IntroductionWelcome| 00:05 | My name is Paul Aubin and I'm
thrilled to be here teaching you the Revit
| | 00:08 | Architecture Family Editor course on lynda.com.
| | 00:11 | When it comes to building
information modeling, content is king.
| | 00:15 | Your projects will only be as good as
the data and objects that you put in them.
| | 00:19 | But you and I both know that certain
items just require custom treatment, and
| | 00:23 | the Family Editor is amazingly
powerful and allows you to build just about
| | 00:26 | anything you can imagine.
| | 00:28 | In this course I'll get you started
on the right foot by going over the
| | 00:31 | high-level big picture concepts first.
| | 00:33 | Then we're going to dive in and
create some annotation and model Families.
| | 00:38 | We're going to make those Families
parametric by introducing flexible
| | 00:41 | dimensions, materials,
and visual characteristics.
| | 00:44 | We'll explore several
different kinds of Parameters:
| | 00:47 | Parameters to control length, angle,
driving array quantities, and inputting
| | 00:52 | useful product data that we can
report in our project schedules.
| | 00:55 | We'll even look at creating advanced
formulas and conditional statements to
| | 00:59 | reduce data input, drive complex
relationships, and prevent our Families from
| | 01:04 | failing on bad input.
| | 01:05 | So if you're ready to take your Rivet
projects to the next level, then the
| | 01:08 | Family Editor awaits you.
| | 01:09 | Let's get started!
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium Member of the lynda
.com Online Training Library, you have
| | 00:04 | access to the Exercise Files
used throughout this title.
| | 00:07 | The Exercise Files are in a folder called
Exercise Files that I've placed on the Desktop.
| | 00:11 | You can place yours wherever you like.
| | 00:14 | Within that folder we have several
subfolders containing the files for each chapter.
| | 00:18 | There are also some general files
that I use across several chapters.
| | 00:22 | Within the chapter folders you'll
find the files that I use for each movie
| | 00:25 | within a particular chapter.
| | 00:27 | You can follow along with these
files, or you can use your own.
| | 00:30 | If you are a monthly or annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have access to
| | 00:34 | the Exercise Files, but you can
follow along with your own work.
| | 00:37 | Let's get started and create some Families.
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|
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1. Basic ConceptsUnderstanding family hierarchy| 00:00 | All elements in the Revit
software belong to Families.
| | 00:03 | Family is one of the most fundamental
and basic building blocks in the software.
| | 00:07 | When you create your model, when
you interact with views, when you add
| | 00:11 | annotation or configure your
project settings, in all cases you're
| | 00:14 | interacting with a Family.
| | 00:16 | Therefore in this lesson we're going
to define the term Family as it applies
| | 00:20 | to the Revit software.
| | 00:22 | So let's start with a basic definition.
| | 00:23 | I pulled this from the Help file.
| | 00:26 | Families are classes of
elements that belong to a category.
| | 00:30 | Family groups elements with a common
set of Parameters or properties, identical
| | 00:34 | use, and a similar representation.
| | 00:37 | Different elements in a Family may have
different values for some or all of the
| | 00:41 | properties, but the set of properties, their
names and their meaning must all be the same.
| | 00:47 | That's from the Help file, but that's a
pretty good working definition of the word Family.
| | 00:51 | We're going to start with that and
now we're going to talk about how that
| | 00:54 | definition, or how the concept of Family
fits into the broader hierarchy of the software.
| | 00:58 | So at the top of that
hierarchy we have Categories.
| | 01:01 | Categories are also built into the software;
| | 01:03 | they're fixed and pre-built.
| | 01:05 | You and I can't actually change the
Categories in any way or add Categories.
| | 01:10 | They include things like walls or
doors or roofs or stairs or pipes or ducts,
| | 01:14 | if we were talking about MEP, or some beams
and columns if we were talking about structure.
| | 01:18 | So there's a broad list of
Categories that we have to choose from.
| | 01:23 | Each category will have
Families associated with it.
| | 01:27 | So that definition we just
discussed sort of fits in here next.
| | 01:30 | So if you remember the first part of
the definition was that a Family was a
| | 01:33 | class of elements in a Category.
| | 01:36 | So it comes next on the hierarchy.
| | 01:38 | But even at that level a Family
is still a pretty broad thing.
| | 01:41 | It defines overall characteristics,
overall behaviors, but there may be several
| | 01:45 | more specific behaviors or
characteristics of each Family;
| | 01:49 | we refer to those as Types.
| | 01:51 | So each variation of a Family that we want
to save and use over again, we save as type.
| | 01:57 | And then finally, the actual
objects in the model are the Instances.
| | 02:01 | So we could work this hierarchy going down the
chain, or we could actually work it backwards.
| | 02:05 | So we could say that an Instance belongs
to a Type, that Type in turn belongs to
| | 02:10 | a Family, and the Family is
part of a broader Category.
| | 02:12 | So here's a quick example, the Category
would be Doors, the Family comes next,
| | 02:17 | that's Single-Flush in this case, and then
finally 36 x 84 would be the name of the Type.
| | 02:23 | We don't see the Instance listed here,
because the Instance is the actual thing
| | 02:26 | you would click on in the software itself.
| | 02:29 | So that gives us a working definition
of the term Family and how it fits into
| | 02:33 | the overall hierarchy of the software:
| | 02:35 | Category, Family, Type and Instance.
| | 02:37 | But as you're no doubt aware, there are
actually several kinds of Families and
| | 02:42 | in our next movie we're going to look
at the three overall kinds of Families.
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| Understanding family concepts| 00:00 | So in the previous movie, we
discussed how everything in Revit belongs to a
| | 00:04 | Family, and that nearly every action
that we perform in the software involves
| | 00:08 | manipulating a Family in some way.
| | 00:10 | In this movie we want to discuss some
of the important distinctions between the
| | 00:14 | various kinds of Families.
| | 00:16 | Specifically we have three kinds of
Families and we're going to look at each one
| | 00:20 | of those basically here in this session.
| | 00:22 | This will help set the stage for
the rest of the training series.
| | 00:25 | The most important concept to
understand is that there are essentially two
| | 00:30 | overall classifications of Family:
| | 00:32 | those that we can edit and those that we can't.
| | 00:35 | So let's start with the System Family.
| | 00:37 | The System Family is built into the system.
| | 00:40 | You and I cannot edit a system Family.
| | 00:43 | They come from the factory in the
software that way and we can configure
| | 00:47 | certain settings and so on about system
Families, but for the most part System
| | 00:50 | Families are what they are.
| | 00:52 | You and I cannot customize them in any way.
| | 00:55 | The next kind of Family we
have is an In-Place Family.
| | 00:57 | Now an In-Place Family is ... it's
a very special case of the Family.
| | 01:02 | It's meant to be for one-off unique
situations in your model and I want to talk
| | 01:07 | about that more in just a couple of minutes.
| | 01:09 | And then the third kind is the
Component Family, or is sometimes called the
| | 01:13 | Loadable Family, or sometimes just Family.
| | 01:16 | So it goes by a few different names, but
really for the majority of the training
| | 01:21 | series when we talk about working in
the Family Editor, we're really talking
| | 01:24 | about that third kind.
| | 01:26 | Those are the kinds of Families
that we have complete flexibility,
| | 01:29 | complete freedom and we can build
them customize them, create them
| | 01:32 | completely from scratch.
| | 01:33 | What I want to do is go into Revit
here and I want to show you an example of
| | 01:38 | each of the three kinds and talk about
these just a little bit more carefully.
| | 01:42 | Over here on the right-hand side
of the screen I have a floor plan;
| | 01:45 | it's a pretty typical floor plan.
| | 01:46 | And you see some examples of walls that
are on the screen and walls are a great
| | 01:51 | example of a system Family.
| | 01:53 | Walls are built into the software.
| | 01:55 | What it means to be a wall in
Revit is predefined by Revit.
| | 02:00 | You and I can't customize
what it means to be a wall.
| | 02:03 | Now let's not confuse that with wall types.
| | 02:06 | I certainly can select a wall;
| | 02:09 | choose different types off the list.
| | 02:12 | I can go to Edit Type.
| | 02:14 | I can even duplicate and create my own types.
| | 02:17 | I can do that with walls, I can do it
with floors, I can do it with roofs;
| | 02:20 | any kind of system Family.
| | 02:22 | What I cannot do with a system
Family is edit the Family in any way.
| | 02:26 | Notice there is no Edit Family button up here.
| | 02:29 | I can't go into the Family
Editor and create a Wall Family.
| | 02:33 | I can't load in a Wall
Family from an external file.
| | 02:37 | If you go to the Home tab and
click the Wall tool, there is no Load
| | 02:41 | Family button over here.
| | 02:42 | So those are the things you're looking for.
| | 02:44 | If you are not sure whether it's a
system Family or a loadable Family, those are
| | 02:48 | the things you're looking for.
| | 02:50 | Contrast that to the Door Family.
| | 02:52 | If I click the Door tool,
there is a Load Family button.
| | 02:55 | If I click the Window tool, there is
a Load Family button, the Column tool,
| | 03:00 | Load Family, and so on.
| | 03:02 | If I select one of those kinds of
elements, like a piece of furniture, or a
| | 03:08 | door, or a window, you
would see an Edit Family button.
| | 03:12 | Those are Loadable Families or
Component Families, or again, just Families.
| | 03:16 | Those are the kinds of Families that
we'll be working with in this training series.
| | 03:21 | We mentioned In-Place Family;
| | 03:23 | In-Place Family is the third kind
of Family that we can work with.
| | 03:27 | And it's a special case. It is editable.
| | 03:30 | It is a Family that we can modify and
customize and build our own, and I have an
| | 03:34 | example of one right here, this sort of
curved casework item here that you can
| | 03:39 | see both here in the floor plan and
over here in this 3-D view, you have this
| | 03:43 | sort of curved condition.
| | 03:44 | It would be very difficult to define
that item all by itself in the Family
| | 03:51 | Editor without the surrounding context,
without knowing that there was a certain
| | 03:55 | curved wall there, without knowing
exactly how much space was available and how
| | 03:59 | many pieces of casework we
could fit within that area.
| | 04:03 | So that's a pretty typical case of where
you would choose to go to an In-Place Family.
| | 04:07 | But the caution is an In-
Place Family is completely unique.
| | 04:11 | If I were to take this In-Place Family
and copy it around to other locations
| | 04:16 | in the project, I would actually be
creating completely new instances of the Family.
| | 04:20 | They wouldn't just be Types like
they would be with a Component Family.
| | 04:25 | So if I made a change to the first
one, it would not ripple through and
| | 04:29 | change the other copies.
| | 04:30 | So it's very important to understand that.
| | 04:32 | An In-Place Family can be just what
you need in a case where you have a very
| | 04:36 | unique and one-off condition.
| | 04:38 | But if you use it thinking that
you're going to then be able around and
| | 04:43 | manipulate it, you may be surprised
when you find that it doesn't behave the
| | 04:47 | same way as other items do, and you
don't get the benefit of being able to
| | 04:51 | make the change in one place and see that
change ripple throughout the rest of the software.
| | 04:55 | Not trying to discourage you
unnecessarily from In-Place Families.
| | 04:59 | This is really the only time we're going
to talk about them in this training series.
| | 05:02 | I want to put them out there in the
interest of completeness, so that we know
| | 05:06 | that In-Place Families
is one of our three kinds;
| | 05:08 | they do have some interesting possibilities.
| | 05:10 | But for the most part when we talk about
Families in this training series, we're
| | 05:14 | going to be talking about
Loadable/Component Families;
| | 05:18 | items that we build in the Family
Editor and then load into other Projects.
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| Using models vs. annotation| 00:00 | So in the last few movies we've been
discussing the difference between the
| | 00:04 | System Families and the so-called non-
system Families, Component Families,
| | 00:08 | Loadable Families, they've
had a lot of different terms.
| | 00:11 | From now on in the training series
we're going to refer to anything that we can
| | 00:14 | manipulate in the Family Editor simply as a
Family, just to make it a little bit easier.
| | 00:20 | In this movie I would like to focus on
two major classifications between the
| | 00:25 | so-called Component or Loadable, or as
we just said Families that we can modify
| | 00:31 | in the Family Editor.
| | 00:32 | And that would be the Model
Families, from the View-Specific or
| | 00:36 | Annotation Families.
| | 00:37 | Now this diagram that I have on screen
sort of encapsulates all the different
| | 00:42 | kinds of elements that are available
in a Revit project and some of these are
| | 00:47 | strictly in the project environment,
some are in the Family environment, but it
| | 00:50 | does a pretty good job of summarizing
at a high level, how everything fits in.
| | 00:57 | On the model side of the branch,
we can see that it branches into two
| | 01:01 | subcategories of Host
Elements and Component Elements.
| | 01:04 | Now Host Elements is really just
another name for System Families, and so those
| | 01:09 | aren't the ones we're going to be talking about.
| | 01:11 | You can see from the diagram it's
the Walls, the Floors, the Roofs.
| | 01:14 | The Component Families is the Loadable
Families or the ones in the Family Editor
| | 01:18 | that we're going to be talking about
and those are our model elements that we
| | 01:21 | can put our hands on, that we can
touch, that are part of the building.
| | 01:24 | So if I clarify, both Host and
Component Elements are real things that you can
| | 01:29 | touch and represent actual objects in
the Project, they represent real things,
| | 01:34 | but it's only the component side
that are the ones that we can actually
| | 01:37 | manipulate in Family Editor.
| | 01:38 | So for the coming chapters those
are the ones that we'll be looking at.
| | 01:41 | We'll be building Furniture examples.
| | 01:44 | We'll look at some Door examples.
| | 01:45 | We have a few different types of
Families that we're going to focus on, on
| | 01:48 | the Component side.
| | 01:49 | But they all represent
real things in your Project;
| | 01:53 | actual objects that either get
installed in place or are built in place.
| | 01:57 | On the Annotation or View Specific side,
we're talking about descriptive items
| | 02:02 | that get added on top of the view that
are not real things, you don't actually
| | 02:06 | build them, but they describe your
design intent, they describe what the drawing
| | 02:11 | is showing in further detail and make it
easier for the end user of that drawing
| | 02:16 | to understand what they're looking at.
| | 02:17 | Those include Symbols, Tags, Text or Dimensions.
| | 02:21 | Now Text and Dimensions
are actually System Families.
| | 02:23 | So we won't be manipulating
those in the Family Editor.
| | 02:26 | But Tags or Symbols are things that we
can manipulate in the Family Editor and
| | 02:30 | those will be among the first examples
that we look at together in the Family
| | 02:33 | Editor in the next chapter.
| | 02:35 | Detail Components are also on this
side of the branch and so those are also
| | 02:39 | View-Specific items that can be
manipulated in the Family Editor as well.
| | 02:43 | Now I haven't really highlighted the
middle part of this diagram, because, for
| | 02:47 | the most part those items are not
Families that we can manipulate, they are
| | 02:51 | important and they are in our software
and we manipulate and work with those in
| | 02:54 | our projects all the time, but they're
not things that we will be discussing in
| | 02:58 | terms of the Family Editor.
| | 03:00 | However, Reference planes on the
Datum Element branch are going to be very
| | 03:03 | important and so when we get to our Model
Families, we'll talk about that a little bit more.
| | 03:08 | As we can see in this diagram, there
are many different kinds of Families, but
| | 03:12 | only certain ones really concern us
when we're talking about the Family Editor.
| | 03:16 | And for the most part they break into
these two overall classifications of Model
| | 03:20 | versus Annotation or View-Specific
Families and that will really be the focus of
| | 03:25 | the majority of this training series,
with the larger focus being on the Model
| | 03:29 | Families, and a small focus
on the Annotation Families.
