Found BUG? in Creating Assemblies with nested family

[Anonymous]

 as the pic below ... after I create assembly of structural column and the structural connection family (nested family I made it up my self)

It' seem like the nested family (bolts) not go into the assemblies ... and this cause all the bolts missing in the assemblies drawings.

Any Idea or Suggestion ? 

PS. Attached is my nested family.

[Anonymous]

Hello @Anonymous

Add up the bolts into your assembly and see if helps.

Click the ADD on the left side of your screen then click the Bolts you want to include then finish it.

[Anonymous]

Hello @Anonymous

Add up the bolts into your assembly and see if helps.

[L.Maas]

Yes, this is correct. Not sure if it is a bug or designed this way.

This has been the case for many(all?) Revit versions.

as @Anonymous mentioned you can add them by editing the assembly and use the add function and select the missing items. They normally will show up quite clearly as they are not colored as the items already belonging to the assembly

Maybe something for the IDEAS forum?

[Anonymous]

Thanks all you guys ...

Adding individual bolts item into assembly manually not a smart way to do it ... imagine you have more than 100 unique column assemblies ... that's mean you have to manually add bolt = Number of bolts x 100 Column Assemblies ... and that's HUGE !!

The work around is to delete all the nested family bolts from my steel plate and then create an extrusion within that family to represent bolts ... and play some work around to make it parametric and schedulable.

Hope the development team see this thread.

[L.Maas · Accepted solution]

There are things you can do to speed up this process.

Maybe little bit quirky. It requires that your nested families to have a visibility parameter.

-Created the assembly (nested families are not included). 

-Edit the assembly.

-Use the visibility parameter to unhide the nested families.

The shared nested families will now be added to the assembly. If all the bolts are linked to a single visibility parameter in your family they all can be added to the active assembly. This would basically get the same result as creating a single extrusion for your bolts as you proposed.

Second solution. Make use of Dynamo. Dynamo has nodes for creating assemblies and selecting sub-elements (nested families). Combining those nodes allows to create complete assembly by just selecting the column. A concept shown in the screencast (first manual then with dynamo).

With some additional nodes (depending on your project) it should not be too difficult to create all your 100 assemblies in a single Dynamo script.

[Anonymous]

Great ! @L.Maas

The Dynamo sound to be very interesting solution ... never thought that Dynamo can also create an assembly.

I'll try it out for my next project.

[lucaspfmoreira]

Hello.

I can't find the hide/unhide option for nested elements. I can edit the assembly and manually ad each element. 

Do you mind elaborating on that? Which option is the hide nested families?

---

 -Use the visibility parameter to unhide the nested families.

The shared nested families will now be added to the assembly. If all the bolts are linked to a single visibility parameter in your family they all can be added to the active assembly. T

I mean the families are visible outside the assembly views but not in the assembly.

Thanks in advance.

[L.Maas]

See my first line in my post "It requires that your nested families to have a visibility parameter."

It means that you have to make sure that a visibility parameter is used in your nested families.

If it does not have a visibility parameter (yet), than you will have to create it.

[lucaspfmoreira]

Oh, I see. They do have a visibility parameter, but they are conditional (have formulas) so I guess this will not work for me. Your dynamo example does not show the name of the nodes. Could you share them so I can try that approach? 

Thanks a lot!

[petrlanik]

I have no problem display the nested families in the assembly in classic views, but they d not display in assembly drawings unless each individual nested element in family is addes separately in assembly. Any advice on that?