I have a simple family comprised of an extruded angle shape.
While I can rotate this freely in the family editor, when I try to rotate it in the project I get a "Can't rotate element into this position." error in Revit 2011.
I have many other similar families that don't have this restriction and this was built from one of those.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Jon
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by Alfredo_Medina. Go to Solution.
I'm rotating speakers, too. I find the results capricious - sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. Today, I have edited a (copy of) a previously-functioning family (that took hours to get working) having one parameter, "DOWN ANGLE". I have a reference line, running from the family origin toward the front. In left section, I can rotate it down, say, 10 degrees, align the end of the reference line to the two axes, drop an angular dimension in between the reference line and the plan axis and, assign it to the DOWN ANGLE parameter, open the family parameter properties page, exercise the DOWN ANGLE with some values and, voila, the reference line rotates about the origin, just as forums and tutorials say. I have previously discovered how to un-tick "always vertical". However, when I group the reference line with the speakers which, for simplicity, are represented as trapezoidal extrusions having another extrusion, representing a structural element called a "bumper", across the top, then the simple exercising goes upside down, literally. All of the extrusions, the dimension and the reference line rotate 180 degrees up over the plan axis. It should be noted that all of the extrusions are modeled below the reference plane, but moving everything up didn't fix the problem. I haven't left the family, yet! So, I tried making a family of one speaker and the bumper, showed its work plane as unassigned,disabled its reference level and set it to work-plane based, brought it into the array family, which only has the DOWN angle and the reference line (working well, I might add), and checked that the work plane was parallel to the page (Left) by showing and unshowing the work plane. As soon as I tried to rotate the nested family, without even grouping it to the reference line, Revit complained that it couldn't change the angle..
Why use a parameter? For a sports building, there are multiples of this family that get shoved around in design to accommodate sight lines for lights, television cameras, private boxes, etc. I need to efficiently adjust the elevation of the speaker array and its down angle to keep up.
I share the frustrations of other posters on this subject. I am not a Revit Jedi, only a benighted user who hopes to promote Revit in my business. Revit makes it possible to play in the sandbox with big architectural firms doing stadia, arenas and concert halls, since the big architects don't do AutoCAD anymore. My models are filled with parameters controlling all sorts of criteria and scheduling data for the team.
This is the only area that stumps me, again and again. So, please don't patronize the posters by saying if we were as well-versed in the minutiae of the program, we'd be off to the races. I know that. Instead, please accept that this is a tough problem and look a bit deeper.
Thank you.
Yes, it's a learning curve. There are multiple possible solutions. I just made a speaker array as a test, using the Specialty Equipment category. It freely rotates, using the rotate tool, in plan view without using the methods put forth previously. I simply built it on the reference level plane instead of either the front/back or left/right planes. Just like you would with a piece of furniture or something. Except I built it below the level, so I can "hang" it from whatever level I want to hang it from in the project.
Quite frankly, the first time I might have attempted to make this as a 3D block in Autocad, without any help, it probably would have taken me two and a half hours to figure out also.
Um... can you make the bumper bar a face-based family and host it right onto the speaker surface? Then if the speaker extrusion rotates the bumper goes along with it, no?
Gotcha. So I'm envisioning it in my mind, and I think you've got to figure out the primary heirchy if you're going to have multiple families. And I think you should have multiple families. Will it be one for each NUMBER OF SPEAKERS in the array? I'll bet that's the most logical. That way each family can have a known/predictable number of parameters at least.
Okay I've played around a bit (see screencast video below) and I'm going to suggest the following:
1. A parametric bumper (or mounting bracket, or fixture, or whatever you want to call it). Use the basic Specialty Equipment family so it can simply host to a Level. Construct it hanging down below the level as you find appropriate. Use type parameters so you can create a few variations as desired. Units of substantailly different form probably need their own family, with with a few possible types in it as well. Mine is simply a sweep along an arc, but you could easily make a segmented, multi-angled bumper as well, or whatever you need. I don't know what they look like, so I just made a curved plate to bolt my speakers to for ease of experimentation.
2. A parametric speaker, consisting of simply an extrusion that you can change the size of and the angles of as neccessary to represent different speakers. Use a face-based generic model, and then change its family category to Specialty Equipment (this is preferred because there is no face-based Specialty Equipment family template file). Use type parameters to set up a few different types/sizes of speakers. Create a reference line with an angle parameter that on the front/back plane, and build the speaker, including its size and angle parameters, on the plane of the reference line, so that the whole thing can tilt up or down a bit after it's placed on the face of the bumper. In my screencast you can see that the default placement will be tangent to the face of the bumper, and then you can use the up/down tilt to adjust each one if necessary.
3. Place your bumper into a project on an upper level so that it hangs down. Place your speakers on it as desired. Position and angle them as desired. Select the whole mess and create an assembly. That way you can call it Speaker Assembly A or whatever, and create new instances of it. You can also create an Assembly View from the side with dimensions and angles and everything. You can make a few of them. Then you can change the speaker type and position on one assembly, and it will become Speaker Assembly B or whatever, and you can create more instances of it also, and create an Assembly view of it also. And you can schedule how many of each Assembly you have.
@Anonymous wrote:
Chris, what family template is "standalone"?
I'm afraid I do not understand the question.
Okay. Then you probably want to build a face-based speaker family that attaches from the top instead of from the back. And you probably want to place them into the project each underneath the previous, as demonstrated in this screencast. Yes?
Use this link if the embedded screencast doesn't work for you here in the forum: http://autode.sk/1KpUOgz
When you reply, in the text editor area, along the upper edge, are some formatting icons/tools. One of them is Insert/edit Image. Use it to add an image file into your post.
Making the tilt work is pretty easy. It's a face-based generic model. Once you start you can change its category to whatever you want. Make a reference line on the appropriate plane, align and lock one of its ends twice, and make the other end an angle parameter. So the line tilts. So how do you get an extrusion to tilt also? Or in fact any nested family you might want to plug in at this point? You build/place it on the reference plane of that reference line. So when the line tilts, anything built upon it must also tilt.
Of course I didn't bother with actual dimensions of the speaker cabinet, or materials. I was just experimenting with the funtionality. As you'll see a hint of in the screencast, before I started over to show you, I had made two extrusions with visibility parameters tied to them, so that I could make a 'Type A' with one extrusion shown, or a 'Type B' with a different extrusion shown. This methodology would allow you to place a few different speaker types with one family. I put in the final two reference lines and made them strong references just to make sure I had good selectable edges and center points on the front upper and lower edges of the speaker. I had not done that in the previous screencast.
Link: http://autode.sk/1JKa8nM
Okay, I remade the speaker family with dimension parameters, and three speaker Types of differing dimensions. The only problem (not shown in the screencast video) is that if I change the dimensions of a type or simply change types of one of the already-placed speakers, the edge alignment is broken and I have to re-align it. Have not figured out how to make them always track to front/center of the one above no matter what.
Link: http://autode.sk/1BZgDwy
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