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| Exploring libraries and resources| 00:00 | So to close out this chapter
let's talk about a few best practices.
| | 00:04 | In general, it is always more efficient
to simply load an existing Family into
| | 00:08 | your project and use it.
| | 00:09 | If the precise family or type you need
is not readily available, you can often
| | 00:14 | find one that's close, and then you can
make some quick modifications to it to
| | 00:18 | bring it in line with what you do need.
| | 00:20 | Failing this, you can of course
endeavor to build the Family yourself.
| | 00:24 | The main focus of this training series
is giving you the tools and procedures
| | 00:27 | you need to do just that,
to build Families yourself.
| | 00:31 | And in the process you will be
learning the steps and the procedures and the
| | 00:35 | overall tools that you need to actually
analyze and assess Families that you may
| | 00:41 | be downloading or accessing from other sources.
| | 00:44 | So in the interest of best practices
let's kind of walk through those basic
| | 00:48 | steps that you should be following and
then keep in mind that in the training
| | 00:52 | series we'll be building most of our
Families from scratch for the educational value.
| | 00:57 | So of course, the first thing that we
want to do is try and find a suitable
| | 01:00 | Family and there's lots of places
we might locate a suitable Family.
| | 01:04 | For most firms, the first place you
should look is the Office Standard Library.
| | 01:09 | You can assume that if you've got
anybody on board who serves the role of a CAD
| | 01:13 | or BIM Manager that they probably have
a collection of Families available that
| | 01:18 | they have sanctioned as
official office standard contents.
| | 01:21 | So that would definitely be
the first place look to look.
| | 01:24 | The next place that you could
look is the stuff that's installed
| | 01:27 | Out-of-the-box from Autodesk.
| | 01:29 | Depending on your region, what part
of the world you're in, you may have
| | 01:33 | different content packs installed.
| | 01:36 | You can choose from among those
and there are lots and lots of
| | 01:39 | Families available.
| | 01:40 | Some of it's pretty basic;
| | 01:42 | some of it's a pretty good starting point.
| | 01:44 | And then course there are copious online
libraries out there and you could do an
| | 01:49 | Internet search and find
lots and lots to choose from.
| | 01:53 | Assuming you find a family in one of
those locations that's a good starting
| | 01:58 | point, it's often going to be more
efficient for you to take that Family,
| | 02:01 | open it up in the Family Editor, make
a few modifications, than to start all
| | 02:04 | over again from scratch.
| | 02:06 | But of course, your third
option is to do just that.
| | 02:09 | If you can't find the family that suits
the need you're looking for, it's just
| | 02:13 | simply not available or for whatever
reason you find it easier, then you can
| | 02:17 | certainly do that and that will be
how many of the examples will be created
| | 02:21 | throughout this training series.
| | 02:22 | I want to take a couple minutes to
talk about what's installed and also what
| | 02:27 | you can find online.
| | 02:29 | What's installed will vary
depending on what region you're in.
| | 02:33 | So if you're in the US, and you
installed the default installation, you'll get
| | 02:37 | both an Imperial and a Metric US library.
| | 02:41 | They'll have shortcuts over on the side,
and in this case I have the Imperial
| | 02:45 | Library installed over here, and
you'll also have on the dropdown under
| | 02:49 | Libraries, you'll be able to see what
are the Libraries you have installed, so
| | 02:54 | this particular computer I have
the US Imperial and US Metric.
| | 02:58 | In other regions throughout the world
when you're installing Revit, you can
| | 03:01 | actually choose different content packs
and install other options, so there are
| | 03:06 | several Libraries that Autodesk does
provide that we have available to us.
| | 03:11 | The other resource we have
available from Autodesk is Autodesk Seek.
| | 03:14 | It's an online web portal
where you can put in a search.
| | 03:17 | You can tell it which product you're
interested in searching for and of course
| | 03:21 | all the major Autodesk products are
listed, so of course, I've chosen Revit
| | 03:24 | here, and we can type in our search criteria.
| | 03:27 | So perhaps I'm looking for Door Families,
so I can simply put in the word Door
| | 03:32 | and press Enter in the Search field
and you'll see I'll get a variety of Door
| | 03:36 | Families from which to choose.
| | 03:38 | So the thing you want to look for is this
indication right here beneath each item.
| | 03:42 | This particular one says Manufacturers,
so that's how I know that the source of
| | 03:46 | this Family comes from a product manufacturer.
| | 03:48 | Over here on the left hand
side there are Product Libraries.
| | 03:53 | The General Library or the Revit
Architecture, Revit MEP Structure, these are
| | 03:58 | the out-of-the-box Autodesk Libraries.
| | 04:01 | So if I click, for example, on the
Revit Architecture link, now what you're
| | 04:05 | going to see instead of manufacturer is
the word Library here and that's telling
| | 04:10 | me that this content is actually
provided by Autodesk as one of the Libraries
| | 04:15 | that I actually could install directly,
or I can go access it here if I haven't
| | 04:20 | previously installed it.
| | 04:22 | On this side, both here, and if I go to
the previous page, over here, it shows
| | 04:27 | you which file formats
are available for that item.
| | 04:31 | So the RFA files are typically what we're
looking for, if we're interested in Families.
| | 04:36 | Those are our Family files, but you
can see this particular manufacturer is
| | 04:39 | providing this piece of
content in a variety of formats.
| | 04:43 | Another place that's pretty
popular to look is the AUGI web site.
| | 04:46 | AUGI is the Autodesk User Group
International and they have a whole series of
| | 04:52 | forums devoted to Revit, and those are
broken down into General Categories and
| | 04:57 | tips and tricks and so on, and some
of these posts are just informational,
| | 05:02 | where people share information with one
another and ask questions and answer questions.
| | 05:06 | And in many cases people actually post
Families in answer to queries that people
| | 05:11 | might have in the forums.
| | 05:12 | So this is certainly a good place to
search and you can use their Search feature
| | 05:17 | over here, and put in what you're
looking for, and you'll find not only
| | 05:20 | sometimes ready-made Families, ready
to go that you can download, but also
| | 05:24 | explanations and
discussions related to those topics.
| | 05:27 | So those are just a few sites,
there are dozens, if not hundreds more.
| | 05:31 | And if you do a web search in your
favorite search engine, you will no doubt
| | 05:35 | come up with many possibilities.
| | 05:37 | So that gives us an example of some of
the places that we can look for content.
| | 05:43 | Remember that it's always easier and
usually quicker to start with a Family
| | 05:47 | that already exists.
| | 05:48 | If a suitable Family is not readily
available from any of your installed
| | 05:54 | locations or from the web searches that
you do, you can certainly build it yourself.
| | 05:59 | But I would look for opportunities to
find a suitable Family that already exists
| | 06:03 | or perhaps one that's close that you
can modify, because as I said, that will
| | 06:08 | usually be more efficient.
| | 06:10 | You should also vet any Families you
download very carefully, particularly if
| | 06:14 | they come from the web.
| | 06:15 | Some of the manufacturer's content and
some of the online sites provide very,
| | 06:21 | very high quality content,
some of them not so much.
| | 06:24 | So it's going to be up to you to open up
those Families, take a look at them and
| | 06:29 | to make good decisions about whether or
not the content is suitable for the task
| | 06:33 | that you have in mind.
| | 06:34 | And throughout the course of this
training series when you're learning how to
| | 06:37 | create Families yourself, you'll also
be equipping yourself with the tools you
| | 06:41 | need to be able to properly vet and
analyze those downloadable Families as well.
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|
|
2. Annotation FamiliesKinds of annotation families| 00:00 | Annotation Families can be any graphic or
symbol that you use repeatedly in your projects.
| | 00:05 | We can break this down into
two basic classifications:
| | 00:08 | Annotations that report data
from the Model and those that don't.
| | 00:12 | A North Arrow would be a good example of
an Annotation Family that is static and
| | 00:15 | does not report data from the Model.
| | 00:17 | A door Tag would be good example of
one that does report data from the Model.
| | 00:21 | In this movie we'll look
at a few examples of each.
| | 00:24 | Let's start with what are Annotation Families.
| | 00:27 | We've discussed this in the previous
chapter a little bit, but an annotation is
| | 00:30 | always a View-Specific element.
| | 00:33 | Here on screen I have a few examples.
| | 00:35 | I have a door Tag, I have a window Tag right
here, there is a centerline symbol, and so on.
| | 00:40 | If I would have come down here to Level
1, right-click it and choose Duplicate
| | 00:44 | with View, I can choose to
Duplicate it with or without its Detailing;
| | 00:47 | Detailing is another word for
annotation, right, or View-Specific elements.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to choose Duplicate and
what you're going to see is, the only items
| | 00:55 | that are left behind are the items
that are actually model elements.
| | 00:58 | So all the stuff that disappeared that
was the Annotation, and all of those are
| | 01:03 | Families in one way or another.
| | 01:04 | They're just different kinds of Families.
| | 01:07 | This, and this is a Tag Family,
this and this are just Generic
| | 01:13 | Annotation Families.
| | 01:14 | This is another Tag Family.
| | 01:15 | This is also a Generic Annotation Family.
| | 01:18 | So they fall into these
different classifications if you will.
| | 01:21 | Let's start with Generic Annotation.
| | 01:23 | In Generic Annotation, we actually
have three examples on the screen;
| | 01:28 | The Centerline symbol, the North
Arrow and this little Align symbol are all
| | 01:32 | considered Generic Annotations.
| | 01:34 | Now everything I'm showing you on
screen comes out of the box in the Installed
| | 01:37 | Imperial Library from Autodesk.
| | 01:39 | So the Centerline and the North Arrow
were already part of the project, but both
| | 01:43 | of those could be found if I went to
Load Family and looked under Annotations,
| | 01:50 | you would see them in this folder here.
| | 01:53 | North Arrow is here,
there are two versions of it.
| | 01:55 | And the Centerline symbol, further up
right here, and the one that I have back
| | 02:01 | here on the screen, this Align symbol
right here, that's actually not an Align
| | 02:05 | symbol, I wrote the word Align in there.
| | 02:06 | It's actually a more generic symbol;
| | 02:08 | it's just called Label Annotation.
| | 02:11 | And there are three variations of it;
| | 02:13 | One that's set to 1/8" tall text, another 1/
16" tall text and the third one 3-32" tall.
| | 02:20 | I brought in the 3-32" for the
example, you that you see on my screen.
| | 02:24 | If I wanted to bring in the 1/8" tall.
| | 02:27 | So, after I'm done downloading it, I
can go to the Annotate tab and I can use
| | 02:31 | the Symbol tool on the Annotate
tab to actually place that thing.
| | 02:34 | Now Generic Annotations, probably the
most challenging aspect of working with
| | 02:38 | them is the terminology.
| | 02:39 | We load a Generic Annotation symbol, or
we create a Generic Annotation Family,
| | 02:45 | but we use the Place Symbol tool in
order to actually place it in our projects.
| | 02:50 | So you can see here, here is Label
Annotation and when I place it, initially all
| | 02:54 | I get is a question mark.
| | 02:56 | So I had gone in there
and typed in the word Align.
| | 02:59 | I could also type in a note here and
this particular Family is set up with that
| | 03:06 | label being a type-based Parameter.
| | 03:09 | So it's going to ask me if it's okay
to continue, because what I've actually
| | 03:12 | done is created a type modification there.
| | 03:16 | And then I could certainly click on it
and Add the Leaders and it would behave
| | 03:19 | much the same way as my Align symbol.
| | 03:22 | In other words, a Generic Annotation is
really just a symbol that can either be
| | 03:28 | static, graphical information like
this North Arrow or like this Centerline.
| | 03:33 | The CL in that case is static;
| | 03:36 | it's not something that I could modify.
| | 03:38 | Obviously, the North Arrow is
graphic, so I can't modify that.
| | 03:41 | There's no text to modify, and
in this case it's got a label.
| | 03:46 | So a Label is a piece of
Annotation that I can actually manipulate
| | 03:51 | directly within the symbol.
| | 03:53 | Now the Tags also use labels.
| | 03:55 | Okay, but the labels and the
Tags are a little different.
| | 03:57 | Here the Tag was just a generic
placeholder and I was able to type in anything I
| | 04:02 | like, like the word Remove
Finish or the word Align.
| | 04:06 | Here the designation is
actually part of the host object;
| | 04:10 | in this case the Window
or in this case the Door.
| | 04:13 | So if I select my Door and I come
over here and change this to another
| | 04:20 | designation, the Tag responds immediately.
| | 04:23 | If you open both of these items in the
Family Editor, so let me take the Tag
| | 04:28 | here and do Edit Family, this
piece of text is actually a label.
| | 04:34 | You can see from the tooltip on
screen or from the tooltip down here on the
| | 04:38 | Status Bar, when I hover
over it, it says the word Label.
| | 04:41 | That is a piece of text that's
actually linked to some property in the model.
| | 04:48 | We call that a Label in the Family Editor.
| | 04:50 | If I switch back to my Sample Floor
Plan here and open this Family instead with
| | 04:55 | Edit Family, this is still considered
a Label, but here they've even left the
| | 04:59 | word just generically Label, because
they don't really know how we're going to
| | 05:03 | use that label, it's
really for any purpose we want.
| | 05:06 | It's more generic and it's not
attached to anything in the model.
| | 05:11 | Okay, so just some different kinds of
annotation that we can create and work on.
| | 05:16 | So a Tag is associated with a specific kind
of object and a Generic Annotation is not.
| | 05:24 | A Generic Annotation is just a basic symbol
that we can really fill in any way that we like.
| | 05:30 | The process of creating either
kind of Annotation Family is pretty
| | 05:34 | straightforward and that will
be the focus of the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an annotation family| 00:00 | Architectural and engineering
drawings all require many symbols and
| | 00:04 | specialized graphics.
| | 00:05 | Many tags and symbols are easy to
recognize in established industry standards,
| | 00:09 | and some are customized versions
that exist only in our offices.
| | 00:14 | Annotation Families in Revit allow us to
create any common graphical symbol that
| | 00:19 | our projects may require.
| | 00:20 | Virtually any graphic standard can be achieved.
| | 00:23 | In this movie, we'll build a simple
North Arrow to illustrate the point.
| | 00:27 | So on screen I have a pretty simple
Floor Plan and I'm going to use this as a
| | 00:32 | backdrop project to load my
Family into when it's complete.
| | 00:35 | I recommend this approach;
| | 00:37 | I call this my sandbox project.
| | 00:39 | It can be anything you like.
| | 00:40 | It can be a couple walls, pretty much an
empty file, or it can be a complete project;
| | 00:44 | it's really up to you.
| | 00:46 | I do recommend that it's based on
your office standard template, so that if
| | 00:50 | there's anything about the symbol
you're creating that needs to match a
| | 00:54 | certain office standard, you will have those
items readily available in your testing file.
| | 00:59 | So for now I'm just going to Minimize
this project file, kind of keep it open in
| | 01:03 | the background, and I'm going to create
my New Family from the Application menu.
| | 01:08 | So we'll go upto the big R or the
Application menu and we highlight the New
| | 01:11 | command and I could go directly to New
> Family, but that would bring me to the
| | 01:16 | more generic Family folder.
| | 01:18 | They also have an item here for new
Annotation symbol, and if I do that, that
| | 01:23 | takes me into an Annotations folder,
which is just one folder deeper than where
| | 01:27 | I would go, had I gone to New Family.
| | 01:30 | If I go up one level, you can see this
is where New Family would take me, and
| | 01:33 | new Annotation symbol just takes me here.
| | 01:36 | Otherwise they achieve the same thing.
| | 01:38 | Now you'll see several
items listed in this folder.
| | 01:41 | These represent the various categories
of Annotation symbol that we can create.
| | 01:45 | You can see most of these are Tag categories.
| | 01:48 | At this point we're not ready to create
a Tag yet, so we're going to settle on
| | 01:52 | the Generic Annotation Family template.
| | 01:55 | That's more suitable for the North
Arrow that we're going to create, because I
| | 01:59 | don't actually have a dedicated North
Arrow template, and I'll go ahead and
| | 02:03 | click Open, maximize this up and let's
zoom in a little and see what we have.
| | 02:07 | The most obvious thing that we see is
these two Reference Planes, one running
| | 02:11 | horizontally and one running
vertically, and then of course, this big red
| | 02:15 | note off to the side.
| | 02:17 | So if zoom in a little on the note and we
read it, it basically tells me three things;
| | 02:23 | that I should change the category
of this Family as appropriate before
| | 02:27 | beginning, it tells me that the two
Reference Planes mark the insertion point
| | 02:31 | of the Family, and it says that I probably
should delete this note, before I continue.
| | 02:36 | So let's go ahead and follow the third
suggestion, delete the note and zoom in a little.
| | 02:41 | The first thing I want is a sense of scale.
| | 02:43 | I want to understand how big everything is.
| | 02:45 | There are a variety of ways we could
do that, but I find the easiest thing to
| | 02:49 | do is if there's any text associated
with this Annotation symbol, then if I
| | 02:53 | simply place the piece of text in, that's
going to immediately give me a sense of scale.
| | 02:57 | Since my North Arrow does include a
piece of text, I'll start with that object
| | 03:01 | and then that's what's going to give me
the sense of scale in the project here.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to go ahead
and click on the Text tool.
| | 03:07 | I want to set my Justification to
Align Center and I'm going to click a point
| | 03:12 | near the insertion point there at
the center, and I'll type N for this.
| | 03:18 | Now I can move it around and make it a
little more centered, and what you'll
| | 03:21 | notice is the letter N came in and
it's kind of this boring font there.
| | 03:26 | Now I'm going to cancel out of my Text
tool, Modify, and I'm going to select on
| | 03:31 | this and for my North Arrow I might want
something a little bit more interesting
| | 03:35 | than Arial as the font, and I also
want to point out to you that the size of
| | 03:40 | this piece of text came in 3/32" which
is fine for notes and so on, but it's not
| | 03:45 | really a good size for North Arrow.
| | 03:46 | So I'm going to click the Edit Type
button here and what I want to do is
| | 03:51 | duplicate this 3/32" type here and
create a new type for my North Arrow.
| | 03:58 | So I'm going to call this 1/4" and
come down here and make the Size 1/4", and
| | 04:03 | then from the available fonts that I
have on the system, I'm going to want to
| | 04:07 | choose something that may be a little
bit more interesting for a North Arrow.
