Grade Beam Family

[leahmbell]

I'm trying to create an annotation in my grade beam family to represent the ties of the rebar. I have everything laid out and I have the spacing of the ties flexing with the length of the grade beam but for some reason I can't get the array to adjust with the width of the grade beam. The array is just a line that I have nested in another generic model family. Can someone shed some light as to how to get this working please?

[RDAOU]

@leahmbell 

It appears to be adjusting (constrained the first and last spacings

[leahmbell]

The length works just fine, I need the width to adjust. I want the annotation of the ties to stretch with the grade beam see 1 vs 2 below. The ties stay the same size no mater if I associate them with a reference plane that is tied to the width of the grade beam. 

[RDAOU]

@leahmbell 

You did not constrain the lines to the tie width in the nested family...how are they supposed to change? You placed 2 reference planes (marked in red) but  you need to align and lock the end points of the lines to those reference planes...even if you mange that, after the lines are arrayed I doubt they will resize properly

Alternatively, Since they are symbolic lines, I would place 1 line in a Detail Item give it a length ...nest it into the grade beam and array it directly there

[leahmbell]

Correct. Every time I associate the ties with the reference plane is says I'm breaking the group and I need to ungroup them. But if I ungroup them I lose the ability to tie the array to adjust to the length.

Do you know how to get around this?

[RDAOU · Accepted solution]

@leahmbell 

I gave you the workaround in the previous reply... place the line in a detail item family...nest that into the grade beam >>> lock to center start planes >>> associate its length with the Tie Width >>> array it

See GIF below...When it comes to arrays use a nested family. This should always be your first option...any other method would be the workaround

[leahmbell]

Thank you!!!

I was trying to do the array in the nested family instead of just having the nested family be just a single line. Thank you so much!!