1. More nested family visibility options, 2. Link Parameters of shared nested Families to the host family

[Mark.Friis]

To ease my work I combine Families into a host family and nested families. The parameters of the host family and the nested families are connected. Example a "Roof Hood"  (nested family Nr. 1) and the associated "Roof Opening" (Nested family Nr. 2). Now the Host family is placed a 100 times in the Project. The Architect wants to see both "Hoods" and "Openings", the structural engineer only wants to see the "Openings".  They are both in the same Project Host Model. The only way to solve this is to create a Structural view and an architectural view. The Host Family view options only offer to change visibility of the nested families through "detail level".  So the structural view setting is forced to be "coarse" or "medium" in the View detail level, and the architectural view is forced to be "fine". But this is a too rough differentiation, because this way a lot of other Detail elements and other families is hidden from the structural engineer ins his view. The Architect will have a problem when viewing the top floor, where he will only wants to see to see the "Roof Opening" but will see both the "Hood" and the "Opening". He could then switch to a coarse view but will loose a lot of Detail elements and his Top Floor Layout will look really different from his other Floor layouts. So please add more visibility options to nested families, so that we can filter some of the nested families out with the project view filter! I have tried to make the nested families to "shared families" in the hope to be able to filter them out in my project view based on shared parameters. But when the the nested families are shared I cannot link their parameters with the parameters from the host model. Please make nested families (which are shared) able to link their parameters with the parameters of the host family.

[dplumb_BWBR]

Sounds like you need to create sub-categories for your Hoods and Openings

[Mark.Friis]

The Problem with sub categories is that the Hood family contain a nested detail family with a filled region to show the minimum distance to other Roof Hoods. An filled regions don't work with sub categories, only their border lines but not the hatch.

[karolina_kordula]

Currently, while nesting a shared family, in a non-shared family, the visibility of the shared family in the Revit project has to be controlled independently of the host family.

Example:

There is a shared family B nested in a non-shared family A loaded into the Revit project. The visibility of Family A is controlled by the visibility parameter. 

• If the visibility is active, both families (host Family A and nested Family B) are visible.

• If the parameter is deactivated, Family A will be hidden, but the nested shared Family B will be still visible. To hide the shared Family B additional parameter is needed.

The suggested functionality would be to control the visibility of nested families by the visibility parameter assigned for the host family, also when the nested family is shared. This functionality would provide consistency in the behavior of families. 

[Mike.FORM]

This is already implemented in Revit with standard parameter association. All you need to do is assign a visibility parameter to the elements in family B and then link the visibility parameter of Family B to the visibility parameter of Family A using the little grey box to the right of the parameter in properties.

Unless you are wanting some other functionality which I am not understanding.

[Keith_Wilkinson]

@Mike.FORM the issue is as noted by Karolina above - if the nested families are shared, then the standard family visibility parameter doesn't work. 

If you use an alternative linked parameter to control the visibility of the nested components you then have the issue that the preview visibility tool doesn't apply, making it VERY tricky to make amendments (especially if using arrays... )

This idea gets a definite +1 from me.

[Mike.FORM]

@Keith_Wilkinson it works fine for me. I have a host family which is shared and a nested family which is not and using a visibility parameter, it turns on and off the geometries. I am using Revit 2022, have not tried any earlier versions. It works both by either applying the parameter to the geometry within the nested family (ie. the extrusion) and also applying the visibility parameter to the families visibility once it is nested.

 

[Keith_Wilkinson]

You're doing something different - if you simply nest the family and link its visibility to a parameter in the host family it doesn't affect it's visibility.  It will ONLY work via the method you have shown but that has a whole different raft of issues.

[Mike.FORM]

I have tried every way I can think of and these are the outcomes:

• works - nested family (shared) - visibility instance, host family (non-shared) - visibility instance for family itself
• works - nested family (shared) - visibility instance, host family (non-shared) - visibility instance for geometry in family
• works - nested family (shared) - visibility type, host family (non-shared) - visibility type for family itself 
• doesn't work - nested family (shared) - visibility type, host family (non-shared) - visibility type for geometry in family - can't link parameter
• works - nested family (shared) - visibility instance, host family (non-shared) - visibility type for family itself
• works - nested family (shared) - visibility instance, host family (non-shared) - visibility type for geometry in family
• works - nested family (shared) - visibility type, host family (non-shared) - visibility instance for family itself 
• does't work - nested family (shared) - visibility type, host family (non-shared) - visibility instance for geometry in family - can't link parameter

Conclusion: it works every time unless the visibility of the nested family is a type parameter since you cannot associate a type parameter of a shared family into a host family.

[Keith_Wilkinson]

Hopefully this explains what I'm getting at.  In this scenario you have a nested family (parent) that is made up of multiple other shared nested families - in this instance it's for the internals for a WC cubicle.  The non-shared family has just been added in to show what happens - it is nested into the parent.  There are in effect 3 levels of nesting happening here.

When the Parent family is nested in you see it as above - everything is visible.

If you now uncheck the 'Visible' parameter the unshared families disappear but the shared families do not.

This is the problem I'm facing.  Shared families nested at a single level behave fine, it's only when you add the second level of nesting that the problem occurs.

Hope that makes sense.

[Mike.FORM]

I understand, I was only going one nesting level deep but the issue is happening when you have multiple levels of nesting with both shared and unshared families in the same host family. 

Thanks for clearing it up, I had not ever run into this as don't use too many nested shared families let alone multiple nest a couple levels deep.

[Keith_Wilkinson]

I only came across it this week but it’s being driven by the need to be able to schedule more components that we previously didn’t really have to worry about… We can work around it but requires a few more hoops to jump through…