| | 04:11 | So in this case I'm going to choose
the out-of-the-box Microsoft font, the
| | 04:15 | Monotype Corsiva, which is a little bit
of a script font, might be kind of nice
| | 04:19 | for a North Arrow, verify any other
settings I might be interested in, you
| | 04:24 | could make it bold, and you could make
it italic, whatever you'd like to do,
| | 04:28 | and then I'll click OK here.
| | 04:31 | I had canceled out of the Text command
and selected the piece of text, so it
| | 04:35 | applied immediately.
| | 04:36 | If that doesn't happen in your case, you
can simply click Modify, you can select
| | 04:40 | the piece of text, and then you can
choose your new type off the list and you
| | 04:44 | see that it's available there.
| | 04:45 | You can use this arrow to get it
positioned a little bit more in the center.
| | 04:50 | So that's my basic and I know that
that's about a 1/4" tall, so that starts to
| | 04:55 | give me a little bit of a sense of
scale for this symbol that I'm drawing.
| | 04:59 | The next thing I want to
do is create the Graphics.
| | 05:02 | So I'm going to go up here to the Home
tab and I want to click on Line tool.
| | 05:06 | So I'm going to start this line
somewhere above the North Arrow and I'm going to
| | 05:10 | draw it right through the letter N
down to about here and I'll press Esc.
| | 05:15 | I'm going to select this line and I want to
edit this dimension to make it a certain length.
| | 05:20 | So again, if you have a certain
size in mind for your North Arrow, you
| | 05:25 | can indicate it here.
| | 05:26 | So I'm going to make this 1" tall.
| | 05:29 | Now I want to break out the piece of
the line that covers over the letter N
| | 05:34 | there, so I'll use the Split tool for
that, delete the Inner Segment and just
| | 05:39 | sort of split it between about here
and here, but the overall length between
| | 05:44 | those lines is still 1" tall right there.
| | 05:50 | I don't really need the dimension;
| | 05:52 | I was just using it to show you.
| | 05:53 | I'm going to zoom in over here,
and then I'm just going to indicate a
| | 05:56 | little arrow over there.
| | 05:58 | Now if you don't want the arrow
filled in with any kind of a Fill Pattern,
| | 06:02 | you could just simply draw this with lines,
so I could come over here and draw the lines.
| | 06:07 | If you want to do something that's
filled in, we can use a Filled Region.
| | 06:11 | It's really up to you what you use;
| | 06:12 | it really depends on the kind of North
Arrow that you're interested in creating.
| | 06:17 | If you want to create the little arrow
here, what I am going to do is actually
| | 06:21 | draw this shape with invisible lines,
okay, and I want to show you why.
| | 06:26 | I'm actually going to draw it without
the visible lines first and show you
| | 06:28 | why I'm making that suggestion and let me
just sort of draw a little wedge here, like so.
| | 06:36 | It looks fine in this view, but as
soon as you click Finish, what you see is,
| | 06:43 | because of the thickness of the lines
that are being used on that, they sort of
| | 06:48 | round out and it doesn't
have the same kind of crispness.
| | 06:52 | You also see two other problems;
| | 06:54 | the letter N is covering up part of
the arrow and the line underneath is
| | 06:58 | awfully thin, right?
| | 07:00 | So let's deal with each problem in turn.
| | 07:02 | I'm going to select this one, go back to
Edit Sketch, select the three lines and
| | 07:09 | move those to the Invisible Lines category.
| | 07:12 | It's still rounded, but when it's
deselected, it's a nice sharp-edged graphic.
| | 07:17 | It looks a little, let me
nudge that up just a touch.
| | 07:21 | It looks a little crisper and
sharper and I think that's a nicer graphic.
| | 07:25 | As far as this Line Weight goes, I need
to actually define a Line Style for that.
| | 07:31 | So I'm going to go to Manage, go to
Object Styles, and I need to create a
| | 07:36 | Subcategory which I'll call Medium lines,
I don't want to quite go too wide, and
| | 07:45 | I'll make that maybe a pen weight 3, so
that's going to make that a little bit
| | 07:49 | thicker, click OK and now I can select
these two lines using the Ctrl key, and
| | 07:55 | Medium lines will be available right
there and you can see how that makes it
| | 07:58 | just a little darker.
| | 07:59 | Now again, if you want something darker
still, you can choose a different Line
| | 08:02 | Style and then finally with this guy
I'm going to go back to Edit Type and one
| | 08:08 | of the options that we had available
was the Background and I'm going to make
| | 08:11 | this Transparent rather than Opaque,
and when I do that it now won't try and
| | 08:16 | cover up the arrow underneath.
| | 08:18 | Now of course, I kept my North Arrow
very simple, you could get much fancier if
| | 08:23 | you want, do compass roses and
all sorts of things like that.
| | 08:26 | I'm going to simply save this and I'll call
this North, and let me give you a little tip here.
| | 08:34 | When I create Families, I always like
to click the Options button and set the
| | 08:39 | Number of Backups here down to 1.
| | 08:42 | It's not that I don't want to back up my
Families, but I think one backup is suitable.
| | 08:46 | Families aren't like projects where
you're modifying them repeatedly, so
| | 08:49 | having multiple backups I think just gives me
more stuff that I have to then clean up later.
| | 08:54 | So I like to set that down to 1, click OK,
and then I'll go ahead and save this.
| | 08:59 | Now the big test is to
just load it into a project.
| | 09:01 | So the reason I had this project open
in the background was for that purpose.
| | 09:06 | I can come over here where I want to
place the North Arrow, put it in, select
| | 09:12 | it, go to my Rotate tool and let's say
North is about 18 degrees that way and
| | 09:19 | there it is, that
completes our North Arrow symbol.
| | 09:22 | So admittedly, this was a pretty simple
exercise and a pretty simple annotation;
| | 09:27 | it doesn't have any Parameters, there
are no labels in it, it's just simply text
| | 09:31 | and graphics, but it does give you a
flavor for the basics of what's involved to
| | 09:35 | create a simple 2D Annotation Family.
| | 09:37 | In the next movie, we'll move
on and we'll make a custom Tag.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a tag family| 00:00 | A Tag is an Annotation Family that
reports data embedded within a Model Element.
| | 00:05 | Construction documents use all kinds of tags;
| | 00:08 | we have Door tags, Window
tags, Wall tags, and so on.
| | 00:11 | Revit ships with many, but most offices
have their own standards, and I'm sure
| | 00:15 | yours is no different.
| | 00:16 | So, in this movie we are
going to create a custom Room Tag.
| | 00:20 | The Room Tag that I have on screen here
is the completed version and it's based
| | 00:24 | on one of the Tags that is shown
in the US National CAD Standard.
| | 00:29 | The US National CAD Standard or NCS
doesn't ship with any Revit files.
| | 00:34 | So if you decided to purchase and adopt
the National CAD Standard, you would be
| | 00:38 | responsible for creating those files
yourself in Revit, and so I thought I would
| | 00:43 | use that as the example for creating
this custom tag here in this movie.
| | 00:47 | Certainly, if your standards vary from
the out-of-the-box Revit or the National
| | 00:52 | CAD Standard, you can use this
procedure to create really any Tag;
| | 00:55 | it's exactly the same procedure.
| | 00:57 | So with that let's go
ahead and get started here.
| | 00:59 | I'm going to go to the big R, go to New
and we're going to choose Annotation Symbol.
| | 01:05 | In the previous movie, we chose the
Generic Annotation template, because we were
| | 01:10 | doing a North Arrow, but in this
case we're going to choose the Room Tag
| | 01:14 | template, because we're
actually creating a Room Tag.
| | 01:16 | So I'll go ahead and click Open and we
get the same Reference planes marking the
| | 01:22 | insertion point that we saw before,
minus the red note this time, because this
| | 01:26 | template is already
assigned to the Room Tag category.
| | 01:31 | Now, if you want to verify that
you can see that right up here.
| | 01:34 | So the Family and Category and
Parameters icon is available here on the Home
| | 01:39 | tab, and if we click on that you'll see
that the Room Tags category is already
| | 01:43 | selected for this Family.
| | 01:45 | I'm not going to change that.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to zoom-in just a touch here,
and as we discussed previously, you
| | 01:52 | might want to start with your text
information to give you a sense of scale.
| | 01:57 | Of course, the other way you can do
this is if you know the size of the graphic
| | 02:03 | that you're trying to create.
| | 02:04 | Now, in this case because I'm basing
my tag on the National CAD Standard
| | 02:08 | recommendation, I do actually know the
size of the symbol that I'm trying to create.
| | 02:13 | It's 3/4 of an inch wide
and 3/8 of an inch tall.
| | 02:16 | So I actually have a choice in this case,
I can start with the Text portion or
| | 02:20 | the Graphical portion;
| | 02:21 | in either case they will
give me a sense of scale.
| | 02:23 | So, let's try it with the
graphical portion this time.
| | 02:27 | So, I'm going to click on the Line
tool and start with a Rectangle, and I'm
| | 02:32 | going to draw that rectangle, like so.
| | 02:35 | Now like most things in Revit, you sort of
start with a rough size, and then you modify it.
| | 02:40 | So in this dimension it's 3/8 of an
inch tall, and in this dimension it is 3/4
| | 02:47 | of an inch tall, or wide rather.
| | 02:49 | Then I'll select this, go to Move and
move it from the midpoint here to the
| | 02:58 | intersection right there.
| | 03:01 | So the insertion point that I want for my
tag is to be right at the midpoint of this box.
| | 03:06 | Now I need another line going from
midpoint to midpoint, and then a couple more
| | 03:12 | lines running vertically.
| | 03:14 | And I'm going to just kind of eyeball
them in right now, because just like we
| | 03:18 | can do in the Project environment,
here in the Family Editor I can create a
| | 03:22 | dimension, dimension between each of
these lines, pull that dimension out here,
| | 03:31 | and click the little EQ symbol
to get those all equally spaced.
| | 03:35 | If I want to do the same thing in this
other direction, I can do that, and that
| | 03:39 | ensures that all of those will be
equally spaced without my having to do any
| | 03:43 | calculations or
quantifications to figure that out.
| | 03:47 | So that's the basic
graphic portion of the symbol;
| | 03:49 | these are just simple lines, and now
I'm going to add the text-based portion.
| | 03:54 | There are two kinds of text that you
can create in the Annotation Family.
| | 04:00 | You can create Text, which is just static text;
| | 04:03 | we saw an example of that in the
previous movie when we built a North Arrow.
| | 04:06 | There with the letter N it was just a
piece of text that didn't need to ever change.
| | 04:10 | Or you can create Labels.
| | 04:12 | Labels are linked text;
| | 04:15 | that text is linked to some property in
the host object that this object will be
| | 04:20 | attached to when we're done.
| | 04:22 | So if I click on the Label tool,
you'll see I get lots of the same features
| | 04:27 | that I get with Text.
| | 04:28 | I can justify it over here.
| | 04:30 | I can choose my types over here.
| | 04:33 | The default size is Label 1/8".
| | 04:35 | I'm going to go ahead and accept that.
| | 04:37 | I'm going to click right about here,
because I have it centered, and an Edit
| | 04:43 | Label dialog will appear.
| | 04:45 | This list here is determined
by the category of this Tag.
| | 04:50 | If you remember, at the start of the
movie, I clicked on the Category and
| | 04:53 | Parameters dialog to show you that this Tag
was actually assigned to the Room Tag category.
| | 04:59 | So these parameters that are available
here are the kinds of parameters that you
| | 05:03 | would expect to see in
Room Objects in your Project.
| | 05:06 | And the parameter that I
want to use is the Room Name.
| | 05:09 | So all I have to do is select it here
off the list and add it to my Label.
| | 05:14 | So these are the available parameters
over here on the left, and these are the
| | 05:18 | ones I'm adding to the
Label over here on the right.
| | 05:21 | I'm going to go ahead and click OK
and that places my first label in there.
| | 05:26 | I can do it again right here.
| | 05:29 | Choose Number, add it to the Label.
| | 05:32 | You can see it creates a Sample Value of 101;
| | 05:35 | If I wanted to change that I could.
| | 05:37 | Maybe I want to imply that my numbers
ought to be four digits rather than three,
| | 05:42 | so I'll put in 1001.
| | 05:43 | It's entirely up to you.
| | 05:47 | And then the third Label I
want to click down here somewhere.
| | 05:52 | The National CAD Standard recommends
Finish designations that are single character.
| | 05:57 | You can see here that we've got Base
Finish, Ceiling Finish, and so on available
| | 06:01 | to us in the Room Object.
| | 06:03 | So I can add those Finish
designations to my Label.
| | 06:07 | So I'm going to start with Base Finish
and I'm going to add it to the Label.
| | 06:11 | Now, what you're going to see is, it's
going to suggest a sample value of Base
| | 06:16 | Finish, which is awfully long and it
certainly wouldn't fit in that tiny little box.
| | 06:20 | So what I'm going to do is just
change this to letter A, alright?
| | 06:25 | Now it turns out, I could click OK here
and create each of the four designations
| | 06:30 | separately as a separate label, or
notice that all these buttons are still
| | 06:34 | active, you can go in here now and add
the Wall Finish next, and I can add that
| | 06:39 | to the Label and it will appear as a
second parameter within the same Label, and
| | 06:44 | I'll change this to a Sample Value of number 2.
| | 06:47 | Now here, Spaces was grayed out under Base,
because that was the first item in the Label.
| | 06:53 | So there is no Spaces prior to the
letter A, but I can actually change this
| | 06:59 | and I'm going to pad this to 3 Spaces,
so that if I move this out of the way,
| | 07:04 | when we have the letter A here, then
it's going to go Space, Space and then
| | 07:08 | the number 2, so that I can account for the
fact that I have a line there in the middle.
| | 07:12 | Now there's not a lot of hard science here;
| | 07:13 | you're going to have to do
a little trial and error.
| | 07:15 | Maybe it's 2 spaces, maybe it's 3.
| | 07:16 | So I'm going to try 3 and see what happens.
| | 07:19 | So I've got my Wall Finish next.
| | 07:21 | Then I'm going to do my Floor Finish.
| | 07:25 | I'll do 3 spaces as well.
| | 07:27 | Make this B. And then finally my Ceiling Finish.
| | 07:31 | Make that 3 Spaces and make that 4.
| | 07:35 | I'm just making up these designations here.
| | 07:37 | Now, in this final column you can check
this box and that would actually put a
| | 07:41 | word wrap, or rather a break, a
line break to move it to the next line.
| | 07:45 | In this case we want them all to run
horizontally, so we don't want to do that.
| | 07:49 | But I could have done that here with
Name and Number to put a Return and put
| | 07:54 | those both in the same Label.
| | 07:56 | There was actually a reason why didn't
do that, and I'm going to talk about that
| | 08:00 | right now, but first let me position these.
| | 08:02 | Okay, so you could see that 3
Spaces was a little too much.
| | 08:05 | Let me Edit Label and
let's try 2 for each of those;
| | 08:11 | that's a little better.
| | 08:12 | You can use your Arrow
Keys to nudge this a little.
| | 08:15 | And so we're getting close to what we
want here, but you can see we need to do
| | 08:20 | a little fine tuning.
| | 08:21 | 1001 and A2B4 are all, they're rather large.
| | 08:26 | So what I want to do is select both of
these Labels, go to Edit Type, duplicate
| | 08:33 | my type and make it 3/32 of an inch.
| | 08:37 | Now, I'm not going to change anything else.
| | 08:39 | I'm going to leave the same font and
other settings, but when I do that it makes
| | 08:44 | that Text a little smaller.
| | 08:46 | Now you can see that I
probably should have left 3 Spaces.
| | 08:48 | Okay, I can come back to that in a moment.
| | 08:50 | The other thing that I want to do is
make that Text transparent, because that
| | 08:54 | way the lines underneath will show through.
| | 08:57 | Now this one, I can make it
transparent just to be sure that that Room Name
| | 09:03 | doesn't accidentally cover up
this line later in the project.
| | 09:05 | It looks okay right now, but you never know.
| | 09:07 | I'm going to select this, go
to Edit Label, go back to 3.
| | 09:11 | There is a lot of trial and
error in the Family Editor.
| | 09:14 | So, there's our basic setup.
| | 09:17 | So we started with the graphics,
that gave us the overall sense of scale.
| | 09:21 | Then we dropped in the Labels.
| | 09:23 | We're now going to save it.
| | 09:24 | We'll give this a name and if you
remember from the previous movie, I always
| | 09:33 | like to change the number of backups
down to 1, and we'll click Save, and then
| | 09:38 | we'll load it into our project.
| | 09:40 | So now when I choose Load into Project,
it's actually offering me two choices,
| | 09:44 | because at the start of the movie you
may recall, I had the completed version of
| | 09:48 | this file available and
it's still open here in Revit.
| | 09:51 | So it's actually possible for me to
load it simultaneously into more than one
| | 09:55 | project or to choose different
projects that I want to load it into.
| | 09:58 | And in this case I want to make sure
I'm loading it into my Office Building
| | 10:01 | project, so I've got that
checked and I'm going to click OK.
| | 10:04 | So just pay attention and make sure
you read that when this dialog appears.
| | 10:07 | So now I'm here in my Office Building,
and what you'll see is all the rooms
| | 10:14 | are highlighting because the new Tag
that I'm creating is actually appearing
| | 10:19 | directly here on my cursor and I can
simply click and place it into an existing room.
