Share your best tips & tricks for Revit families

[Marcus.Isacsson]

Hi fellas!

Would be neat if we shared some of our tips & tricks for Revit families.
Creation, management, webpages with families, everything is welcome!

I'll start with two tips:
1. BIMobject.com - Thousands of families from manufacturers
2. I recently learned that different categories of families are cut in different ways. Some families show everything when cut while others gets cut 'like they should' (not sure which categories behaves like this though).

[Avaris.]

Cuttable and not-cuttable

[aRcHiTeCt.JM]

... hi

... there are plenty of amazing tips and tricks with Mr. PAUL AUBIN @Paul_F_Aubin

https://www.lynda.com/Revit-tutorials/Revit-Tips-Tricks-Troubleshooting/386630-2.html

[Marcus.Isacsson]

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@aRcHiTeCt.JM wrote:

... hi

... there are plenty of amazing tips and tricks with Mr. PAUL AUBIN @Paul_F_Aubin

https://www.lynda.com/Revit-tutorials/Revit-Tips-Tricks-Troubleshooting/386630-2.html

---

Thanks, but where are the tips & tricks related to families? I can't find them.
We would rather not buy anything at this point, just some tips & tricks from the community. 

[RobDraw]

I only use BIMobject as a last resort. I'd much rather go directly to the manufacturer's websites. 

[Avaris.]

One important trick to remember when creating families is creating a family from a model in place component. Sometimes you want something as a family, but you want to draw it in the project environment. Model in place components have the disadvantage of creating new instances when copying, thus using a lot of space on your project and you can't control the copies as a type.

There is a neat trick to make a family from in place:

-Create a model in place

-Model what you want

-Create a model group of what you want to be a family

! Don't exit the in place dialog

- Search for your model group in the project browser

- Right-click 'save group'

- Now you can save it as a Revit family .rfa

- Load that family into your project

- You can now copy the family without taking excessive amounts of space and control it from the .rfa file

[Marcus.Isacsson]

@Avaris. Awesome, exactly the kind of trick I'm looking for. Any more aces up your sleeve? Thanks!

[aRcHiTeCt.JM]

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@Avaris. wrote:

One important trick to remember when creating families is creating a family from a model in place component. 

There is a neat trick to make a family from in place:

-Create a model in place

-Model what you want

-Create a model group of what you want to be a family

! Don't exit the in place dialog

- Search for your model group in the project browser

- Right-click 'save group'

- Now you can save it as a Revit family .rfa

- Load that family into your project

- You can now copy the family without taking excessive amounts of space and control it from the .rfa file

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.... perfect !!! .. thanks @Avaris. .... I didn't know that.

... the more you know .... 

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Thank you @aRcHiTeCt.JM for mentioning Tips, Tricks and Troubleshooting. It includes coverage on many Revit topics not just the family editor. But I do frequently cover the Family Editor in there.

@Marcus.Isacsson if you are looking for some free resources, please visit: www.paulaubin.com/au 

I have posted my class handouts for conferences where I have spoken over the last several years. Again, not all Family Editor, but recently I did a two-part session on the Family Editor called: Beyond the Basics. Click to expand 2018 Midwest University on that page noted to download the paper. There are several other papers as well that you might find of interest. All free to download, many include accompanying ZIP files with the Revit files. 

Enjoy. 

[Viveka_CD]

Hi there @Marcus.Isacsson 

Thanks for posting! An interesting thread and I hope this will benefit many:)

Regards,

[Avaris.]

And maybe a trick which is more well known: when you have a non-cuttable family above your viewrange, but you really want to see it in your view. Like LCD screens etc.

Draw a hidden line in the family till reference level. That way Revit will cut through the hidden line and will display your non-cuttable family.

[Marcus.Isacsson]

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@Avaris. wrote:

And maybe a trick which is more well known: when you have a non-cuttable family above your viewrange, but you really want to see it in your view. Like LCD screens etc.

Draw a hidden line in the family till reference level. That way Revit will cut through the hidden line and will display your non-cuttable family.

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Thats a nice one, I've been using it a couple of times.
But some families have the 'correct' behaviour automatically right? (like caseworks?)
Is it possible to see which families don't have this built in somewhere? (need for invis. line trick) 

[Avaris.]

Yes of course: see my first reply on this topic, which lists all non-cuttable and cuttable families.

[Marcus.Isacsson]

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@Avaris. wrote:

Yes of course: see my first reply on this topic, which lists all non-cuttable and cuttable families.

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I didn't mean cuttable families. I meant families that automatically show 'dash dot' lines when above the cut plane. 

[nharburger]

Paul - thank you so much for sharing all this great content - I never knew you did that. 
One of the things i saw in a handout you made for a Midwest University presentation was:

Many hosted ceiling elements have voids integrated into them. This allows the fixture to be recessed into the ceiling plane. This can have an impact on performance in large files. Create a void that moves away from the surface when “Cut Ceiling” is unchecked To deal with this, you can use a Yes/No parameter to drive the size of the void element. When checked, the void will be big enough to engage the surface host. When unchecked, it will move away from the face and disengage*.

I got super excited and tried it out and spent way too many iterations attempting to make it work before i noticed your footnote:

"Unfortunately, this does not always work as expected. Once you uncheck the void, it will not re-engage with the surface when rechecking the box. So, it works well to disengage the void, but not as well to re-engage it."

It seems the issue is even greater than this - it's not just the void that cannot re-engage, but the entire fixture loses its association with the ceiling. If its ceiling hosted - the family requires the instance be deleted, and if its face-based, the family remains but no longer hosts to the ceiling surface - so if the ceiling moves - your lights all get hidden or start hanging down. 

Is there a way to avoid this? Am i doing something wrong? Or is this how your families behave as well? |
Any clue why this happens? It seems like even if you place a void in a face-based family which NEVER cuts anything - the family will never host to a face in a project model - it just instantly becomes disassociated.  

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Yeah that tip is not as useful as the others in that paper. And as you noted, I did point out its limitations. 

I have not experienced the disassociation behavior you mentioned. I would try in a clean family file and make sure that you have not ended up with some corruption that has crept into the family you are working with. 

[nharburger]

Yeah - i tried it with a brand new family - made from scratch - same issue occurred. I went back and checked older families with which I had thought I had achieved a similar thing (e.g., surface mount/semi-recessed/recessed fire extinguisher cabinet) and sure enough - when you place the surface mount cabinet (where the void isn't cutting the wall) it isn't associated with the wall its placed on. And if you change a recessed cabinet to surface mount - it loses its association with the wall. 

Interestingly enough - i did not run into this issue if I just modeled a generic model family (no hosting at all) - and checked off the Cut with Voids When Loaded & Work Plane-Based options in the Family Category  and Parameters Menu... 'Recessed' can lights made with that setup could still be placed/associated with the ceiling faces in RCP views - and the association held. By default -the lights DON'T cut the ceiling.. then you can use the 'cut geometry' tool to cut the ceiling with the lights you want. And - if you Uncut the ceiling with the light - the light remains associated with the ceiling... so that might be the route to go. 

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Interesting findings to be sure. I do like the cuts with voids feature. I just wish it was a little less manual and that it work on nested families. 

[donnia.tabor-hanson]

Did not know if anyone answered this or not. Generic models can be cut with sections, others cannot. @Paul_F_Aubin taught a trick to nest a generic model with the geometry in your family of say Specialty Equipment to get it to show a cut in section. He showed that in the Autodesk Community Conversations.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/community-conversations/eb-p/communityconversations

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Thanks @donnia.tabor-hanson