Ideas regarding being able to see specific graphical content from a family view dependent?

[oana.rusu]

Hello!

My problem: I have a 3d family of fire extinguishers that has symbols driven by yes/no parameters attached to show what kind of extinguisher. Problem is - turning on the icons obviously does it for the entire project, and I only want to see the symbols on the fire sheets. Is there any way to do that?

The only thing I could think of is try inserting the symbols as tags - but trying to draw them at a reasonable scale ended up in "line is too short" error message.  I ended up using the dwg icons inserted in the tag family but that would not size up and down with scale. 

[barthbradley]

So only a few views need this info (e.g. those views placed on fire sheet)?  Sounds like tagging would be the way to go then.  Are you saying that it's not?   If so, how so?    

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Yes tagging should work.  Another approach is using a nested family:  

- Nest the symbol in a different family of a different category (X) that you will not be using.  Make the family shared.

- Nest this family in your main family.

- Turn off (X) category in view templates where you don't want to see the symbol.

Try the attached FEC family, turn off Pipe Accessories category when you don't want to see the symbol.

[mhiserZFHXS]

You wouldn't necessarily need to nest a family as Toan said, but it'd certainly work. You could simply draw linework in the family and assign a unique object style to those lines, and then control those the way that Toan said. I think this would be the cleanest way and require the least amount of work in the long run, especially if you save these settings to your project template so its always set up for future projects.

[oana.rusu]

Hello, and thank you for the suggestions!

Regarding the tag, it works, but it is not smart. I can't set condition formulas in a tag to make it read what kind of extinguisher it is and choose a pictogram based on that, so they would just need to be selected manually, which kind of defeats the purpose of a tag. Also, scale in tags seems weird. Granted, the objects are pretty small (fire extinguishers), so the symbols for them are also small, but not smaller than the extinguisher itself - so if it's possible to draw the 3d object at its normal size, with tags it seems it considers a different scale, as drawing the symbol with linework resulted in the "element too small" error.  I could use dwg symbols inserted, but I don't like going through a third party software to make revit work.

Regarding setting the pictogram family as nested, and assigning it a different category, you can't do it with detail item families - they can only be that.

Regarding setting a different object subcategory, I would have liked this best, as the project this is on is huge and finding a category that is not use anywhere else would be risky (same with using view detail level), so being able to create a custom subcategory would have been great. However, it appears filled regions (which is what the pictograms are basically) also cannot be assigned a subcategory. You can assign it to linework, just not filled regions (or masking ones). 

As a workaround, I could create the pictograms from extrusions instead and give them a cover pattern override. I will most likely do it like that, as this seems the only smart way to do it - everything else is basically manual 2d work.

Edit: I just saw how you went around the detail item family issue by nesting it in a regular family. Another great way to force revit into submission on things it should do willingly, thank you!

Edit 2: I tried to use the nested-in nested family try with my detail items and assign them subcategories. It's not working - closing either the category or subcategory did nothing. It worked when I nested a generic annotation family like Toan had in his example. Sadly you can't assign it subcategories - or I didn't figure it out, so the category way seems the only one for now.