| | 10:27 | This project already had Room Tags in
here, which is helpful because it shows
| | 10:31 | us that the Room Tag is functioning
properly and we're seeing that this Room
| | 10:37 | that it was associated with is already
picking up the correct Name and the correct Number.
| | 10:43 | It does not however list any
of the Finish information yet.
| | 10:47 | So to take care of that, all we need to
do is select the Room, scroll down over
| | 10:53 | here and start inputting some Finish
designations into these parameters.
| | 10:59 | So the Base Finish is going to be V
for Vinyl, the Ceiling Finish would be A
| | 11:04 | for ATC, the Wall Finish would be P for
Paint and the Floor Finish would be C for Carpet.
| | 11:09 | And when I apply that you're going to see
all of those designations fill in to the Tag.
| | 11:14 | If I wanted, I could now continue and apply
that Tag to multiple rooms in the project.
| | 11:21 | What we see here in this movie is that
in addition to the graphics and the text
| | 11:27 | that we explored when we built our
North Arrow, we have the very powerful Label
| | 11:32 | feature, which allows us coupled with
the correct category, in this case Room
| | 11:36 | Tag, to attach to and read information
off of the host object, Rooms in this
| | 11:42 | case, and then that information is fed
back to the Tag and that's how we create
| | 11:47 | intelligent annotation in our Revit projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shared parameters for tags| 00:00 | When you choose the category for your
custom Tag Family, it exposes a list of
| | 00:05 | standard Parameters
associated with the chosen category;
| | 00:08 | we saw an example of this in the previous movie.
| | 00:10 | In some cases you'll wish to include
additional Parameters that are not included
| | 00:15 | on the standard list.
| | 00:16 | It is possible to create
your own custom Parameters.
| | 00:19 | To use custom Parameters in the tag, they
must be defined in a special external file.
| | 00:25 | Such Parameters are called Shared
Parameters, and they are the subject of this movie.
| | 00:30 | So what I have on screen here is a file
called Room Tag Finish (Start) and it's
| | 00:36 | the start of another Room Tag.
| | 00:38 | So similar to the previous movie, if
we took a look at the category for this
| | 00:43 | particular Family, you can see that
it's already assigned to Room Tags.
| | 00:47 | Now these two labels here, if I edit
the Label, are using the prebuilt list.
| | 00:53 | So this particular one uses the Base
Finish, and this one here is looking at the
| | 00:58 | Floor FInish, right there and
those two are from the prebuilt list.
| | 01:04 | What I want in these four wedges here
is four wall finishes pointing at the
| | 01:10 | various walls, so that when you place
this room tag in the wall, you can say
| | 01:13 | what the north wall is or
the east wall, and so on.
| | 01:16 | The Out-of-the-box Label would only give
me access to a single Wall Finish Parameter.
| | 01:23 | I would not get access to wall
Parameters on the four sides.
| | 01:27 | It turns out here in the Edit Label
dialog however, that you have an Add
| | 01:31 | Parameter button down at the bottom.
| | 01:33 | Now if I choose that what you're going
to see is a Parameter Properties dialog
| | 01:38 | appears, and grayed out here in the
background, it's going to say that the
| | 01:42 | Parameter you're creating
has to be a Shared Parameter.
| | 01:45 | So what is a Shared Parameter exactly?
| | 01:47 | Well, we have different kinds of ways
we can define Parameters in a Revit file.
| | 01:51 | There is really about three different ways:
| | 01:53 | we can define the Parameters directly
in a Family file, we can define them in a
| | 01:57 | Project file, or we can
define them as a Shared Parameter.
| | 02:01 | That's perhaps the most flexible way
to do it, you can see here in the grayed
| | 02:06 | out text that says they can be shared
by multiple projects and Families, they
| | 02:11 | can be exported to databases, and
they can appear in schedules or Tags.
| | 02:15 | So it's perhaps the most flexible way
that you can create a custom Parameter,
| | 02:21 | but it does take a little bit of setup
and in order to do the setup we have to
| | 02:25 | have either an existing Shared
Parameter file, or we have to create one.
| | 02:30 | Now I'm going to walk through the
process of creating one, but I want to stress
| | 02:33 | here that we've actually jumped right
into the deep end of the pool here, and
| | 02:38 | this is a somewhat advanced topic.
| | 02:39 | You should check with your CAD or
BIM Manager before you create your own
| | 02:43 | custom Shared Parameter file to make
sure that there isn't already one in
| | 02:47 | existence at your firm.
| | 02:49 | There should only be one Shared
Parameter file for the entire office.
| | 02:54 | It's called shared for a reason.
| | 02:56 | We want everybody to share the same
Shared Parameter file, and in doing that
| | 03:01 | then we all access the same list of Parameters.
| | 03:05 | If multiple Shared Parameter files become
available, it's not going to work so well.
| | 03:10 | So when I click that button, it's
going to say I have not specified a Shared
| | 03:13 | Parameter file, but it's going to offer
me the ability to choose one now, so I'm
| | 03:17 | going to go ahead and say Yes, and that
brings up the Edit Shared Parameters box
| | 03:21 | where I can either browse to an
existing Shared Parameter file, and again, if
| | 03:24 | your CAD Manager tells you that one
does exist, that's what you want to do, or
| | 03:29 | in this case, I'll just go ahead and
create one in my Chapter 2 folder here, and
| | 03:32 | I'm going to call this LDC Shared
Parameters, and I'm going to save this.
| | 03:42 | Now that creates an empty text file.
| | 03:44 | All a Shared Parameter file is,
is a text file on your hard drive.
| | 03:48 | Now it's a very specially formatted text file;
| | 03:51 | it's not one you want to
open up and edit directly.
| | 03:54 | You want to edit it only through the
Revit interface or some other appropriate
| | 03:59 | Shared Parameter editing tool.
| | 04:02 | Shared Parameters are organized into groups.
| | 04:04 | You can see because I just created it,
there are no groups, so I can add one,
| | 04:07 | and I'll call this Rooms.
| | 04:09 | So in this Rooms group I'm going
to group all of my Room-based Shared
| | 04:14 | Parameters, and I'm going to
create four new Parameters here.
| | 04:17 | So the first one is going to be North
Wall and the kind of Parameter can be
| | 04:24 | anything that I like.
| | 04:26 | In this case, if I just want them to be
simple text designations, the two best
| | 04:30 | choices would either be to
choose Text or to choose Material.
| | 04:33 | If you actually want to designate
materials from your material list, you can
| | 04:37 | choose Material, but in this case
I'm going to keep it relatively simple.
| | 04:41 | I just want a text designation like a
material code, rather than an actual material.
| | 04:46 | So I'm going to choose North
Wall, and I'm going to make it a
| | 04:48 | Text-based Parameter.
| | 04:50 | And then I'll repeat that three
additional times to make East Wall, and South
| | 04:59 | Wall, and West Wall.
| | 05:08 | So I now have these four Parameters defined;
| | 05:11 | they're all text Parameters, and they're
defined for the four walls of the room.
| | 05:15 | I'm going to select the North Wall
Parameter and I'm going to click OK.
| | 05:20 | It's going to say, choose the
Parameter from the list, so to understand what
| | 05:24 | we've just done, I'm
actually back now in the Edit Label.
| | 05:27 | So when I clicked OK, I created the
Parameter file, but now it's saying, Which
| | 05:33 | Parameter do you want to use for this Label?
| | 05:35 | and the one I want to use is the North Wall.
| | 05:37 | So I'm going to click OK, and you'll see
that it fills in all of the information
| | 05:42 | here automatically for me, based on
the Shared Parameter that I defined.
| | 05:47 | I'll click OK one more time, and now
North Wall appears in the list and I can
| | 05:52 | add that to my Label.
| | 05:53 | I come over here and I'm going to put
in a Sample Value of P1 and click OK, and
| | 06:01 | so what I have here is a Label that
I'm going to position, maybe shrink this
| | 06:07 | down just a little bit, instead of 1/8"
text, I'm going to choose a predefined
| | 06:11 | 3/32" Label type for it and
that gives me my first Finish here.
| | 06:17 | So basically the process to create the
next ones is similar, actually I have
| | 06:21 | this in the West Wall and I defined it
as North, so let me move it over here.
| | 06:25 | That's a little better, so now
that's my North Wall Parameter.
| | 06:29 | So let's repeat the process.
| | 06:31 | I go to Label, choose my Label Type,
select where I want it to go, so I'm going
| | 06:37 | to click New again to Add a Parameter.
| | 06:39 | Now this time I can click Select and
rather than getting the dialog that said
| | 06:45 | Where is your Shared Parameter file?
| | 06:47 | Do you want to browse to it or create it?
| | 06:48 | It already knows where the Shared
Parameter file is, so now I can simply just
| | 06:52 | choose from that Shared Parameter
file I previously created and I want to
| | 06:56 | make this one East Wall.
| | 06:57 | It fills in all the information for
me, click OK, add that to my Label,
| | 07:03 | call this P1 again.
| | 07:06 | P1 is just a Sample Value, so I can
use P1 all four times, and then Continue.
| | 07:12 | Now once I've defined the four
Parameters and added them roughly to the correct
| | 07:16 | spots, once again, I can reduce the
Grip Size here, make it a little smaller, I
| | 07:22 | can kind of position it a little
bit better, just to kind of fine-tune
| | 07:26 | everything, and so that
completes the setup of the Tag.
| | 07:32 | Now I can do a Save As and I'll just
take off the word Start at the end here, so
| | 07:38 | I'll call this Room Tag Finish, check
that I'm only doing one backup, click OK,
| | 07:44 | save it, and then I'll load
it into my testing project.
| | 07:49 | The view is called Level 1 - Finish
Tags and you can see that I have stripped
| | 07:53 | off all the Room Tags in this particular view.
| | 07:56 | I can go ahead and place the Tag here
into the various locations and this one
| | 08:03 | doesn't show Name or Number, so we're
not seeing anything appear, we do see V
| | 08:09 | and C appear in this case, because
this room here has a designation for the
| | 08:16 | Base Finish as V and the Floor
Finish as C. This room does not have any
| | 08:22 | finishes designated at that point yet,
so if I came over here and the Base was
| | 08:28 | say a wood base, and the Floor Finish
was also a C. When I apply that, both of
| | 08:34 | those would fill in.
| | 08:35 | But now if you scroll through the list
here, where are my custom Parameters?
| | 08:40 | I'm not seeing my four wall
finishes showing here at all.
| | 08:44 | Well, I'm in a different Project file now,
so what I have to actually do is tell
| | 08:49 | this file to also access
that Shared Parameter file.
| | 08:54 | Now I don't want to define the file,
again, remember, we want one Shared
| | 08:58 | Parameter file that we're going to use
for any Project or any Family throughout
| | 09:01 | our office, but I do have to tell the
Room Objects in this Project that they
| | 09:07 | should look at that Shared
Parameter file for the custom Parameters.
| | 09:11 | So let's go ahead and do that now.
| | 09:13 | So I'm going to go to the Manage tab and
here you're going to see a couple buttons.
| | 09:18 | There's a Project Parameters button
and there's a Shared Parameters button.
| | 09:23 | Shared Parameters is the button
you would use to actually access the
| | 09:27 | Shared Parameter file.
| | 09:29 | Notice that it already knows that I have
a Shared Parameter file in the Exercise
| | 09:35 | Files Chapter 2 folder;
| | 09:37 | that's the one we just created together.
| | 09:39 | It already knows about this file;
| | 09:41 | it already knows about the
four Parameters in that file.
| | 09:44 | So I'm going to Cancel there.
| | 09:45 | There is nothing to do there, but that's
the first step that we've already done.
| | 09:49 | The second step is to go to the Project
Parameters and actually Add those Shared
| | 09:54 | Parameters to the Room
Objects in this Project file.
| | 09:57 | So when I click Add, you can now see
that there are two choices here, Project
| | 10:02 | Parameter or Shared Parameter.
| | 10:04 | A Project Parameter would not be
connected to the Shared Parameter file.
| | 10:08 | It would be global across the entire
Project, but it would not be connected
| | 10:12 | to the Shared file.
| | 10:13 | I want to choose the Shared Parameter
file and I want to click Select and I want
| | 10:17 | to select my North Wall.
| | 10:19 | That fills in all the
information just the way we would expect.
| | 10:23 | I'm going to group that under Materials
and Finishes, because that's what this
| | 10:27 | type designation represents, this text
field that I've done, and very important,
| | 10:31 | I want to come over here and I want to
assign that Shared Parameter to the Room
| | 10:38 | Objects in this project.
| | 10:39 | I'm going to click OK.
| | 10:42 | North Wall now appears and I just need
to repeat that process three more times
| | 10:46 | for the three additional Parameters.
| | 10:48 | So I have the four Parameters now defined:
| | 10:51 | West Wall, North Wall, East Wall and South Wall.
| | 10:54 | I'm going to click OK and now if I go in
and select any one of the rooms in this
| | 10:59 | Project, here under Materials and
Finishes, you'll see those four wall
| | 11:03 | designations appear, and I can come in
here, put in P1 for the North Wall, P2
| | 11:08 | for the East Wall, P2 also for the
South Wall and maybe P3 for the West Wall,
| | 11:14 | click Apply and those Parameters all fill in.
| | 11:16 | As an additional bonus to creating
Parameters as a Shared Parameter, they would
| | 11:22 | also appear in a Schedule file.
| | 11:25 | Okay so in the Project, I already
have a Room Schedule (Wall Finishes).
| | 11:29 | In that Schedule I've added in the
four missing columns and as you can see,
| | 11:34 | those columns are already reflecting the
Finish designations that we previously put.
| | 11:39 | If I change designations here for some
of the other Tags that are in here, in
| | 11:45 | this case I have only one other
existing example of this Tag, I could do that
| | 11:50 | and I could return to the Floor Plan and
you'll see that those designations are filled in.
| | 11:55 | So Shared Parameters allow us to
define a set of Parameters externally to any
| | 12:00 | Project or Family and then share
those Parameters among any Project or any
| | 12:05 | Family throughout the office, they
do have to be defined very carefully.
| | 12:09 | Please make sure that you have only
one Shared Parameter file for the entire
| | 12:13 | office to share and use, thus the name.
| | 12:16 | So if you're unclear about how to use
it, just keep reminding yourself that
| | 12:19 | it's actually called a Shared
Parameter file and that should help, and make
| | 12:24 | sure that it's up on an accessible
location, somewhere up on the server, and
| | 12:28 | then you'll be able to create custom
Tags and/or Schedules that refer to those
| | 12:33 | Shared Parameters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Simple Model FamiliesThe family creation process| 00:00 | Now that we've explored Annotation
Families and we've seen many possibilities
| | 00:04 | that exist that can accommodate nearly
any office standard, it comes time to
| | 00:08 | turn our attention to Model Elements.
| | 00:11 | Most of the families that you're
going to want to create are probably going
| | 00:13 | to be Model Elements.
| | 00:14 | Using the Revit Family Editor, we
can not only model nearly any geometric
| | 00:18 | form, but we can base the geometry on rules,
constraints and other logical relationships.
| | 00:23 | We call this making it Parametric.
| | 00:25 | Parametric Families are at the
heart of what makes Revit so powerful.
| | 00:29 | So in this chapter we're going to lay
down the foundation of the skills that
| | 00:31 | we're going to need to begin making
fully Parametric Component Model Families
| | 00:36 | and we'll start that with
just an overview of the process.
| | 00:39 | So the first thing is deciding what you need.
| | 00:42 | This can take the form of hand-drawn
sketches, look at other objects and mark them up.
| | 00:47 | You can download things
and use those as a basis.
| | 00:50 | Whatever process you use, but you
identify the need, you decide how you want the
| | 00:55 | item you're going to create to behave,
and you document that in some way either
| | 01:00 | through sketches or other forms.
| | 01:02 | When it comes down to actually jumping
into Revit and using those sketches that
| | 01:05 | you've determined, there are a couple of
key things you're going to be deciding.
| | 01:09 | Now we saw in the previous chapter
creating Annotation Families that when we
| | 01:12 | first create a family, it takes
us to the Family Templates folder.
| | 01:17 | When we go to the Family Temples folder,
we're actually choosing two things,
| | 01:22 | when we're doing a Model Family,
where with the Annotation Family we were
| | 01:24 | really only choosing one.
| | 01:26 | With the Annotation Family we were just
saying what category of Annotation we're
| | 01:29 | creating, but here with the Model
Family we're also choosing the category from
| | 01:36 | the template that we select, but
we're also choosing the hosting behavior.
| | 01:39 | So what is the hosting behavior?
| | 01:41 | Well some Families require a Wall host;
| | 01:43 | some Families require a
Ceiling host or a Floor host.
| | 01:47 | If you choose a template that
requires a host, then the Family you're
| | 01:50 | building will be required to be
attached to that kind of a host element when
| | 01:54 | you put it in a Project.
| | 01:55 | So it's pretty important decision and
you're being enforced to make that right
| | 01:58 | away at the beginning.
