Creating different Types of thermostat for different angles

[Anonymous]

I am working on a thermostat family that has 4 separate types for different orientation (0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees). It consists of a small mass that goes inside a wall on placement with an annotation with label "T" coming out of the wall. Ideally I would be able to select whichever type of orientation I want, place it on the wall (or line, etc) and the "T" would appear upright. I have attached the family file.

[CoreyDaun · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, Revit is not capable of determining "down" in regards to the current View. The most basic method of control is to place four instance of the "T" annotation in their proper location, overlapping one another. Create a Yes/No, Instance parameter to control the visibility of each orientation of the annotation. This will allow the user the select which orientation is displayed. See attachment (Revit 2013) to see how I would configure this.

Just let us know if you need any additional info.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Corey. We had something similar already set up so I modified it and it works perfectly.

[Anonymous]

How would you modify that to appear in a Mechanical Systems family instead of General Models family?

The way it is, when you need to place a thermostat, do you find it in the Project Browser under Families and then Create an Instance, or is there a more direct way to use it?

[CoreyDaun]

Well, under normal circumstances it is pretty easy. You can change the Category of most any family by opening and going to Family Category and Parameters and selecting a difference Category, then reload it into the Project. The desired Category must be of the same "classification", meaning that you can take, say an Electrical Equipment family and then change it to a Title Block or Generic Annotation family.

Note that with this particular example, I should have drawn the Symbolic Lines in the Front Elevation View for them to show up on a Plan View when the family is hosted to a vertical face.

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THE INFO BELOW IS USEFUL IF YOUR SYMBOL IS AN EMBEDDED GENERIC ANNOTATION.

Now, I lead the above statement with "under normal circumstances" for a reason; that being that this Face-Based Generic Families do not display embedded Generic Annotations as one would expect. In this case, the Annotation will not appear in a Plan View (with the family hosted to a wall), but instead will only be visible in a Section or Elevation View. This wouldn't be a problem if embedded Generic Annotation could be placed in a view other than the "Ref Level".

In order to get a Face-Based Family to show the embedded Generic Annotation as desired, you have create a new family following these steps:

1. Start a new Family using the Lighting Fixture WALL-based template.

2. Change the Family Category to Mechanical Equipment.

3. Create the model geometry and import your Generic Annotation.

4. Start a new Project and load in this Family.

5. Create a Wall and place an instance of this family on it.

6. Save the Project somewhere are start another new Project.

7. Link-in the previously saved Project.

8. Use the Copy/Monitor tools to copy the family from the Linked Model.

9. You can now open the family that has been copied to this Project and save it somewhere.

This process converts the Family to a Face-Based Family but retains the annotation behavior of the original family. Convoluted, I know, but it works...

[Anonymous]

I shouldn't ask, but could you make a video of that?

[CoreyDaun]

That's a fair request, but I'm not really set up here to so that. I apologize if anything seems unclear - I typed it in haste. Feel free to ask any questions that some to mind!

[Anonymous]

Beggers can't be demanding!  No worries.