Idea Summary
Revit still does not provide a supported way to create reusable structural steel assemblies—such as truss modules, gangways, gantries, pipe racks, or trestles—using families, while retaining basic structural behaviour like coping, joins, constraints, tagging, and scheduling.
This has been a known limitation for years and continues to cause significant friction for infrastructure and industrial users.
The Problem
When modelling repeatable steel systems:
- Structural framing only behaves correctly in the project environment
- Nested/shared framing in families loses constraints and resets geometry
- Coping and steel connections are not available in the Family Editor
- Users must choose between:
- Correct geometry or
- Tagging and scheduling
- A commonly cited workaround is rebuilding framing behaviour using Generic Model (often line‑based) families, which is time‑consuming, fragile, and bypasses native structural tools and is not a scalable or supportable solution
Why This Matters
- Infrastructure and industrial projects rely on repeatable steel modules, yet Revit forces trusses, gangways, and gantries to be rebuilt in every project.
- This has been a known limitation for over a decade, widely discussed across Autodesk Community, AUGI, Revit Forum, and industry blogs.
- Without a supported way to author once and reuse assemblies, Revit remains constrained for infrastructure, prefabrication, and industrialized delivery workflows.
Proposed Direction (Not Prescriptive)
Not a specific tool — just one supported path to:
- Create reusable, parametric assemblies
- Maintain structural intelligence
- Behave consistently between families and projects
- Support downstream coordination and delivery
Closing
This is a long‑standing, well‑known limitation that many of us run into repeatedly on real projects, not a theoretical edge case. Fixing it would immediately improve Revit for a large group of users who rely on repeatable steel systems every day.