| | 01:59 | So it's something you want to think
about carefully before you get started, and
| | 02:02 | we'll see some examples of that shortly.
| | 02:05 | Once you're in the Family, the next
step is laying down the Reference Planes.
| | 02:09 | Now you can think of Reference
Planes as really the framework or the
| | 02:12 | formwork, the skeleton;
| | 02:14 | all of these words kind of mean the same thing.
| | 02:16 | Formwork determines the shape and
extent of poured concrete, and the skeleton
| | 02:21 | of course determines the shape and
the form of our bodies, and so whatever
| | 02:25 | form, scaffolding sometimes people use,
whatever analogy you use to represent
| | 02:29 | the Reference Planes, they literally
are determining the overall form and
| | 02:34 | behavior of this Family.
| | 02:36 | We're going to then add Parameters and
Constraints to that formwork, and that's
| | 02:42 | what's going to give us the smart
or the flexibility in our Families.
| | 02:45 | So another way we call this
as making the Family flexible.
| | 02:48 | That's going to mean that it can
adjust and change shape and move in size.
| | 02:52 | So we do all this sort of preplanning
and set up before we finally get around
| | 02:56 | to building geometry.
| | 02:57 | So building geometry may be one of the
first things you think you're going to
| | 03:00 | do, but it's actually one of the later steps.
| | 03:03 | You want to get everything set up and
established correctly first and then go in
| | 03:07 | and actually add the geometry.
| | 03:09 | If you've got a properly
structured formwork and set up, adding the
| | 03:13 | geometry becomes much simpler,
because it will relate to that formwork that
| | 03:18 | you've established.
| | 03:20 | And then the most important step of
all is to flex your Model or test it out.
| | 03:24 | Okay, so if we're making a Family
flexible by adding Constraints and Parameters
| | 03:29 | then the process of flexing it just
simply means that we're actually going to
| | 03:33 | put it through its paces and make sure
that everything is working and behaving
| | 03:36 | the way that we expected it to work.
| | 03:39 | Those are basically the overall
things that we need to consider.
| | 03:43 | It's essentially like the back
of a shampoo bottle at this point:
| | 03:46 | lather, rinse, repeat.
| | 03:47 | So once you've done these steps,
you just do more of the same.
| | 03:51 | And so in the next movie, we're going
to go in and we're actually going to
| | 03:54 | perform these steps, start creating our
first Model Family, and we'll be doing
| | 03:58 | that throughout the course of this chapter.
| | 04:00 | It'll actually take several movies
for us to build our first Model Family.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new model family| 00:00 | With the academic concepts out of the way,
it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
| | 00:05 | In this movie we'll begin the
process of creating our first Model
| | 00:08 | component loadable Family.
| | 00:10 | How's that for a mouthful?
| | 00:12 | As we saw in the previous movie,
it starts with the planning of a
| | 00:15 | well-chosen template.
| | 00:17 | That's the first step that we're going to do.
| | 00:19 | The Family we're going to create is
going to be simple conference table.
| | 00:22 | We will deliberately be
keeping the design very simple.
| | 00:26 | The goal of this exercise isn't to
make the most complicated award-winning
| | 00:31 | table that we can muster;
| | 00:32 | the goal is to solidify the process.
| | 00:35 | So the first step is to create a new Family.
| | 00:38 | Now I'm looking at the recent file
screen here in Revit and there is a link
| | 00:42 | right here to Create New Families,
and of course I can go to the big R and
| | 00:45 | choose New and then Family as well, and
it's going to take me to the New Family
| | 00:51 | - Select a Template File folder.
| | 00:54 | So in this folder we're going to see a
list of all the various Family templates
| | 00:57 | that are available to us.
| | 00:59 | Because I chose New > Family, it
takes me to the folder that contains all
| | 01:03 | the Model templates.
| | 01:04 | If you watched the previous movie, the
previous chapter rather, you saw that we
| | 01:09 | were going into the Annotations
folder and that had Annotation templates.
| | 01:12 | So here we're seeing the Model Templates.
| | 01:14 | Now what I usually like to do is this.
| | 01:16 | If I select the first item in
the list, don't double-click it.
| | 01:20 | If you double-click it, you're going to
create a new Family from that template,
| | 01:24 | but if you single click on it and then
use the arrow keys on your keyboard, you
| | 01:28 | can pretty rapidly scroll through each
of the templates and get a preview over
| | 01:33 | on the right-hand side.
| | 01:34 | This is a way that you can quickly
familiarize yourself with the various
| | 01:38 | templates that are included in this
folder and without really spending too much
| | 01:42 | time lingering on any one, what you
start to notice is each of these templates
| | 01:46 | contain very different things.
| | 01:48 | sometimes there are some text notes
to describe what you're supposed to do.
| | 01:52 | We of course, recognize the two green
Reference Planes marking the insertion
| | 01:56 | point that we've seen previously, and in
some cases they even contain existing geometry.
| | 02:02 | Now you're going to see existing
geometry included when the name says the
| | 02:07 | word "based" in it.
| | 02:09 | Now the particular one that I have
selected right now says Specialty
| | 02:11 | Equipment wall based.
| | 02:14 | This is telling me that this
Family is a hosted template.
| | 02:18 | We talked about that in the previous
movie, this idea that we're choosing two
| | 02:22 | things when we select our template.
| | 02:23 | We're choosing the category, and
we're also choosing the hosting behavior.
| | 02:28 | Specialty Equipment would be the
category, and wall based means that this
| | 02:32 | particular item would require a wall host.
| | 02:35 | If I want a non-hosted piece of
Specialty Equipment then I would choose
| | 02:39 | this template instead.
| | 02:41 | If we look at some of the other
categories, like Mechanical Equipment, I see
| | 02:46 | that there are actually two hosted versions.
| | 02:49 | There is the ceiling based
Mechanical Equipment, there is the wall based
| | 02:52 | Mechanical Equipment, and then
there's just simply Mechanical Equipment.
| | 02:56 | What if you're not sure?
| | 02:57 | How would you decide?
| | 02:59 | Well, you can change your
mind about the category later.
| | 03:02 | You cannot change your mind about the
hosting behavior so the best thing to do
| | 03:06 | if you're not sure whether you
want it hosted or not is to choose the
| | 03:10 | non-hosted version.
| | 03:11 | Every category that you see
here has a non-hosted version.
| | 03:15 | So you can always choose that to play it safe.
| | 03:18 | You can always take a Lighting Fixture
that's setup as non-hosted and move it
| | 03:22 | next to a wall, align it and lock it.
| | 03:25 | So you always have the ability to make
it kind of look like it's hosted, but you
| | 03:28 | can't take something that's
hosted and pull it off the wall.
| | 03:31 | Okay, so that's not allowed.
| | 03:33 | Now in our case it's a little simpler,
because I said we're going to create a
| | 03:36 | conference table and what you notice
here is there is only one Furniture
| | 03:40 | template and it's not hosted.
| | 03:42 | So there really isn't any such thing as
Hosted Furniture, even though you might
| | 03:46 | be tempted to say, well, Furniture
should be hosted to the floor, that's sort of
| | 03:50 | assumed and obvious in Revit.
| | 03:52 | So every object has an association
with its parent level, that's not really
| | 03:56 | considered hosted per se.
| | 03:58 | So in this case we're going to
choose the Furniture template.
| | 04:01 | We're going to click Open and when we
do, you kind of saw things flash by a
| | 04:06 | little bit, and the reason for that
is if I do the keyboard shortcut for
| | 04:09 | Window Tile, which is W+T, you're going to see
that there's actually four open windows here.
| | 04:14 | Now if you don't like keyword shortcuts,
I could have gone to the View tab and
| | 04:17 | chosen the Tile button here, and
would have achieved the same thing.
| | 04:20 | Now the other keyboard shortcut I'm
going to do is Z+A, and I'm going to zoom
| | 04:23 | all the viewports to fill the screen.
| | 04:27 | Now at the moment the 3D view won't do
that, it's not going to do that until I
| | 04:31 | get some geometry in there.
| | 04:33 | We can see that the template
starts off with these four open windows.
| | 04:37 | We have a Floor Plan, we have two
Elevations and we have a 3D View, and that's
| | 04:41 | going to be helpful while we're working,
because as we're making changes in one
| | 04:45 | view, we're going to see those changes
in how they respond in the other view,
| | 04:48 | and when you're working on 3D
geometry that's really helpful.
| | 04:51 | The next step in the process was
to begin laying out the structure.
| | 04:55 | Before we do that let's talk
about the ones that are already here.
| | 04:58 | This one right here there's a Reference
Plane going horizontally and if I hover
| | 05:03 | over it, you see it's got a name called
Center Front/Back, and if I hover over
| | 05:06 | this one, it's got a name
that's called Center Left/ Right.
| | 05:10 | Now hover over it, you can see it on a tooltip.
| | 05:12 | If you click on it that name
actually appears as a blue label.
| | 05:16 | The other thing you're going to see is that
these two default Reference Planes are pinned.
| | 05:22 | They've done this because if you
recall from our Annotation Family exercises,
| | 05:26 | the two Reference Planes in the
center mark the insertion point.
| | 05:29 | So if you pin them, it means that people
won't be able to accidentally move them
| | 05:33 | and that's kind of a good thing if we
want that to be our insertion point.
| | 05:37 | But what makes that the insertion point
is if I select on it, you can see that
| | 05:43 | Reference Plane is
actually set to define the origin.
| | 05:47 | So both of these Reference Planes, if I
click on them, have that Defines Origin
| | 05:51 | check box checked already.
| | 05:52 | This is in the default template,
I haven't made any changes yet.
| | 05:55 | This is already all here.
| | 05:57 | So that's what we're starting with and
we're not really starting with much else.
| | 05:59 | Let's go ahead and save this.
| | 06:02 | Save it as Family, and I'm just going
to call this Simple Conference Table.
| | 06:12 | I mentioned this in the
Annotation Family movies.
| | 06:16 | I like to do the same
thing with my Model Families.
| | 06:18 | I'm going to a click on
Options, set the Backups to 1.
| | 06:22 | In Annotation Families, I didn't have
to worry about the preview, because there
| | 06:25 | was only a single view, but here in
Model Families there is an option down here
| | 06:29 | to set the source of the Preview file.
| | 06:31 | Now the default is just the Active Viewer Sheet.
| | 06:34 | What I'm going to do is open that
up and change that to the 3D View.
| | 06:38 | Now there maybe more than one 3D view;
| | 06:39 | I can choose anyone that I want.
| | 06:41 | And then if you check this
box, it just regenerates.
| | 06:44 | It doesn't really matter in this
case, because there is no geometry, so
| | 06:46 | that's not really going to help me
very much, but I want to make sure that I
| | 06:49 | have one backup and the 3D View is the
source of my preview, and then I'll go
| | 06:53 | ahead and save this.
| | 06:54 | So that gets us started.
| | 06:57 | So here we have created our Family file,
we've set up our work environment, and
| | 07:00 | the next step is going to be to start
laying down the Reference Planes that will
| | 07:03 | serve as the framework for the Family.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding reference planes, constraints, and parameters| 00:00 | In Project files we establish the
overall form and structure of the building
| | 00:04 | with a series of Levels and Column Grids;
| | 00:06 | not every building has
column grids, but many of them do.
| | 00:09 | Such Datum Elements are not
available in the Family Editor.
| | 00:13 | All Model Families do include
one or two Reference Levels;
| | 00:18 | it really depends on the actual template
you start, whether you'll get one or two.
| | 00:22 | In the Family Editor
instead we use Reference Planes.
| | 00:25 | Reference Planes are what are going
to determine the overall structure and
| | 00:30 | form of our Family.
| | 00:32 | We started with the two, here in the
center, and what we're going to do here in
| | 00:35 | this movie is we're going to add
additional ones to represent the overall shape
| | 00:39 | and size of our table that we're drawing.
| | 00:41 | So to do that, I'm going to start here
in Floor Plan and I want to draw a series
| | 00:46 | of four Reference Planes to
represent the four sides of the table.
| | 00:49 | So I'm going to go to my Home tab and
there are actually Reference Lines and
| | 00:54 | Reference Planes, I want you to make
sure that you're choosing Reference Planes.
| | 00:58 | We will discuss Reference
Lines in a later chapter.
| | 01:00 | Let me choose Reference Plane.
| | 01:02 | There are two ways to draw them;
| | 01:04 | you can either draw them point by
point or by picking other geometry.
| | 01:07 | The choice is really up to you, but I
usually just draw these point by point.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to start here above my
existing Reference Plane and just draw
| | 01:15 | horizontally across the top.
| | 01:16 | Then I usually like to click the
dimension and set that to some rational value,
| | 01:21 | like maybe about 2 feet here.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to draw another one running
vertically this way, rationalize that
| | 01:28 | value, and then I'll click my
Modify tool to get out of there.
| | 01:34 | Now this is a little
fussy thing that I like to do.
| | 01:37 | I usually like to adjust the lengths
of these things a little bit, and let me
| | 01:42 | mirror them to the other side and
then I'll talk about why I like to adjust
| | 01:45 | the lengths of those.
| | 01:46 | So I'm going to select this one, mirror
it around the center, select this one,
| | 01:51 | and mirror it around the center.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to temporarily maximize
this Floor Plan and zoom in on it.
| | 01:59 | What we can't do in the Family
Editor is change the color or line type or
| | 02:04 | anything like that, of
individual Reference Planes.
| | 02:07 | I could change all the Reference
Planes, but that really wouldn't serve the
| | 02:11 | purpose that I'm looking for.
| | 02:12 | What I'm looking for is some sort
of visual hierarchy on the screen.
| | 02:18 | So if I leave the overall Center
Reference Planes longer, and take the ones that
| | 02:24 | I'm drawing and maybe make them a
little shorter, but make them match one
| | 02:28 | another, you see how they kind of snap
here, this is a way that I can establish
| | 02:32 | this visual hierarchy on screen, even
though what I'd really like to be doing
| | 02:36 | here is changing the color or
the line type of these things.
| | 02:40 | So this may seem like a little fussy
step and it's certainly not required.
| | 02:43 | I don't want you to think
that you have to do that.
| | 02:46 | But personally I like to do that
because I think that gives me a little bit of
| | 02:50 | visual hierarchy, and at the moment
we've only got four Reference Planes, but as
| | 02:54 | we start getting dozens of them, you're
going to appreciate having some way to
| | 02:57 | go to quickly identify them.
| | 02:59 | Now the other thing you can do is you
can name them and we'll get to that a
| | 03:02 | little bit later, but that's another way
that you can help to identify them on screen.
| | 03:06 | So I've got the four and that gives me
the overall basic footprint of the table,
| | 03:11 | the next thing I'm going to
do is add some dimensions.
| | 03:13 | I need four dimensions.
| | 03:14 | I want one that goes from the left
side to the center to the right, and I'm
| | 03:21 | going to make that equal
and do another one here.
| | 03:26 | It's kind of the same from top to
center and to bottom, make that one equal as
| | 03:30 | well, and then I want two overalls,
one that gives me the overall width, and
| | 03:36 | another that gives me the overall height,
and I'll place each of those and then
| | 03:40 | click my Modify tool.
| | 03:42 | At the moment what I have is, this
dimension is actually now a Constraint and
| | 03:47 | this one is just a
dimension, it's not anything yet.
| | 03:50 | So what I mean by that is if I took one
of these Reference Planes and I dragged
| | 03:54 | it either to the left or to the right,
it doesn't really matter which way I go,
| | 03:59 | you're going to see that the other one on the
opposite side is going to move the same amount.
| | 04:04 | I'm going to undo that with Ctrl+Z
and that's because of the equal equal.
| | 04:09 | That's what we refer to as a Constraint.
| | 04:11 | We're constraining the position of the
two outside Reference Planes so that they
| | 04:16 | have to be equal relative to the center.
| | 04:19 | What I want to do next is take the two
outside dimensions and turn those into
| | 04:23 | what we call a Parameter.
| | 04:25 | A Parameter is going to be a value
that my end-user is going to be able to
| | 04:29 | type something into.
| | 04:30 | So this is going to be length of my table.
| | 04:32 | This is going to the width of my table
and I want to make both of those values
| | 04:36 | editable values that the
end-user can manipulate.
| | 04:38 | So we do that by making those into
Parameters and the way we do that is a
| | 04:42 | pretty simple process.
| | 04:43 | I'll go ahead and select the overall
dimension here and we're starting to see
| | 04:49 | some common terminology that we've
seen elsewhere in the Family Editor.
| | 04:52 | If you recall from the Annotation
Families, we were able to add labels
| | 04:57 | which were intelligent pieces of text that
were linked to some Parameter in the object.
| | 05:02 | We can now label dimensions and when we
label dimensions, we will have a choice
| | 05:07 | here where we can add a parameter and
what we're going to be doing in this case
| | 05:12 | is giving this dimension a label;
| | 05:14 | in this case I'm going to call that Length.
| | 05:16 | I can make either Type or Instance;
| | 05:18 | I'm going to leave it Type for now.
| | 05:19 | We'll talk about Instance
Parameters a little bit later.
