Custom beam family problems

[Anonymous]

Hi There,

I have made a custom beam family that contains penetrations controlled by an array.  This mostly works well until I adjust the length down such that the array controlling the penetrations can't be resolved, approx 3m.  I have tried adding a visibility parameter to hide the penetrations when the beam is less than 3.1m long but it still fails.

Here's what the beam looks like.  It's a Speedfloor joist.

I've attached the family in the hope that someone smarter than me can look at it and offer some advice.  Maybe there's a better approach altogether.

Thanks.

[L.Maas]

See what happens when your beam gets at 3000 mm

The quantity in one of your arrays becomes 1. This is not allowed in Revit.

So you should resolve it in such away that the no of penetrations will be at least two

[Anonymous]

Hi @L.Maas

That was why I thought about using visibility to control whether the penetrations show or not but I think the array is still trying to resolve.

The manufacturer drawings show the penetrations at min 1300 from the ends and at 1000 crs between so I'm trying to get it to show no penetrations where length<2600 (I think i have it set to 3100 for testing), show 1 penetration where 2600<Length<3600 and show multiple penetrations at 1000 crs where length>3600.

Maybe I'm asking too much of it.

[L.Maas · Accepted solution]

Even when it is not visible the array is  still there causing the error. In the Ideas section of the forum you will find request for arrays allowed to be of 1 or 0 elements. I myself have requested for a void visibility parameter, which could help in these kind of situations

There are workarounds to solve it.

1-Keep 2 elements in the array but position them such that they overlap. You might get a warning that you have identical elements in the same place but this is only a warning.

2-Duplicate (part of) the element. Get one element with the array and one element with a single hole. Depending on the amount of holes you can make one or the other element visible.

For the situation without holes you could make third element. Or modify the position of the void so that it is not cutting the element

[Anonymous]

Thanks @L.Maas

Although it wasn't the solution I was hoping for, I kind of expected it to be the case.

Thanks for your time.

Steve

[Anonymous]

I had requests to use the family so I have uploaded it with this post.  I gave up working on it as it was becoming too complicated for what I was trying to achieve so I made a compromise with just one penetration hole.  Feel free to use the families and develop them further.

Cheers

Steve

[rcastel]

Thanks a lot Steve,

I'll try to get a friend to work on it... as I've told you I'm not an expert on family editing, but if I get any improvement I'll upload it back.

All the best.

Sincerely,

Ricardo Castel-Branco

[Anonymous]

No problem.

I look forward to seeing if your friend can develop it further.