Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Shared families & sloped walls

So its been a few days since I posted, but then I haven't done very much in Revit either. What I have been playing with is the shared family setting for families. Turns out that if a family is shared, and nested into another family, you can only link to the nested family's instance parameters, type parameters are un-touchable because you're supposed to use a type parameter to allow the user to choose a different type of the nested family. In theory this sounds great, but there is one minor problem that comes along with this concept. In my case I've been working on baseline generic casework families, starting with a whole kit of casework parts; doors, panels, shelves, hardware, etc...

So what's the problem you ask? Well, if make a generic base cabinent with 2 doors, I probably want those doors to resize with the cabinent automatically. Great idea you say, however then you tell me that you want to schedule those doors separate from the cabinent, so that means I need the doors to be a nested shared family. Well then, I can't do both, the only way to do both would be to make all the physcial dimensions of the doors instance based parameters, which kinda defeats the purpose of having different door types. I would be willing to do this if it were possible to swap one door family for another, say if you wanted to evaluate different door styles, like a flush, paneled, or glass, but that kind of nested family swapping isn't supported yet, so it really doesn't make very much sense.

On another note, using a very small mass element in my project I very handily and very quickly made this slab wall that is supposed to slope out as it goes up, it works great! Mass elements can be very useful for unique conditions as they allow you to "cheat" when it comes to some unique situations regarding walls, roofs and floors.

4 comments:

Daniel Hurtubise said...

I have to disagree with that comment. Did you find the way to link parameter from nested family ? if not enail me i will explan it to you.

daniel.hurtubise@lemaymichaud.com

Robert said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Robert said...

I'm curious to know what you have in mind Daniel. From my expereince so far, a host family's parameters can only link to the instance parameters of a nested family if that nested family is shared. If the nested family is not shared, then you can cross link all the parameters you want to. What I would like to do is not cross link actual dimensions, but be able to create some inteligence between shared families. Such that a 24" wide cabienet is smart enough to know that only a pair of 12" doors can go on it, or a single 24" door. Or the other way around, and the doors are smart enough to know what size cabinents they belong on. In this way you would still be able to created whatever doors you want, but I don't have to worry about users putting a pair of 18" doors on a 24" cabinient.

djnelson75 said...

I know this was an older post, but I was wondering if you ever found a work around, as I am struggling with something similar?