List of family categories

[m-de-lange]

Me and some colleagues were discussing about a Fire hose family, whether it should be a Mechanical Equipment or Piping Fixture family.

So I went looking for a list that perhaps tells which category certain families belong to. Sadly i was unable to find one so I came here.

Is there a list out there that explains this?

We are aware that in the end it doesn't really matter for the project. But we do like to see our work more structural by bringing some standards on family categorization.

Much appreciated!

[hmunsell]

are you looking for a tool to tell you the category a family was created as,

• like pointing to a folder on you computer or network and listing each family

or are you looking for a list of out-of-the-box families and what there categories are?

[Mahmoud.Ziedan]

@m-de-lange 

Usually families category is based on the Standard or the logic. For example ,if we are talking about pump,Split,AHU.Chiller,.... (These are all equipment and they are related to plumbing as pumps and HVAC as AHU).Also they could contain both piping and ducting.This is why Autodesk Grouped all these equipment in one Tab and placed it just in the middle of Ducting and piping tools.

Regarding the other debatable elements,there are 2 scenarios:

Refer to the category assigned by the creator(if it was Autodesk defauly library or a supplier).
Adjust these categories by yourself according to your beliefs.
I believe both scenarios are fine if all the stakeholders agreed on it.

Back to your question usually I assign FHC as Mechanical Equipment but it could be plumbing fixture.

Also you can check your master specification CSI and check the FHC under which division.I think they are under CSI 10520 (Fire Protection Specialties).

Please, if this solved your issue, marked as an answer to help others.:)

[m-de-lange]

No nothing like that, simply a list that tells which components belong to which category.

Example:

Lighting - Lighting fixtures

Fire detector - Fire Alarm device

Fire damper - Duct accessories

valve - pipe accessories

A full list like this could help us a lot to determine.

[m-de-lange]

I understand and agree with you, for the most part it's rather logical what family belongs to which category. Other times it's not. Then we'd have to discuss amongst our project team where the family should belong to.

A standard list from Autodesk for example could just simplify this for us, that's all

[iainsavage]

I don’t think such a list exists.

In most cases just think real-world and it should be obvious which category families belong to.

The other consideration is how do they behave in Revit when performing calculations or creating logical systems.

Personally I would say a fire hosereel is fire fighting equipment but Revit has only one category for that which is Sprinkler and probably wouldn’t be appropriate.

So my next choice would be a plumbing fixture on the basis that it is connected to a cold water pipe and discharges infrequently and with diversity across the system.

Although if you are not going to be performing any calculations on the hosereel system then ultimately it probably doesn’t matter much and might be driven more by your visibility graphics and filters setup.

[m-de-lange]

Thank you for your detailed response.

We also use a couple of add-ins such as TheModus to get families from. Often even in these add-ins they categorize the same family under different categories. A Firehose was Mechanical Equipment in TheModus and Piping accessories in the other, hence our confusion.

But i understand and agree with your point.

[iainsavage]

I wouldn’t always rely on what manufacturers or third-party providers etc categorise their equipment as.

I’ve had heating pumps from Grundfos which had domestic hot water connectors on them and wouldn’t connect to heating pipes.

I’ve had valves classed as mechanical equipment.

I’ve had families which were generic models.

I very often have to modify manufacturers families to perform the way they should in the model. Off topic but I recently found that all the Myson radiators which I had downloaded had a fault in a formula which made the flow ten times what it should be and I had to edit all of the families.

They key is what it would be in the real world and how does it behave or display in the model.

In my opinion.

[m-de-lange]

Completely agree, often the families created by third parties hold big mistakes, parameters that haven't been linked properly, wrong categorization etc.

That's why a category and family list would make sense to me, even if a family can be categorized under let's say two different categories, you can in that case choose with your project team.

It could prevent the occasional discussion between colleagues whether it's this or that category. If the list would be accurate.

[RobDraw]

I'm pretty sure there's a way to use the library to create a list from the folder structure.