| | 05:21 | We'll accept the default for now and
when I click OK here what you're going to
| | 05:24 | see is that Length is going to be
applied in front of the dimension.
| | 05:29 | That is now a Parameter.
| | 05:31 | It's a driving value.
| | 05:33 | That value, Length, is actually
driving the size of the dimension.
| | 05:38 | Let's go ahead and label this one
and I'll illustrate what I mean by
| | 05:42 | that driving behavior.
| | 05:44 | Let me call this Width;
| | 05:46 | accept all the defaults, click OK,
and I now have it labeled here and here.
| | 05:52 | The next step in the process
is to do what we call flexing.
| | 05:57 | Flex is where you test out your
flexible Parameters, and make sure that they're
| | 06:02 | working the way you expect. How do we do that?
| | 06:04 | We come up here to the Properties
panel and we click the Family Types button.
| | 06:09 | When I click that button, I get this dialog.
| | 06:12 | I'm going to move it out
of the way a little bit.
| | 06:15 | Each of these parameters corresponds to
the two dimensions. Here's the Width;
| | 06:20 | you can see it highlighted over here on
the left-hand side. Here's the Length;
| | 06:23 | you can see it highlighted up here at the top.
| | 06:26 | So that if you've lost track of which
Parameter belongs to which dimension,
| | 06:30 | you can just simply select it and then here
in the Value field I can try another value.
| | 06:34 | So I'm going to try 3 feet for the
Width and maybe 7 feet for the Length, and
| | 06:40 | when I come down here and click Apply,
you're going to see both of those values
| | 06:44 | adjust and this is what I meant by
those Parameters are now driving the value
| | 06:50 | of that dimension, and in turn they
are moving the corresponding Reference
| | 06:55 | Planes as a consequence.
| | 06:57 | So I'm going to go ahead
and change these values back.
| | 07:00 | I always like to change them
back to my starting values.
| | 07:03 | I like to think of these as my home values.
| | 07:05 | Click Apply, everything really adjust
back the way that it started, and I'll go
| | 07:10 | ahead and click OK and that's
what we mean by flexing the Model.
| | 07:15 | It's a good idea after each iteration
in your Family to go in and do a flex to
| | 07:22 | make sure everything is
working the way that you expect.
| | 07:25 | It's going to very difficult if not
impossible to track down a problem if you
| | 07:30 | set up a couple dozen Reference Planes,
a couple dozen parameters then go to
| | 07:35 | Family Types, change all the values and
the whole thing fails and breaks on you
| | 07:39 | and you'll have no idea which
Parameter is actually causing the problem.
| | 07:43 | So this is why we recommend frequent
flexing of your Model, in order to make
| | 07:47 | sure that everything is working correctly.
| | 07:49 | So this gives us our basic formwork
and a structure for our new Family.
| | 07:54 | As you can see, we can add Reference
Planes, Label and Constrain them to give
| | 07:58 | them a little bit more smarts and intelligence.
| | 08:00 | In the next movie, we will begin
adding geometry to the Family and attaching
| | 08:04 | that geometry to this
formwork of our Reference Planes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding geometry| 00:00 | So we've created a new Family, we have
established its category, laid down the
| | 00:04 | Reference Planes and even applied
some Parameters and Constraints.
| | 00:07 | So now we're finally ready to
actually start modeling something.
| | 00:11 | We're going to go ahead and add some
geometry and the first form that we're
| | 00:14 | going to look at is just a simple extrusion.
| | 00:16 | Now we do have the opportunity in the
next chapter to get into detail on all
| | 00:20 | of the various forms.
| | 00:22 | I'll just point out a few
of them to you right now.
| | 00:24 | Here on the Home tab, there is
Extrusions, Blends, Revolves.
| | 00:27 | You can see there are actually five
forms and then the same five forms are also
| | 00:31 | available under Void.
| | 00:32 | The simplest of the five is the Extrusion
and that's the one we'll start with now.
| | 00:37 | Just a little sidebar, if you pause
your mouse over any of the tools, as
| | 00:42 | you've no doubt discovered in the
project environment, you get tooltips, you
| | 00:45 | get the same in here.
| | 00:46 | This helps you identify what
each of the forms look like.
| | 00:49 | So we can see that this is actually
going to be a sketch-based object.
| | 00:53 | We've encountered other sketch-based
objects in the project environment most
| | 00:56 | likely, if you've been working in
Revit for a while, you've seen Floor
| | 00:59 | objects or Roof objects or Stair objects,
Extrusions and other solid forms are very similar.
| | 01:05 | They take you into Sketch mode and as
you can see the drawing has grayed out
| | 01:10 | here in the background, so that's one of the
obvious indications that we're in Sketch mode.
| | 01:15 | The next thing that's fairly obvious
is the Ribbon tab tints in color, so it
| | 01:20 | says Modify/Create Extrusion here on
the Ribbon tab and whole thing tints in
| | 01:24 | this sort of greenish color.
| | 01:26 | The last indicator that you're in
Sketch mode is these two icons right here.
| | 01:30 | So we get a Mode panel and we get a big
green check box that's our Finish Edit
| | 01:35 | mode and we get the red X,
that's our Cancel Edit mode.
| | 01:39 | We use either of these buttons to
complete the Sketch mode and move on
| | 01:43 | into something else.
| | 01:44 | You do have to finish the Sketch mode
before you can move on to some other task.
| | 01:49 | So you really have to complete it or cancel it.
| | 01:51 | Now I should just say that a common
mistake for beginners is to start off
| | 01:56 | sketching something and then get sidetracked
and go click onto one of the other Ribbon tabs.
| | 02:01 | If you find yourself doing that, what
you're going to see is that it doesn't
| | 02:06 | look like you can do anything;
| | 02:08 | a lot of things are going to be grayed out.
| | 02:09 | You're going to see
everything is grayed out here.
| | 02:12 | You really need to stay on
this Modify/Create Extrusion tab.
| | 02:16 | It's very important that you do
that when you're in Sketch mode.
| | 02:18 | So look for the tinted
colored tab and stay there.
| | 02:22 | Everything you need to draw
your extrusion is on this tab.
| | 02:25 | So I'm going to start with a rectangle.
| | 02:28 | I'm going to draw a simple rectangle
form and I want to snap that rectangle to
| | 02:32 | the opposite corners of these Reference Planes.
| | 02:35 | Now Revit will offer to lock that
sketch to the underlying Reference Planes and
| | 02:43 | normally that's a really good thing
for us to do, and actually applies a nice
| | 02:46 | Constraint, it keeps the shape
constrained to those Reference Planes and
| | 02:50 | ultimately that is what
I'm going to want to do here.
| | 02:52 | At the moment though, I'm going to
actually not do that and I want to show you
| | 02:56 | what will happen if you choose not to.
| | 02:58 | So I'm just going to go ahead and draw
the sketch and click the big green check
| | 03:03 | box and finish that.
| | 03:05 | So when I do you can kind of see that
here's the form right here, a little tough
| | 03:09 | to see in plan, so I might want to
shift over to other views to get a look at
| | 03:14 | it, but before I do that, I'm
going to stay here to look at this.
| | 03:19 | So here is the form right here and it
is attached to these Reference Planes.
| | 03:22 | Let's go ahead and flex it.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to go to my Family Types
dialog that we've seen before, move it out of
| | 03:28 | the way, put in a number here, put in
another number here, it doesn't matter
| | 03:33 | what numbers I put in really, and click Apply.
| | 03:36 | You may be a little surprised to see
that the form actually adjusts, even though
| | 03:41 | we didn't constrain the sketch, right?
| | 03:44 | We did not click the little padlock
icons and the sketch therefore was not
| | 03:48 | locked to the Reference Planes, but yet
somehow Revit is assuming that we want
| | 03:54 | that behavior anyway.
| | 03:56 | Why is it doing that?
| | 03:57 | Where is that assumption coming from?
| | 03:59 | I'd like to talk about a concept
called automatic sketch dimensions.
| | 04:05 | While you're creating items in Revit,
Revit is always looking for opportunities
| | 04:10 | to add smarts to those items, to add
relationships and to make the overall
| | 04:14 | experience more intelligent, more valuable.
| | 04:17 | In this case it's doing that with
something called Automatic Sketch Dimensions.
| | 04:22 | You have to kind of know that these
things exist in order to understand that
| | 04:26 | they are there and to make use of them.
| | 04:27 | I'm going to show them to you in the
Visibility Graphics dialog and I'm going to
| | 04:31 | use the keyboard shortcut to get in
here V+G. So if you type the letters V+G in
| | 04:35 | succession, that will take you to
Visibility/Graphics Override dialog.
| | 04:40 | If you have gone into this dialog in the
Project environment, you see a lot more
| | 04:44 | categories listed here than
what we're seeing right now.
| | 04:47 | Because we're in the Family Editor,
I'm only seeing the active category,
| | 04:52 | Furniture in this case.
| | 04:54 | There's really no clue here to
automatic sketch dimensions, in this case,
| | 04:57 | because everything is turned on.
| | 05:00 | If you go to the Annotation
Categories tab, underneath Dimensions, there is
| | 05:05 | an item called Automatic Sketch
Dimensions and by default it's turned off, so
| | 05:09 | I'm going to go ahead and turn this on, click
OK, select my Extrusion and edit the sketch.
| | 05:19 | Now when I do that, you're going to see
these four tiny little dimensions that
| | 05:25 | are set to zero appearing on each
of the four sides of the sketch.
| | 05:31 | You can leave these;
| | 05:33 | if they're giving you what you
want, you can use them just fine.
| | 05:36 | There is really no reason otherwise,
but sometimes the Automatic Sketch
| | 05:41 | Dimensions will actually start to
give you results you weren't looking for,
| | 05:46 | usually when the forms get more complicated.
| | 05:48 | So we'll probably have some
opportunities to discuss them again in later movies
| | 05:52 | when the forms start to get more complicated.
| | 05:53 | If you decide that you want to be more
deliberate about where the constraints
| | 05:59 | are and what's controlling what, and
this is really the point of discussion,
| | 06:03 | then you can assign the constraint
yourself deliberately and when you do that
| | 06:09 | will remove the Automatic Sketch Dimension.
| | 06:12 | In other words you can't have both
an Automatic Sketch Dimension and a
| | 06:16 | manually applied constraint.
| | 06:18 | The manually applied constraint
will always override and remove the
| | 06:23 | Automatic Sketch Dimension.
| | 06:24 | I can't just delete it.
| | 06:26 | If I try and delete it, it just comes back.
| | 06:28 | So the Delete key isn't the answer.
| | 06:31 | What we want to do is take this geometry and
lock it to the underlying Reference Planes.
| | 06:37 | Now we could do that one of two ways.
| | 06:38 | I could move it out of the way and then
move it back again to get the lock to appear.
| | 06:43 | When I click that notice that the zero
dimension disappears, or the easier way
| | 06:48 | to do this is with the Align tool.
| | 06:50 | So I'm going to click on Align, click on
the Reference Plane and then the Sketch
| | 06:56 | Edge and lock it, click on the
Reference Plane, Sketch Edge and lock it.
| | 07:01 | Notice the dimensions are
disappearing when I do that.
| | 07:04 | Click on the Reference Plane,
Sketch Edge and lock it.
| | 07:07 | So, all four Automatic
Sketch Dimensions disappear.
| | 07:10 | I go to Finish and ultimately I
really won't see anything different with
| | 07:15 | respect to how it flexes.
| | 07:17 | It's still going to flex the same way,
but that's only because the geometry that
| | 07:21 | we have on screen is so simple.
| | 07:23 | Later when the Model gets more
complicated, you're probably going to find that
| | 07:27 | you're going to want to control those
constraints a little bit more deliberately
| | 07:30 | than relying simply on the
Automatic Sketch Dimensions.
| | 07:33 | I wanted you to be aware that they
were there and understand how they behave;
| | 07:37 | the Automatic Sketch Dimensions will
apply automatically by the software and
| | 07:41 | will remain around until you apply
other constraints manually to override them,
| | 07:46 | and then they will remove.
| | 07:48 | But before you can even know they're there,
you have to go to V+G and turn them on.
| | 07:55 | So that's creating our first piece of
geometry and a little bit about how it
| | 08:00 | gets constrained to the Reference
Planes using Automatic Sketch Dimensions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using instance parameters| 00:00 | As we continue in our first Model Family,
and if we begin to study it carefully,
| | 00:04 | we're going to realize that the
extrusion that we've modeled, which represents
| | 00:07 | our tabletop, is actually sitting
on the floor and it's very thick.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, we'll adjust the Height
parameters of our table model and we'll
| | 00:15 | introduce the concept of work planes
to help us understand ways that we can
| | 00:19 | control that height parametrically.
| | 00:22 | I'm still here in the Floor Plan View, and
I have my basic table model as we continue.
| | 00:27 | What I'm going to do is press W+T again,
then I'll do Z+A to zoom everything to
| | 00:32 | fit, and the first thing I want to
address just quickly here is when I'm working
| | 00:38 | in Tiled Views, it might be a little
difficult to read the dimensions, because
| | 00:43 | the scale of this view is
set to half-inch equals a foot.
| | 00:47 | That's just in the default template that we use.
| | 00:49 | Now, we're not going to print from
our Family Editor, so really the scale
| | 00:52 | is kind of irrelevant.
| | 00:54 | So what you can do here is anytime you
want to make a view more legible, you can
| | 00:58 | just change the scale and that will
have an impact on all the annotations.
| | 01:01 | So in this case, I actually want to
make the text a little larger, so I'm going
| | 01:05 | to switch to quarter-inch
scale and then zoom in a touch.
| | 01:08 | I could do the same thing
in these other views as well.
| | 01:11 | So I can go in here, and make this
one 1/4", make this one quarter inch.
| | 01:16 | I don't really have to worry about
that here in the 3D because there's
| | 01:19 | no annotation here.
| | 01:20 | However, in the 3D, I'm
looking at it edge on right now.
| | 01:24 | So if I use my little View Cube here
and click the corner, I can get it to zoom
| | 01:29 | to a 3D view, maybe adjust the vantage
point a little, and it's looking pretty
| | 01:34 | hollow right now because it's set to Wireframe.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to change that to Shaded.
| | 01:40 | We already saw this in the Plan View
but now we can see very clearly that what
| | 01:44 | we really have is this very thick
slab sitting down here on the floor.
| | 01:50 | So for the next couple steps, I'm
going to work in the Elevation Views to
| | 01:56 | establish the height of our table.
| | 01:58 | So the first thing I want to do
is work here in the Front View.
| | 02:01 | What you're seeing here, both right
and left here in the Front View, actually
| | 02:07 | are the two Reference planes
that I drew here in the Floor Plan.
| | 02:11 | So if I select this Reference plane,
you see it also highlights here.
| | 02:15 | If I select this Reference Plane on
the left, it also highlights here.
| | 02:19 | Likewise, if I select these, you can
see them highlight in the Right view, both
| | 02:24 | the front and the back.
| | 02:25 | So what a Reference Plane actually is,
is literally it's a plane, and if you
| | 02:29 | think of it as a thin little sheet of
paper standing upright in this model,
| | 02:33 | that's a pretty good
indication of what you're seeing.
| | 02:35 | You're looking at the edge of that
sheet of paper at any given time.
| | 02:39 | So what I want to do here is create
first a new set of Reference Planes.
| | 02:43 | So I'm going to go back to
Home and this is somewhat review.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to do this fairly quickly here.
| | 02:48 | Just add a Reference Plane, set the
Dimension to 3 feet which seems like
| | 02:53 | a pretty good height.
| | 02:55 | Then I'm going to add a second
Reference Plane directly below it, and set the
| | 03:00 | distance between these two to 2 inches.
| | 03:03 | It's just a more rational number.
| | 03:05 | So I want ultimately my tabletop
thickness to be 2 inches thick.
| | 03:09 | So I do that by establishing
a couple of Reference Planes.
| | 03:12 | Now, at the moment these two are
completely independent from one another.
| | 03:15 | So if I move one, the
other one gets left behind.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to undo that.
| | 03:20 | So what I want to do next is set up
some Parameters and some Constraints to
| | 03:25 | control the behavior of
these two Reference Planes.
| | 03:30 | Dimension between the two Reference
Planes first, and click over here somewhere
| | 03:35 | and what I'm going to do is
simply close this little padlock.
| | 03:38 | Now, if I escape out of there and move
one of these Reference Planes, the result
| | 03:43 | of that is that those two
Reference Planes are now locked together.
| | 03:47 | That's another form of Constraint.
| | 03:49 | So earlier we talked about Equal-Equal
being a Constraint in the Plan view, this
| | 03:53 | is another form of Constraint;
| | 03:55 | we're now moving one Reference
Plane and having it move the other.
| | 04:00 | I can give you another definition for the
difference between Constraints and Parameters.
| | 04:05 | I keep using both of those words, but I
want to make it clear here what I mean
| | 04:08 | by the difference between that.
| | 04:10 | When I talk about constraining something,
I'm establishing a rule that cannot be
| | 04:15 | changed by the end-user of this Family.
| | 04:18 | So by locking this 2 inch thickness,
they're not going to have a check box or a
| | 04:25 | text field or a dimension that they
can input a value in to change the
| | 04:29 | thickness of this table.
