Design Duct vs. Fab Duct in Assemblies

[dmiller_SCE]

I recently changed jobs, and I am transitioning from using design items in Revit to fabrication components. I have used assemblies before with native duct and pipe elements in Revit. When I create an assembly with native Revit content, I can place multiple assembly instances without new assemblies being created. However, when I create an assembly using Fabrication components, if I try to copy or place a new instance of an assembly, Revit automatically creates a new assembly.  Is this standard behavior for using fabrication parts in assemblies?

Link to Screencast to show the issue. I could not insert it for some reason. 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/607333ff-8708-45cb-993d-32961ced246a

[Michael-Mair]

Hi,

I tested the issue in Revit 2020.2.4 and Revit 2022 and yes it's still so in this versions.

Why you need an Assembly? Can you use a Group of the Elements too. For exampeIn in our projects we create the typicals for convector units with a Revit Group.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-E7DE3BE3-B931-4996-AB68-FF44402D6ADB

In this Group more kinds of modelkategories included (such as families and fabrication item).

[dmiller_SCE]

@Michael-Mair, thank you for your response. The reason for using assemblies is because of spooling needs for the project. We have a lot of repetitive portions of a large project. My idea was to copy the assemblies and count how many typical assemblies the project had.  We could then reuse master spool sheets for each repetitive assembly and indicate how many of each individual spool needs to be constructed by the fabrication shop.  

[Michael-Mair]

Hi,

we creating model group for our typicals and a schedule for all model groups. See screencast, maybe it helps.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/e3c373e7-5335-46cc-9749-31727bdf965a

[dmiller_SCE]

@Michael-Mair, in my particular scenario, it would be challenging to use groups because of the limitations of worksets for the group.  Everything in a group is placed on the same workset for the group. With assemblies, the individual items can retain their own worksets. This is important because we will have multi-trade prefabricated racks. For other documentation requirements for this particular situation, the different trades will be on separate worksets. 

[Michael-Mair]

@dmiller_SCE I'm sorry about, that the workaround with groups don't work for you. I also looked at the behave in the last Revit beta and here it's the same.

Maybe you can post is as an Revit Idea.