90°, if(Swing_Angle > 89°, 179°, Swing_Angle + 90°))

if(Swing_Angle < 0°, 0°, if(Swing_Angle > 89°, 89°, Swing_Angle))

[barthbradley]

if you are trying to prevent over-extending in either direction, wouldn't the control parameter read something like this:

if(Swing_Angle < 0°, 0°, if(Swing_Angle > 90°, 90°, Swing_Angle))  

[Intuos5]

I have put a conversion in the formulas, because the door is constrained between 90-179 degrees, in order to avoid it breaking at 0 degrees. Ironically enough it does still break. 😕

So the magenta lines are constrained by 90-179 degrees to avoid self-intersection when it's fully folded. So the upper limit I set works. The lower limit, 0 degrees (90 degrees after conversion), breaks.

I figured it would be easier to convert the angle so that fellow students won't have to figure out about the weird opening angle.

E: Note that I've hidden reference planes and other dimensions for visual clarity.

[barthbradley]

what's the purpose of the magenta Ref. Lines? The bifold framework only needs 2 Ref. Lines to host 2 panels -- which will be nested into this family.  

[Intuos5]

That's exactly the point of why the family is more convoluted. The joint locations are off-center compared to a regular bifold door.

Here is a link to what it should become. Perhaps I'm overcomplicating things, should I instead opt to host the panels diagonally?

[barthbradley]

I don't see it the way you see it.  

My family:

[Intuos5]

The way I see it is that the alignment of the hinges is crucial in order to recreate this door, which is hidden in the facade. The cladding continues on the folding wall and facade.

"Or should I just put the panel on an angle on 'your family' even though that seems weird to me?"

So before posting, I went ahead and gave it a try. Since it's already late, I haven't figured this attempt out. For now I don't see how I will. I will give it some more thought tomorrow, I may have to loop back to the previous family anyways. 

Also for some reason there is no way to put an angular dimension in the nested family to report the angle see attached screencast. This shouldn't be so difficult now, shoud it?

[barthbradley]

The nested panel only needs 3 parameters; Height, Width and Thickness.  IT DOES NOT NEED ANGLE PARAMETERS -- or Ref. Lines. The Angle of the Panel is driven by the Ref. Line it is hosted to in the Parent Family.  Just create those 3 parameters (and maybe one for Materials too) and then under the Properties, check the box next to "Work Plane-Based" -- then load the Panel into Parent Family (e.g. the one with the Ref. Lines).  Before you place an Instance of the Panel in the Parent Family, set one of the two Ref. Planes as the "Current" Work Plane and then place a Panel ON TOP OF THAT REF. LINE WORK PLANE.  After it's placed, Align/Lock the Panel to the Ref. Line.   Repeat for second panel, choosing the OTHER Ref. Line as the Work Plane Host.  Now, when the Ref. Lines move/rotate, the Panels move/rotate with their respective Ref. Lines.  You don't need to do anything else to the Panels except associate their Height, Width, Thickness and Material Parameters to Parent Family Parameters. 

Now, I notice the Family I sent you is not using nested Families for the Panels.  I would suggest nesting the Panels, but you could do what I did in my Family and sketch extrusions on top of each Ref. Line. Best way to do this, is to make a Ref. Line the "CURRENT" Work Plane and then create the Panel/extrusion.  

...one more important direction: if you do draw extrusions for Panel, instead of nesting them, make darn sure that labeled dimensions for Height, Width and Thickness are ONLY pulled from the hosting Ref. Line, or between extrusion sketch linework or extrusion edges.  Don't reference anything beyond the Ref. Line Work Plane that the extrusions are drawn on.    

[FAIR59 · Accepted solution]

the hinge also rotates round the fixed origin, from an angled base-line.

• construct the base-line as a reference line (closed position)
•    
• create parameter for the distance from pivot to the hinge point [ diagonal_calc = sqrt(thickness ^ 2 + leaf_width ^ 2) ]
• make a reference-line for the folded hinge postion
• use the end point to determine the 2nd pivot position through an equality constrain
• 
• place  the 2nd leaf  on the 2nd pivot and apply labeled angular dimension

[barthbradley]

Okay, I think I finally figured out what you are trying to build. An offset hinge; right?  If so, this can easily be accomplished via a dynamic Origin in the family -- and Aligning/Locking this Origin in Project.  Open "Bi-Fold_Offset_18" family found in attached RVT file and note "Start" parameter.  

[Intuos5]

That's what I call an elegant solution! Thank you both for your input!

One last question though: do you perhaps know how I can constrain my door family to the reference line? I've placed on top of the reference line workplane and locked it to this line and a perpendicular one (like @barthbradley  mentioned). Both allignments prompt the message that constraints are not satisfied when I change the angle, tested it with two families.