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Show a line-based entity's direction

Show a line-based entity's direction

When working with line-based families they always end up being rotated, mirrored. Depending on the family in question it would be beneficial where it considers its starting and ending points.

These could be model families as well as Brian Mackey's basic detail components with start and end angles.Which one is the beginning and which the end?Which one is the beginning and which the end?

5 Comments

Use invisible lines to draw a I and II at each end, then refer to parameters as End I and End II, e.g. "Chamfer End II". See the Revitworks casework for an example of how this works, I got the idea from them and now use it on all detail and model families instead of "left" and "right"

MichaelWarwick7522_0-1660607759015.png

Snip from the technical specifications at Revitworks Casework.

 

Mark_Engwirda
Collaborator

Here's another example of the same principle of using invisible lines in the family to determine an object's location, in this case, a fixed glass window with no obvious features to determine which is the internal or external side of the window.

When you preselect the window, the invisible line markings show if the window is in the correct orientation, and yes I borrowed this idea from Revitworks as well 🙂

 

placement location.jpg

 

Alternatively to the use of invisible lines, you could simply add a  small coloured placement line at the end of your line based on your family.  

Coloured placement line.jpg

 

Would this help?

 

 

 

 

MichaelWolff
Advisor

@Mark_Engwirda  and @MichaelWarwick7522 Thanks for both your comments. They are both brilliant work arounds. The idea is to relieve the users of the need to create them. Btw. I add an arrow head to the end of line based things now.

Mark_Engwirda
Collaborator
Yeah, I would stick with the workaround with the arrow.
I believe the reason there is an inbuilt arrow is that you can extend
line-based objects in both directions, meaning an arrow at one end is not
necessary.
Mike.FORM
Advisor

Currently we just use the "control flip arrows" and place them on the exterior/front side at the origin reference plane of the modeled element for any family, whether it be line based or not.

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