Families in families in families

[markGGY3N]

Need some revit geniuses over here. I am trying to make a set of families with "shut-off valve .dwg's" I got from a manufacturer's website. The goal is to make these all be in 1 or 2 drop down menus like they are when you get doors. Although each valve is gonna be unique (different sized connections, capped or with a handwheel, etc), I was hoping that I could load them into a project and have a drop down menu for the different options like it is when you load in an autodesk door family.

Been messing around with nested families, and it's not working. I've made a family called "cap" and one called "handwheel" and then loaded them both into a single family called "globe." Now when I load the "globe" family into a project, I don't get a drop down I just get them both sitting right beside each other, as one piece that moves together.

I think I need some text files or something? But as I'm pulling in the .dwg files, I'm unsure of what to put in the .txt as I'm unsure of all the minute differences between each drawing. All help would be appreciated!

Attached are a couple dwgs, a screenshot of what I mean by the drop down menu, my "globe" family, as well as the project I dropped it into.

[markGGY3N]

Here are the other files. Seems one can only upload 3 files per reply

[iainsavage]

In the family you need to create types.

You need parameters to control dimensions and visibility of parts.

You probably need planes to host some of the parts (e.g. the handwheel) so that you can control offset distances from the origin for different valve sizes.

For each type you can then control the applicable dimensions and the visibility of certain parts.

You can create types directly in the family however if you are going to be creating more than about 5 or 6 types it would probably be easier to manage this using an external type catalogue (comma separated text file).

[iainsavage]

Example manufacturer's file attached.

[HVAC-Novice]

I didn't look into the dwg file. But I highly recommend to only use Revit and not some imported dwg data. I also recommend not to have too many nesting layers. Just saying because your title implies 3 layers. All can be done, but it will use a LOT of resources. Keep the family as simple as possible. Only model what is actually necessary, and not all the "looks fancy" things. Generally a simple family should be at 500 kB, and a complex one under 2 MB. If they are larger, definitely look into what you can cut out. Often less is more. 

[markGGY3N]

Thanks for the help! Since you commented I've been looking into Type Catalogs. How do I do that with a .dwg file from autocad? There are a few parameters that are gonna change depending on which one I select, eg pipe connection size, length of connection, wheel radius, just a whole bunch of stuff.. But since I already have all the different sizes I want to use in dwg files, could I load them into one single family? Maybe stack them on top of each other and make different ones disappear depending on a single factor such as pipe connection size? [if pipe connection size = _____ show A, hide B-Z]

[HVAC-Novice]

It probably won't work with dwg files. but I'm not too versed with type catalogs. 

I never use type catalogs since I doubt it really saves resources (unless you have millions of types). And for what I wanted to do (light fixtures with ies files included) it didn't work anyway due to the ies file. I ran into the same problem you seem to have, you can't really include a file to be loaded (in my case ies file, in yours dwg) in an excel spreadsheet. 

I also don't like to do things outside Revit. and if I edit the family in a project, i likely have issues since that only had included some of the types. 

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Creating a dropdown to select different component isn't an issue here (see link for instruction).  The issue is their DWGs cannot be imported in Revit properly.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Revit-C...

[mikewp90]

From what i understand you are looking to generate a family that houses many types and has options to include various accesories/features. I would highly recommend using lookuptables. If you dont know how to use them this will result is a very heavy or over complicated family.  

The "Drop Down" can instead be an instance parameter and you can map all cut sheet dimensions for the valve in the lookuptable. 

Perhaps watch this video here to get you up to speed...https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/ja/class/Power-Revit-Lookup-Tables-2017

What @ToanDN is refering to works great for things like the wheel/connectors and anything that you want nested that may be dependent on nominal pipe size. Nest families assigned to labels is the most robust way to control visibility of components. In simpler families having a Yes/No visibility parameter works too but when yo uhave more than 2 it's tedious and that is where labels come in for the "drop down" ability.