Loading Railing Family

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I'm having problems of just loading a new railing family into my project. Under "Railing" there's only a few selections ( 900mm, 900m pipe, 1100mm, Glass panel- bottom fill) that you could choose from, I've been trying to load another type of railing ( Baluster Panel- Glass with brackets) that's in the Revit library folder. Under "Project Browser", I could see the type of railing that I wanted listed under Family- Railings, but I just can't use it. Please help

Thank

[L.Maas · Accepted solution]

Railings are a system family. This means (similar to walls) that they are not loadable.

What you do is you duplicate one of the existing railings and rename it. Then you modify the settings of that family to create the railing you want.

By editing the type you can choose the rail structure, balusters and so on.

[RDAOU · Accepted solution]

 @Anonymous

Those belong to the Baluster family/type...You load them into an existing or a duplicated Rail Type as follows

[arisleme]

So, to understand:

If you want to reuse a complex custom railing system, you need to either save it with the the file as a template, or recreate it from its parts in a new file?

I am almost tempted to create empty rte's with just one system family each so as to create a library and merge them with new projects.

It sounds very counter-productive! what is the reason you cannot save custom system families?

[ToanDN]

You can save custom system families IN your Template (RTE) or your "Template" project (RVT).  Start a new project from the Template (RTE).  If your project is already created and not from the RTE, then use Transfer Project Standards bring in the custom system families from the RVT.

[Sahay_R]

Create a Project with all your Railings in it. Call it Railing Library or something. This is where you will keep adding new railings as you create them.

When you need to drop a railing into a new Project - CTRL-C the railing from your Railing Library, CTRL-V into the destination project. Works like a charm.

[arisleme]

Ok, 
So as I understand, this is the standard workflow: 
create a file for each of the system categories, populate them with the families you accumulate and use them as libraries. got it!

(as they say in most tutorials the hardest thing about learning Revit is UNLEARNING the previous cad programs you have learned!)

thank you very much!

[ToanDN]

---

@arisleme wrote:

(as they say in most tutorials the hardest thing about learning Revit is UNLEARNING the previous cad programs you have learned!)

---

It's like you unlearn how to drive a car when you learn how to fly an airplane.

[arisleme]

my only problem is that so far it seems too bauhaus-y!!! I've been working with sketchup for years on the concept stage and I doubt I will ever reach its sculpting freedom with Revit (I'm trying though)

[Sahay_R]

@ToanDN

.....not if you have a fear of heights!!

ROFL!!

[ToanDN]

I think we have talked about this in another thread.  If you want freedom in making forms then use Conceptual Mass, or FormIt 360 (then import it as Revit mass).

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much it worked

[Anonymous]

If you open the two Revit files in the same session, you can copy the desired railing into your project, and then use the match tool to apply the pattern.