Nested profile families

[Anonymous]

Hi,

is there a way to create profile families by inserting instances of other profile families?

I have to create a number of plates from different profiles

which share some hole patterns

which share a small number of different hole types

...

So I thought to first create a hole profile

and to assemble a hole pattern family including different instances of this hole profile

which then would be instantiated in the families defining the plate profiles

to be used to create the final shapes via the sweep tool

...

Is something like this is possible?

Thanks for your help,

Dietrich

[Kimtaurus · Accepted solution]

As far as I know, a profile family constists of 1 closed loop of lines.

You can't create profiles with holes.

Well you can create the family, but it won't work for all cases: railings, mullions, wall sweep,... These need a profile with 1 closed loop.

[FGPerraudin]

Yes, to my knowledge there is no point in nesting a profile in a profile.

Revit allows you to insert only detail items as a proof of concept.

But do you know that you can make profiles pametric?

François-Gabriel

[virgilio_benedictos]

@Anonymous

I agree with  mr, @FGPerraudin. no need to make a nested profile, two or more closed looped will do but this will only work on sweep tools not in Swept Blend tool. 

best regards,

Ver

[Anonymous]

Hi François-Gabriel,

Thank you very much for your answer!

> But do you know that you can make profiles parametric?

Thank you.  I know - but wanted to try a more thoroughly hierarchical approach this time.  So parametric profiles (and a flat hierarchy) currently seems to be the way to go.

> Yes, to my knowledge there is no point in nesting a profile in a profile.

Hm.  I disagree, of course, as I would not have posed the question if I would not think that nested profiles might be an interesting approach to my design problem 🙂  

But this might be because I come from a computer science / computational design background where a more thoroughly structured hierarchical approach to problem solving is natural.  In architecture, however, there is a different tradition to problem solving caused by an eternity of being forced to use more traditional, relatively inflexible tools.

(To prevent the logic answer "so why don't you use programming or Dynamo?":  Unfortunately the company, I am currently working for only provides Revit LT - so no access neither to the Revit API nor Dynamo...)

> Revit allows you to insert only detail items as a proof of concept.

Indeed, Revit's approach to parametric design sometimes feels like a "proof of concept":  It is possible to prove something by showing just a single working example 🙂

I have to realize that I expected a more thorough, "from the ground up" approach to parametric design before starting to work with Revit. 

Anyway, sorry for the rant 🙂

Probably this is the result of Revit's history:  I suppose the first version of Revit was motivated by a more "traditional", drawing based approach to design rather than parametric thinking as guiding paradigm.  A large part of Revit's "parametric" behaviour looks like having been integrated in retrospect as solution to some practical need rather than like being part of the initial software design concept.

This is just the beginning of a new design aera - and already a quite impressive one.

Cheers,

Dietrich

[Anonymous]

Actually all three answers agree on the same point and provide the solution.

Obviously I don't like the sentence "there is no point in nesting a profile in a profile" as I would not have posed the question if I would agree 🙂 

So, to summarize, the simple answer is:  

  No, nesting profiles in profiles is not possible in Revit.

Regards,

Dietrich