Scheduling of Nested Families

[IMCornish]

I have tried to follow a number of threads relating to the scheduling of nested family parameters and can only glean that the parameters must be shared, however.....

I am wanting to model a very special masonry gate post which is made up of  6 families (parts) made by the same manufacturer all of which are sold seperatelly and have their own Model Nos, Costs etc.  The gate posts can be made up of varying numbers of the component families to make up different sized gate posts.

I need, in the Project environment, for the component parts of one or more gate posts to be scheduled such that an ordering schedule is created with total cost, numbers of each component etc.

My grey matter is curently overheating and a comprehensive solution would be greatly appreciated.  Is it something to do with the components being twice removed from the project?

[Alfredo_Medina · Accepted solution]

Not only the parameters need to be shared parameters. The families of the components need to be shared, too, and be of a category that can be included in schedules. Your question at the end of your post is not clear. What do you mean by removing the objects twice?

[IMCornish]

I meant that the original components are separated from their placing in the project by two places.  First they are nested in another family before secondly being placed in a project.  Twice removed from the project where I need the schedules to be.

[Alfredo_Medina]

???

[CoreyDaun]

If you want to schedule the subcomponents of a Family (i.e. posts), these subcomponents must be modeled as Nested Shared Families, which is enabled in the Family Editor under Family Category and Parameters. The host Family need not be marked as Shared. Any desired Shared Parameters that you want to schedule must be included in the Nested Families.

Now, when an instance of the Host Family (which is a compilation of Nested, Shared Families) is place in a Project, Revit will Schedule each of the subcomponents as an individual Family. See attached example (Revit 2013) and just ask if this brief explanation doesn't clear thing up at all...

[CoreyDaun]

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IMCornish wrote:

"I meant that the original components are separated from their placing in the project by two places.  First they are nested in another family before secondly being placed in a project.  Twice removed from the project where I need the schedules to be."

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When a Family that contains nested Shared families is loaded into a Project, each of the Shared Families is also loaded into the Project. This is intentional, and is the foundation of the "Shared Family" workflow. Say you have two separate fence Families that each use the same pole as a Nested, Shared Family. When both of those "host" Families are loaded into a Project, they will both reference the same definition of the Shared Post Family. This means that if the Post Family is modified and reloaded into the Project, every Family that references it will now be updated as well.

[IMCornish]

Thanks for your further explanations, it has made Alfredos response clear for me.  I am now much better informed and my understanding of shared families and shared parameters is much greater.   However, I still struggle though, with the choice of 'shared parameters' which need to be added to a nested and shared family so as not to duplicate Family Type parameters already included in the Family, especially 'Identity Data'.  This is most apparent when the 'Parameter Properties' dialog tells you that 'Family Parameters' cannot appear in schedules or tags, but when picking the fields for a schedule all these parameters appear!?  Is there a unique term for the 'Family Parameters' that come with each of the family type templates?  Further would scheduling the standard ' Identity Data' be possible if a family was shared but did not have shared parameters?

[Alfredo_Medina]

The built-in parameters under Identity Data, such as "Keynote", "Manufacturer", "Model", etc., can be scheduled. There is no neeed to re-create those parameters as shared.