Make Assemblies great

[manuelmunoz87]

Assemblies need to behave better, sort of like a family, but built inside the project (not to be confused with in-place components, no).

My idea is for assemblies to start working more independently from the model:

• Add the ability for them to be mirrored, copied and altered, with those alterations affecting the copies instead of creating new assembly types.
• Enable the use of commands such as trim, extend, etc inside the assembly editor
• Make the assembly views INDEPENDENT from the model, it's really annoying when you have all the views and everything set up in the sheets, and you realize you have to shift the assembly a little to the left, and that messes up all your perfectly aligned work. OR even worse, when that first assembly copy, the one the views are dependent on, has to go.

If you ever worked with assemblies, you know what I'm talking about. Give this idea a thumbs up and *hopefully* Autodesk will hear about it.

[purvigirwin]

Assemblies are a great tool but they have a few very large drawbacks that don't make them as useful as they could be. If these few items were fixed, they a lot more people would use them.

1. Allow an assembly to be edited without it turning into a new assembly type. This is the biggest problem with them and is often a dealbreaker when deciding whether or not to use them.

2. Keep an assembly type in the project browser even if it's not placed somewhere in the model. This would allow assemblies to be included in a project template.

3. Have the full view template functionality for schedules inside of assemblies as for regular schedules. Not sure why it's limited here.

4. Allow for a way to tag an assembly as mirrored or rotated so that it can be the same assembly type with this note attached.

[YarUnderoaker]

As for me this good suggestion, but look like assemblies turn into family with own views.

I often use assemblies for structural detailing and I usually make one instance of assembly. I don't use type replacement because it is harder then use groups and families with nesting.

Also there is architectural side of assemblies and maybe other disciplines. I don't imagine what effect will make such suggestion.

[cees]

When creating an Assembly, shared nested components are not included in the selection. They always have to be added afterwards using Edit Assembly. Fixing this would also make them more usable.

[YarUnderoaker]

Selecting subcomponents can be easily done by simple macros or dynamo. I think this is not prior feature.

[murray.stock]

Ability to use all the modify tools in assembly views.

[alex.dias.teixeira]

1. I want to be able to have more control over the naming
2. I want the ability to force changes on all the assemblies instead of just changing one
3. I want to be able to align (etc) assemblies, and not just always the element inside.
4. ánd I noticed that properties of the elements of an assembly dont get exported in een assembly.

[timlove]

My thought on this is to have assemblies act more like a family that is composed of just shared families, fully tag-able to each independent part.

Love the idea of being able to edit that Assembly much like a group where it populates throughout the host model and not just that one. (this is the reason we only use assemblies for 1 off items)  for details of a group we use a completely separate host model and create assemblies in that. 

[anielson]

Why does this not have 1000 votes?

[anielson]

I want number 2 so bad

[anielson]

I feel strongly about your last bullet point! Make them independent of the model! And not delete it when you delete the instance in the project, so you can still use it later and not lose your detailing work, or use it in a project template.

Assuming your bullets are 1,2 3, here's a continued list:

4. Be able to duplicate an assembly along with its views so you don't have to redo all the dimensions and stuff for a small variation in the assembly.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/copy-assembly-with-detailing/idi-p/6715424

5. Be able to copy assemblies BETWEEN projects and bring the views and detailing too.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/copy-assembly-and-associated-views-and-detailing-between/...

6. Propagate changes to one assembly to all instances of it (or at least give that option). 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/propogate-changes-made-to-one-assembly-instance-to-other/...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/allow-for-parts-assemblies-to-have-the-option-to-be-exact...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/assembbly-association/idi-p/8434866

[anielson]

Here is a similar list:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/make-assemblies-great/idc-p/10013252#M36040

[anielson]

Here's a post with a similar list:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/fix-a-few-things-to-make-assemblies-more-useable/idc-p/10...

[glennovits]

@anielson  True! It really should have! +1 (or +500) from here 😉 

This would make it waaaaaay easier to use assemblies and edit on the go. Please consider this!

[Anonymous]

@sasha.crotty, I saw similar requests as this one at least three times in the idea board — one of which you have archived. I believe that the process of annotation in assemblies views need more support from the modify tools, which is different from modifying the assemblies themselves. Consider adding detail lines or filled regions for example: without align, trim, split etc., annotation becomes really cumbersome.

(@kimberly_fuhrman-jones , maybe you could help, too.)

[kimberly_fuhrman-jones]

@Anonymous , Thank you! I will combine any that I find that are similar.

@murray.stock , Thank you for your Idea submission!

-Kimberly