| | 04:31 | That thickness is going to
be maintained as 2 inches.
| | 04:34 | Likewise here with the Equal-Equal,
there is not going to be a setting anywhere
| | 04:38 | in this Family where the user is going
to be able to change that in some way so
| | 04:43 | that it doesn't have to be equal;
| | 04:44 | so it can be unequal.
| | 04:45 | That's what we mean by a Constraint.
| | 04:47 | A Parameter on the other hand, Width and
Length in this case or the new one that
| | 04:52 | I'm going to establish from here down to
here for Height, that is something that
| | 04:57 | my end-user is going to be able to
manipulate and make a change to, so that's
| | 05:02 | what we mean by a Parameter.
| | 05:04 | I've selected this first reference
plane as the first witness line of this
| | 05:07 | dimension, and I want to
be very careful down here.
| | 05:11 | If you move your mouse around down here,
it turns out that if you're underneath
| | 05:15 | the extrusion itself, there is
actually three objects there that I could
| | 05:19 | highlight, and if I move it
here off to the side, there is two.
| | 05:23 | I'm going to go directly underneath the
extrusion and show you the three objects.
| | 05:27 | The same way that you toggle between
objects in the Project Environment, you
| | 05:30 | would do in the Family
Editor, you'd use your Tab key.
| | 05:33 | So I'm going to press Tab here, and I
want you to watch the Status Bar right
| | 05:38 | below my project browser as I do this.
| | 05:41 | So currently the Status Bar
says, Extrusion: Shape handle.
| | 05:44 | So then I'm going to press the Tab key,
and you'll see next it says, Levels: Level:
| | 05:49 | Reference Level.
| | 05:51 | So it's a lot of words, but it's
basically telling me that it's highlighting the
| | 05:55 | Reference Level and if I Tab one more
time, what we see is there's actually a
| | 05:59 | Reference Plane also in that location,
and if I Tab a fourth time, it will just
| | 06:03 | go back to the underside of the extrusion.
| | 06:07 | You definitely do not want to attach
the dimension directly to the geometry.
| | 06:13 | In certain circumstances, the Reference
Plane is okay, but in this case, what we
| | 06:17 | really want is to attach it to the Level.
| | 06:21 | We want the height of the table to
be referenced from the floor level.
| | 06:25 | So it's going to be really important
that the floor level is what's highlighted
| | 06:29 | before we click and create that dimension.
| | 06:31 | So you have to be very deliberate
about the work you do in the Family Editor.
| | 06:36 | If you don't, you will be sorry later,
because things will break and fail.
| | 06:40 | So that's one of the key things to
look out for is exactly what are you
| | 06:44 | attaching that dimension to.
| | 06:45 | Okay, so in this case, we wanted to go
from the Level to the upper Reference Plane.
| | 06:51 | Once I have that dimension, I can select it,
and just like we did before, I can label it.
| | 06:56 | I don't want to choose one of the
existing parameters, I want to add a new one,
| | 07:00 | and I'm going to call this new one Height.
| | 07:03 | Now we'll talk a little bit more
detailed about the difference between Type and
| | 07:06 | Instance Parameters in a later movie,
but for now, I'm going to set this as an
| | 07:11 | Instance Parameter and I
want to just say it this way.
| | 07:14 | Think about a Type parameter as a
parameter that represents something that is
| | 07:19 | going to be built in the
factory to a certain specification.
| | 07:22 | So this table is going to come from the
catalog as either a 4 foot size or a 5 foot size.
| | 07:28 | It's going to be come in a
certain width and length.
| | 07:31 | The Height however, I'm going to set
as an Instance Parameter, and what I'm
| | 07:34 | basically saying is my end-user will
be able to adjust some sort of a ratchet
| | 07:39 | or some other hardware on the legs of this
table and adjust the height of the table.
| | 07:44 | So we're making that an Instance Parameter.
| | 07:46 | In other words, each instance of this
table will be able to be a different
| | 07:50 | height but each width and length
will actually be controlled as a group.
| | 07:55 | So if you change the length of one table,
you could potentially be changing the
| | 07:59 | lengths of dozens of tables, but if you
change the height of one table, you'll
| | 08:02 | only be affecting the one you select.
| | 08:04 | That's the difference between Type,
or Instance Parameters, and you can do
| | 08:08 | this with any Parameter.
| | 08:09 | I always like to take my cues from this
sort of product catalog that I'm thinking of.
| | 08:13 | So in this case I'm building presumably
a real product, so I would think about
| | 08:18 | the product catalog and how it comes
from the factory in reality and try and
| | 08:22 | build IT as close to that as possible.
| | 08:24 | So I now have my height.
| | 08:26 | Let's go ahead and flex that, and go to
the Family Types again, and kind of move
| | 08:32 | this out of the way a little bit.
| | 08:33 | Here is my Height Parameter.
| | 08:36 | You'll see the word Default now in parenthesis;
| | 08:38 | that's how you know that you
have an Instance Parameter here.
| | 08:42 | If I make an adjustment, you'll see
it move down and it takes the 2 inch
| | 08:46 | Reference Plane with it.
| | 08:47 | Let's make it really tall;
| | 08:49 | it takes the 2 inch Reference Plane
with it and let's set it back to 3 feet.
| | 08:55 | So there's our framework.
| | 08:56 | Now at the moment, all we've done is
added some more Reference Planes, added
| | 08:59 | some more dimensions, we haven't
done anything with the geometry.
| | 09:02 | What I really want to happen is this
slab here, instead of being 1 foot thick as
| | 09:08 | it is right now, I want it to be
sandwiched between these two Reference Planes.
| | 09:13 | So we've set up the various Height
Parameters now, we've got it all flexing and
| | 09:16 | working the way that we expect, but
what we still need to do is take this piece
| | 09:20 | of geometry here and get it sandwiched
between these two Reference Planes, and
| | 09:24 | that will be the subject of our next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding work planes| 00:00 | When we create our sketch-based geometry in
Revit, we need to create that sketch on a plane.
| | 00:05 | If we don't establish a plane to do
that ahead of time then Revit assumes one
| | 00:11 | and it usually uses one of the defaults,
either the level of the project or one
| | 00:16 | of the intersecting Reference
Planes at the center of our Family here.
| | 00:20 | What we can do is establish an
alternate work plane elsewhere in 3D space, and
| | 00:27 | then we can create our sketch-
based geometry on that work plane.
| | 00:31 | The workflow can be to either establish
the work plane first and then draw the
| | 00:36 | geometry, or in the case where we
have here where we've already drawn the
| | 00:40 | geometry, it's actually possible for
us to establish the work plane after the
| | 00:44 | fact, and then move the
geometry to that work plane.
| | 00:47 | So we're going to go ahead and take a
look at that process here in this file
| | 00:51 | that we have on screen.
| | 00:53 | So where we left off in the previous
movie we've had identified that the slab
| | 00:56 | was sitting on the floor and we had set
up these height Reference Planes to get
| | 01:01 | us started establishing the height of the table.
| | 01:04 | I would like to point out a slight
difference in the Reference Planes that were
| | 01:09 | already here in the
template and the ones that we drew.
| | 01:13 | So if you recall from the start of the
exercise or any of the Family templates
| | 01:17 | that you may have previously been in,
when you select them there's a couple key
| | 01:22 | settings that we looked
at early in this chapter.
| | 01:25 | One of those settings was the push
pin, one of those settings was that it
| | 01:31 | defines origin, but we also pointed
out that there was a name or a label on
| | 01:36 | that Reference Plane.
| | 01:38 | It turns out that the key to using a
Reference Plane as a work plane is the named label.
| | 01:47 | In other words, if we look at the
Reference Planes that we drew previously here
| | 01:51 | in this exercise, you'll see that
none of them highlight with a label.
| | 01:55 | As such if I tried to select this
geometry and use this button here and choose
| | 02:01 | Edit Work Plane, what we would see is
that there are no choices other than the
| | 02:07 | existing reference level, which it
turns out, if you look at my 3D view there
| | 02:11 | in the background, is the Current Work Plane
of this solid geometry and it's the only choice.
| | 02:18 | If I would rather have the work plane
be associated with either this or this
| | 02:25 | Reference Plane, what I need to do
first is simply name those Reference Planes.
| | 02:30 | As soon as I name that Reference
Plane it will become eligible to be a work
| | 02:35 | plane, not only for the existing
geometry that I've already drawn, but for any
| | 02:39 | future geometry that I would like to draw there.
| | 02:41 | If I simply select this Reference
Plane, come over here to the Properties
| | 02:45 | palette, I'll notice that there is a
Name Parameter and it's currently empty.
| | 02:51 | I can type anything I want in here.
| | 02:53 | The name is not important just that it has one.
| | 02:56 | I like to use descriptive names.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to call this Underside,
press Enter to accept that and apply it,
| | 03:04 | and you're going to see the label
Underside appear on that Reference Plane now
| | 03:08 | in views where it's selected.
| | 03:10 | Once I do that I can return to
selecting the geometry, click on the Edit
| | 03:15 | Work Plane button, and when I open this list
I'll now have that additional choice there.
| | 03:21 | Choose that and the geometry
will jump up to that new height.
| | 03:26 | So that solves half of our problem.
| | 03:28 | We still have a slab that's too thick.
| | 03:31 | But you can see the effect of the work plane.
| | 03:34 | So by changing the work plane, the
plane upon which this extrusion is sketched
| | 03:39 | has now moved up to that new location.
| | 03:41 | And I'm saying it that way because
if I click Edit Extrusion, what you're
| | 03:45 | going to see here is that if I switch
to another view, notice that the sketch
| | 03:51 | is actually up here.
| | 03:53 | You see the purple line here, you see
the purple line here and here in 3D, the
| | 03:57 | sketch has actually moved up to that plane.
| | 04:00 | So it didn't simply just move the
geometry leave the sketch behind, it actually
| | 04:04 | moves the sketch up to that plane and
that had the effect on the geometry.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to cancel out of there.
| | 04:10 | Now to change the height
it turns out it's simple.
| | 04:12 | All we have to do is use this little
grip right here, stretch that down and I
| | 04:16 | can snap it and lock it to
the Reference Plane up above.
| | 04:20 | It doesn't really require that I
name that, but I might want to name it.
| | 04:24 | If I choose this and call it Topside.
| | 04:28 | Now later if I want I can actually draw
something else on that work surface, on
| | 04:34 | the top of this conference table.
| | 04:36 | For example, if there was going to be
some sort of a little cutout or there
| | 04:41 | was going to be some sort of a little
keystone that has a power and so forth
| | 04:45 | in the middle of the conference table,
what I could do is click over to an
| | 04:50 | appropriate view, like this Floor Plan
and I can go to the Home tab and I can
| | 04:56 | set the work plane.
| | 04:58 | So now that I've created a named
Reference Plane, I can choose this button, open
| | 05:03 | up the list and it may be a little
difficult to see here in the 3D view beyond,
| | 05:08 | but currently the floor is being highlighted.
| | 05:11 | And you can see it also here in the
Right view, in blue here that the floor
| | 05:15 | is being highlighted.
| | 05:16 | I can choose this, open it up and I can
choose the Topside, and you'll see that
| | 05:21 | blue plane jumps up above and it's a
little more clear here in the Right view.
| | 05:25 | You can see the blue line coincides with the
top edge of the work plane there, click OK.
| | 05:31 | Now if I created a new extrusion, say
right here, and I'm just going to sort of
| | 05:36 | eyeball the size of this thing and click Finish.
| | 05:39 | It's awfully tall, I could adjust that.
| | 05:44 | The right way to adjust that of course
would be to create a new Reference Plane,
| | 05:48 | constrain that Reference Plane
and attach the top edge of that.
| | 05:52 | But as you can see, you can create
the work plane first and then draw the
| | 05:56 | geometry, or you can draw the
geometry and then say, oops!
| | 06:00 | I need to put that in a certain work
plane and move it to the other work plane.
| | 06:05 | I will say however though, the before
or after only works if they're parallel.
| | 06:10 | So in other words, I could not take
this box that I've just drawn on the top of
| | 06:16 | the table, choose Edit Work Plane and
move it to the vertical work planes.
| | 06:23 | Notice how there are only three choices here.
| | 06:25 | If I cancel out of here and I go back
to Home and choose the Set button, notice
| | 06:31 | there are far more than the three choices.
| | 06:33 | We also have the Center Front/
Back and the Center Left/Right.
| | 06:37 | And if I choose that, it actually
makes the vertical work plane active.
| | 06:42 | So you get more flexibility if you set
the work plane first, and then draw the
| | 06:48 | geometry, and we'll do that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a revolve| 00:00 | So up until now we've kept the
forms of our Family pretty simple.
| | 00:03 | We've used some basic extrusions.
| | 00:05 | We could continue to use extrusions
and create some support for our table
| | 00:09 | because it's kind of floating right now,
and we could easily conceive of some
| | 00:14 | leg or support structure that was made
out of simple extrusions, but we do have
| | 00:18 | other shapes that we can choose from as well.
| | 00:20 | We have blends, we have revolves.
| | 00:22 | So we could really conceive of legs or
other support structure for this table
| | 00:27 | using really any of those forms.
| | 00:29 | Furthermore, we discussed work planes
in the previous movie and we saw the
| | 00:33 | impact that that would have on not
only the existing geometry that we already
| | 00:36 | drew, but any future geometry we create.
| | 00:39 | What I'd like to do is take both of
those concepts and kind of bring them
| | 00:42 | together here to kind of reinforce both
of those, give us an opportunity to look
| | 00:46 | at another kind of form;
| | 00:47 | in this case Revolve, and some
additional work planes, and use that to create
| | 00:53 | the support structure for this table.
| | 00:55 | In a way this movie here is going to
actually wrap up and summarize everything
| | 00:59 | we've been talking about so far to
create this 3D form and just sort of
| | 01:04 | reinforce all of the various concepts.
| | 01:07 | So I'm going to start actually in the
Floor Plan, and on the Home tab, I'm going
| | 01:11 | to create four new Reference Planes.
| | 01:14 | And those are going to be out at
the edges and I'm going to set them 4
| | 01:21 | inches off of the sides.
| | 01:24 | So I'm just drawing them, changing the
dimension, and I'm going to cancel out of
| | 01:29 | there, mirror it to the other side,
and mirror it to the other side.
| | 01:34 | So pretty much more of the same.
| | 01:37 | You could name all of these if you wanted to.
| | 01:40 | I really only need to name two of them,
so I have to decide which one of them I
| | 01:45 | want to draw my legs on.
| | 01:47 | In this case, I'm going to draw in the
right-hand view, and so therefore I need
| | 01:52 | to identify the reference planes
that are parallel to that view.
| | 01:56 | So if you imagine standing over here
and looking at the model, we would be
| | 02:01 | looking right at this Reference Plane
and this other one that I drew over here.
| | 02:04 | So those are the two that I'm going to name.
| | 02:06 | I'm going to name this one Right Legs,
I'll Apply that, and I'll name this one
| | 02:16 | Left Legs and Apply that.
| | 02:19 | Now if I flexed, what we would find is,
and I'll just flex in one dimension
| | 02:25 | here, I'll just flex the length, that
at the moment my Reference Planes are
| | 02:30 | totally oblivious to the flexing.
| | 02:33 | So I'll reset this back to 6, click OK,
and what I need to do now is establish
| | 02:40 | how I want those legs to follow the table.
| | 02:43 | So I'm going to go ahead and add some
dimensions, and I want to really stress
| | 02:50 | here, if I zoom in and make this clear,
I'm not dimensioning to the extrusion.
| | 02:56 | We pointed this out in a previous
movie, but I think it's worth repeating.
| | 03:00 | If your cursor is here, you need to press
Tab to get to the underlying Reference Plane.
| | 03:06 | So I want to go Reference Plane to
Reference Plane, and this is one of the
| | 03:09 | other reasons why it's a good idea
to fiddle with the lengths of these
| | 03:13 | reference planes, and you'll notice that I
always make them a little longer than the geometry.
| | 03:17 | This makes it really easy to
highlight them out here without having to use
| | 03:21 | the Tab key over here.
| | 03:23 | Okay, so that's just another little
tip that you'll find is very helpful.
| | 03:27 | Now these four dimensions, I could
either lock them if I wanted the offset
| | 03:35 | to always be 4 inches.
| | 03:38 | I could just click little padlock and lock
them, or I can constrain them with a Parameter.
| | 03:43 | I'm going to choose a Parameter in this case.
| | 03:45 | So I'm going to go ahead and choose
Add Parameter, and notice that I actually
| | 03:50 | used my Ctrl key and selected all four at
once, and I'm going to call this Leg Inset.
| | 03:56 | I like to mix my case there.
| | 04:01 | I'm going to leave that at Type Parameter,
but again, you could think about this.
| | 04:04 | If the legs were mountable in
different locations, then we could make it an
| | 04:10 | Instance Parameter and the end-user of
the table could decide which location to
| | 04:14 | mount the legs on if they were
assembling this piece of furniture themselves.
| | 04:18 | But if it comes from the factory with a
certain inset, then we would choose a Type Parameter.
