Create reference Family Types, Materials, and Groups from a Linked Model

[jfhalaby]

Allow us to create "reference" family types, materials, and groups from a linked model so that changes to them in the linked model will propagate to the host model. These "reference types" could be indicated with a symbol or color in the project browser to indicate that their definition is coming from a linked model.

This idea is intended to solve a common problem on large projects where family types, materials, and groups need to be consistent across multiple Revit models. Revit models have size limitations for both practical and performance reasons, so that separate linked models are often required, but this breaks the project data structure into silos.

Copy/Monitor and Material Library files (.adsklib) are not the answer.

Below are a couple of real world examples that my firm has encountered within the past 2 years that would have benefitted from this proposed feature.  Although these examples are architectural, you can imagine similar situations with other disciplines: structural column or framing types, MEP equipment types, etc.

Example 1: Exterior wall types shared on a campus project

5 new buildings on a campus project want to use the same exterior wall assemblies and finish materials. It is tedious and error prone to make changes in 5 different models when a wall type or a material setting is changed. Instead, I want to point to one of the models as a source for the types and materials so changes to that model will propagate to the other models when the source model link is reloaded.

Example 2: Residential unit groups shared across buildings

9 new student residence buildings intend to use a shared set of 10 different unit plans modeled as groups. With 9 models this would mean managing design changes in 90 groups.  However, if we could point to one of the linked building models as the source for these groups, we would only need to manage 10 groups.

[gsucci]

This is an important feature, but it needs to be implemented in a strong BIM compliant way (or Revit way, if you will).

Revit works with a single file project structure.  This feature may begin to conflict with this architecture.

For example, what happens when a link to a file that references a wall type is missing? Will the wall type be saved in the host project anyways (like some links do) and still show properly, or will it be removed or replaced with a default wall type?

Revit links may disappear if broken, but DWG and other types of links are saved withing the RVT project file.

I think more than "referencing", we need some automatic, bidirectional ways of propagating elements, materials, styles, etc, from one project to another.  When the links are eventually broken, Revit will use the latest definition (saved within the RVT project file).

If the reference files are instead available, Revit will simply reload and "Sync".

We need a new panel in the project transfer tool, with a kind of project browser (of all styles, materials, etc), and with a source file for the elements we want.  Similar to how InDesign can assign a document to be the source for styles to be propagated to the book.

I think the OP is correct: this would be immensely useful when doing material legends and the same identical materials need to exist in all linked files!  Of course, bidirectional means that we can revise a material and it would be pushed back to all the files it was borrowed from...  We cannot open link, revise, save, reload every time...

Hope it makes sense,

thank you

regards

gio

[jfhalaby]

Gio,

Thank you for your feedback on this feature idea. I completely agree that the implementation will require some careful consideration to get it right.

To your point about missing links, I imagine all the reference types would remain in the project as they were the last time the link was loaded.  Perhaps the Project Browser tree could show these reference types with an icon beside each to show whether its source link was loaded or not, and with some command to dissociate the type from its linked source if needed.

Also, I think there would need to be some UI to indicate to the user what changes have been made in the source definition when the link is reloaded, in the vein of the "Coordination Review" dialog (but much less clunky). For example, "Wall Type A: exterior finish layer changed from 1" to 2" thickness."

Best,

Jason Halaby