| | 04:24 | And you'll see that all four of those
dimensions get labeled with the same dimension.
| | 04:29 | So at this point if we flex, now
you're going to see our new Reference Planes
| | 04:34 | are going to follow along with the
length of the table or the width of the
| | 04:39 | table, and if I change the Inset, and
maybe I'll do something a little larger,
| | 04:48 | and Apply it, you're going to
see it change all the way around.
| | 04:50 | Let me reset all these back to my Home
values and I just want to remind you that
| | 04:57 | this is not required, it's
just my little habit that I'm in;
| | 05:00 | I always like to reset to the home values.
| | 05:03 | So that's all my framework;
| | 05:04 | I'm now ready to actually draw my legs.
| | 05:07 | What I'm going to do differently from
the tabletop is rather than draw the legs
| | 05:14 | first and then move them to the
Reference Plane, I'm going to go to a view where
| | 05:18 | I can work in, like my right-hand view,
I'm going to go ahead and make this just
| | 05:22 | a little larger and zoom in a touch
so I can see a little bit better here.
| | 05:27 | So to set the work plane,
go back to the Home tab.
| | 05:31 | On the Work Plane panel, I'll click the
Set button, and what you'll see is that
| | 05:34 | if I don't choose to set it to anything
else, then Revit just assumes a default.
| | 05:39 | And in this case, it's
chosen the Center Left/Right.
| | 05:43 | I can see that highlighted here in 3D
View and I can see it as a blue line here
| | 05:48 | in the other views because
I'm looking at the edge of it.
| | 05:52 | I don't see it in the Right view
because I'm looking right at the work plane.
| | 05:56 | So you don't actually get an indication there.
| | 05:58 | If I open up this list, you will see
all of the Reference Planes that we've
| | 06:03 | previously named, and that
includes our Left Legs and our Right Legs.
| | 06:07 | So I'm going to choose the Right Legs.
| | 06:09 | That will be confirmed in 3D View as
that plane moves forward closer to me.
| | 06:13 | I'll click OK, and now I'm
actually working on that work plane.
| | 06:19 | So now I can go to the form that I want to draw.
| | 06:22 | In this case, I want to draw the Revolve.
| | 06:25 | Now a Revolve takes a shape, any shape that
I want draw, and it spins it around an axis.
| | 06:30 | So I'm actually going to
have to sketch two forms.
| | 06:33 | I'm going to have to sketch the shape
that I want to revolve, and then the axis
| | 06:36 | upon which I want it to revolve around.
| | 06:37 | It will be a sketch mode
process just like we did before.
| | 06:41 | So think of it like you're turning a
leg on a lathe, and it's basically what we
| | 06:44 | we're simulating here.
| | 06:45 | I'm going to go ahead and click on Revolve.
| | 06:48 | That takes me into Sketch
mode like we saw earlier.
| | 06:51 | Everything grays out.
| | 06:52 | I get the Tinted Color Sketch panel,
I get the Mode buttons, and so on.
| | 06:57 | Over here, I see two buttons.
| | 06:59 | I've got the Boundary Line and the
Axis Line, and I've got all my shapes.
| | 07:04 | So I'm going to keep this one pretty
simple and I'm just going to use Lines, and
| | 07:07 | I'm going to start with my Boundary Line.
| | 07:09 | You need to just draw half of the leg.
| | 07:12 | So I'm going to draw right down the
middle here, come over a little bit to the
| | 07:16 | right, come over a little bit to the left,
move up slightly, I'll zoom in just a
| | 07:22 | touch, give it a little taper at the
bottom, come straight up, give it a little
| | 07:28 | bit of a taper at the top, come
straight up again, I could even angle back if I
| | 07:33 | want to, and complete at a point.
| | 07:37 | Now before I move on to the Axis Line, I
want to point out that we're seeing the
| | 07:43 | sketch in all four views and we're just
seeing it from different vantage points.
| | 07:48 | So if you look at the Front View,
you're seeing a long vertical line which is
| | 07:52 | the edge of the sketch.
| | 07:53 | If you look at the Plan View,
you're seeing a really tiny purple line;
| | 07:57 | that's the top edge of the sketch.
| | 07:59 | And then of course, we can see it best
in the 3D view over here because we're
| | 08:03 | seeing the entire sketch over here.
| | 08:05 | So I'm done drawing my shape and I'm going
to switch over to the Axis Line button next.
| | 08:12 | Now there's two buttons here;
| | 08:13 | you can either draw the axis line
point to point, or you could use Pick Axis.
| | 08:17 | And for a while what I used to do is
the Pick Axis pretty routinely because it
| | 08:20 | allows you to select the Reference Plane.
| | 08:22 | That's kind of handy, and it will create
an axis that matches the full length of
| | 08:26 | the Reference Plane.
| | 08:27 | And if I deselect it, it looks like that.
| | 08:30 | However, I'm going to undo that.
| | 08:32 | What I've started to do recently is it
occurred to me that if I go to the Axis
| | 08:37 | Line and I actually draw it, I can
draw it up here somewhere, kind of out of
| | 08:41 | the way, away from the sketch, and deselect
that and you see it kind of floating up here.
| | 08:47 | It doesn't matter how long the axis line is;
| | 08:50 | it's not the length that's important.
| | 08:52 | What's important is the location
of it and the angle that it implies.
| | 08:56 | So in this case by drawing a vertical
line that coincides with the edge of my
| | 09:01 | sketch, I'm going to spin my sketch on
itself and I end up creating a solid leg.
| | 09:07 | If you looked at the tooltip of the
Revolve earlier when we highlighted on the
| | 09:11 | Home tab, you may have noticed that
they were showing more of a donut shape.
| | 09:15 | So if I took this blue line and I moved
it over here somewhere, I would actually
| | 09:19 | get a hollowed out shape.
| | 09:20 | So you can actually create a Revolve
that is either solid or more of a donut.
| | 09:25 | In this case, I'm going to get a
solid because it's drawn right on here.
| | 09:28 | So this is a little tip for you that
if you draw the Sketch line off to the
| | 09:32 | side, I find it a little easier later
when I want to edit the Revolve because
| | 09:36 | I don't have to use my Tab key to try and
highlight it and it's just a little easier to get to.
| | 09:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and click
Finish here, and that's going to spin that
| | 09:47 | shape around that axis.
| | 09:49 | You can see that I've gotten the solid form.
| | 09:51 | It's probably easiest to see over here in 3D.
| | 09:54 | In any view, I can keep it selected,
go to the Mirror, I'm going to mirror
| | 09:58 | it around this axis.
| | 09:59 | So that gives me two legs over here,
and probably the Top view is the
| | 10:04 | best choice for this.
| | 10:05 | I'm going to select both legs, go to
Mirror, and mirror it this way, so that I
| | 10:10 | get the four legs in that view.
| | 10:12 | Now if I take a look at this thing in 3D,
you'll see I've got all four legs here
| | 10:19 | shaping up pretty nicely.
| | 10:20 | Let's go ahead and flex it and see how we did.
| | 10:23 | So I'm going to go to Family Types and
I'm going to flex the Length, click Apply.
| | 10:29 | And what you're going to see is that it
works great on the right-hand side, but
| | 10:33 | the left-hand side is failing.
| | 10:35 | So that clearly tells us we did something wrong.
| | 10:37 | So discovering one problem, we might as
well flex it in the other direction just
| | 10:41 | to make sure, and you'll see in
that direction it's not a problem.
| | 10:44 | So the problem only exists in the length.
| | 10:47 | So what is the issue?
| | 10:48 | Let's go ahead and reset it
back and we'll talk about that.
| | 10:52 | So the issue is that these two legs on
this side are correctly associated with
| | 10:58 | this named Reference Plane: Right Legs.
| | 11:01 | So here is the named
Reference Plane: Right Legs.
| | 11:04 | And if you look carefully at either
this guy or this guy, what you see is they
| | 11:10 | have this little symbol on them.
| | 11:11 | Now don't click that symbol because
if I highlight over it, what you see is
| | 11:15 | clicking it would actually
Disassociate the Work Plane.
| | 11:19 | But the presence of that icon tells me
that I have a work plane association.
| | 11:25 | The other way I can tell that I have a
work plane association is with the object
| | 11:28 | selected, over here on the Properties
palette, I can see the Work Plane item in
| | 11:32 | gray, and then right here, it tells me
that that's Reference Plane: Right Legs.
| | 11:37 | Now let's compare that to one of
the legs on the left-hand side.
| | 11:40 | I could select either one.
| | 11:42 | I'm going to see that that
little icon is not there.
| | 11:45 | There's no Disassociate icon, and the
reason there's no Disassociate icon is
| | 11:49 | because the work plane
is already non-associated.
| | 11:53 | When we mirrored to the other side, it
lost its association to the work plane.
| | 11:58 | Pretty easy to fix though, all we have
to do, select both of them, go to Edit
| | 12:02 | Work Plane, and instead of not
associated, we can choose Left Legs.
| | 12:07 | Click OK and now if we flex the Family,
with the Length and click Apply, you're
| | 12:14 | going to see that it properly flexes.
| | 12:17 | So I'll go ahead and reset this back, click OK.
| | 12:22 | And the best test of the Family would be to
actually load it into a Project right now.
| | 12:27 | Now I don't currently have a
Sandbox project loaded, so I'm going to
| | 12:30 | actually skip that step;
| | 12:31 | I'll leave that to you to do on your own.
| | 12:33 | But I do highly recommend that every so
often, you load the Family directly into
| | 12:38 | a Project and test it out in that
environment, and make sure it's working.
| | 12:41 | We're going to continue to work with
this Family in future chapters and add
| | 12:45 | more features to it.
| | 12:46 | So at that time, I'll actually load it
into a Sandbox project and test it out
| | 12:50 | that way, so we'll save that for later movies.
| | 12:53 | But at the moment, the basic
geometry of our simple table is complete.
| | 12:56 | We've explored many of the steps
that are required in the basic process.
| | 13:01 | We chose our Family category and our template.
| | 13:05 | We laid down our Reference Planes.
| | 13:06 | We added Constraints and Parameters.
| | 13:08 | We talked about work planes and
building the geometry relative to those work
| | 13:11 | planes, and of course, we built some geometry.
| | 13:14 | And most importantly, we flexed it.
| | 13:17 | So congratulations!
| | 13:18 | You've created your first parametric
building model or Parametric Model Family.
| | 13:23 | And in the chapters and movies that come,
we will take it further and add more
| | 13:28 | and more features to not only this
Family but to some others as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Family GeometryUnderstanding reference planes| 00:00 | Surprising as it may seem, there are
only five basic geometric forms from which
| | 00:03 | all families are composed.
| | 00:05 | They are Extrusion, Blend,
Sweep, Revolve and Swept Blend.
| | 00:11 | In this chapter, we will create a simple
example of each one of these forms with
| | 00:15 | the goal of familiarizing
ourselves with how each one behaves.
| | 00:18 | Both Solid and Void Forms can be
created giving us a total of 10 possibilities.
| | 00:24 | Whether we take an additive strategy
and build up our form from a series of
| | 00:27 | smaller parts, or start with an overall
form and carve away from it with voids,
| | 00:32 | a so-called Subtractive strategy, is
really a matter of personal preference.
| | 00:36 | Now, before we can begin looking at
each of the forms we want to talk a little
| | 00:40 | bit more about Reference Planes.
| | 00:43 | If you followed the exercises in the
last chapter, then you know that Reference
| | 00:47 | Planes play an important role in
allowing us to build our geometry.
| | 00:51 | They provide the work plane upon which the
sketches of each of the forms are created.
| | 00:56 | Now each of the five forms that I just
mentioned are all Sketch-based forms.
| | 01:00 | So each of them in some way is going to
interact with one or more work planes,
| | 01:05 | which will typically be
associated with Reference Planes.
| | 01:09 | So it's pretty important for us to
understand how Reference Planes behave.
| | 01:12 | Now what I have here on screen is
just an empty template and I'm using
| | 01:17 | the Furniture category.
| | 01:18 | We're going to talk more about
template files in another chapter, so for now
| | 01:22 | we'll just stick with the Furniture
Template that we used in the last chapter.
| | 01:26 | There are two Reference Planes to
start off on screen as we've already seen.
| | 01:29 | The first one is the Reference Plane:
| | 01:32 | Center Left/Right, and the second one is
the Reference Plane: Center Front/Back.
| | 01:37 | Now these two are created by default.
| | 01:41 | They do have the names on them;
| | 01:42 | you can see the name listed here.
| | 01:45 | They are pinned, and as we talked
about in the last chapter, they are set
| | 01:48 | to define the Origin.
| | 01:49 | So we have one in this
direction and one in this direction.
| | 01:52 | Now, let me start off talking
about the Defines Origin feature.
| | 01:56 | If I create my own reference plane from
here to here, select it, scroll down and
| | 02:02 | check Defines Origin, what you're
going to see is this one will no longer be
| | 02:07 | defining the origin.
| | 02:08 | So you can only have one Reference
Plane in each direction defining the origin
| | 02:13 | and obviously it takes two to
really establish an independent point.
| | 02:17 | If you only do one, it's not quite enough.
| | 02:19 | So at this point, the intersection
between these two is the origin of this Family.
| | 02:24 | If I come back and I select this one
and I check this box again, now that's the
| | 02:29 | origin point and this one
will no longer have that.
| | 02:31 | The next thing I would like to talk about
is the direction of the Reference Plane.
| | 02:37 | This is actually pretty important.
| | 02:39 | What I mean by this is, I'm going to create
a really simple extrusion in all three views.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to create one here in the
Floor Plan, and that's just a simple box.
| | 02:49 | I'm going to click here in the Front
view and I'll create a cylinder by just
| | 02:54 | extruding a simple circle, and then
I'll come over here to the Right view, and
| | 03:02 | just so we can tell them
apart, I'll do a Polygon.
| | 03:07 | Now in all cases I accepted the defaults
of 1 foot for the Depth, so they're all
| | 03:12 | just one foot deep, but if we look at
this thing in 3D what we see is, let's go
| | 03:17 | ahead and Shade this.
| | 03:19 | What we see is that each one of these
was drawn in a different direction, and
| | 03:23 | you can sort of tell what's going on here.
| | 03:25 | This one was drawn relative to the
Center Front/Back Reference Plane, this one
| | 03:29 | relative to the Floor, and then this
one over here relative to the Center
| | 03:34 | Left/Right Reference Plane.
| | 03:36 | We saw this in the previous chapter as well.
| | 03:38 | When you click into a view and make it
active and if you do not go to the Home
| | 03:44 | tab and set to Work Plane, then Revit
will just assume a default work plane,
| | 03:49 | and that's why in this case all three of
these shapes ended up on a different work plane.
| | 03:53 | There's no way that you could work in
an Elevation view and draw an extrusion
| | 03:58 | that actually extruded up from the floor,
because you're actually looking at the
| | 04:01 | edge of that plane so you
can't work on that plane.
| | 04:04 | So what Revit does is it looks for the
most logical plane that happens to be
| | 04:08 | parallel to the view.
| | 04:09 | Now we also saw that in previous
movies that if we name this work plane, I'm
| | 04:13 | just going to name it letter A, that
I can come into a view that's actually
| | 04:17 | looking at that work plane
such as the Front view here.
| | 04:20 | Go to the Home tab, Set the
Work Plane, choose Reference Plane:
| | 04:24 | A, and then draw a form and that form
will extrude relative to that work plane.
| | 04:33 | Now if I switch over here into this view,
here is Reference Plane A, here is the
| | 04:38 | form, but now we see an interesting
little thing that's happened here.
| | 04:42 | Notice that this form that was drawn
relative to the Center Front/Back Reference
| | 04:47 | Plane has extruded to our left
relative to this view and in this plane it's
| | 04:53 | extruded to our right.
| | 04:55 | Reference Planes have direction and
this is a little bit of a challenging
| | 04:59 | concept unfortunately.
| | 05:01 | In general, it's predictable which
direction the Reference Plane is going to go
| | 05:05 | in for the ones that you create
yourself, because you're going to click and
| | 05:09 | place the two points that
define the Reference Plane.
| | 05:11 | So if I start back here in Plan view
and I go back to my Home tab, click on my
| | 05:16 | Reference Plane tool, if I click my
first point and drag to the right I'm
| | 05:21 | going to get one behavior, if I drag to the
left I'm going to get a different behavior.
| | 05:25 | In other words, the first point to the
second point determines the direction of
| | 05:30 | that Reference Plane.
| | 05:32 | If you imagined that there was a
normal direction or a positive direction of
| | 05:37 | that Reference Plane, from the start
point to the endpoint, that direction would
| | 05:43 | in this case point up.
| | 05:45 | So if you were standing at the
start point looking toward the endpoint.
| | 05:50 | So imagine that I'm a person standing
right here and looking this way, then the
| | 05:55 | positive direction will be on your left.
| | 05:57 | Okay, and if I name this Reference Plane,
I'll call it B, click into the Front
| | 06:04 | view, go to my Home tab, click the Set
button, I'm going to set that work plane
| | 06:10 | active and then draw another Extrusion.
| | 06:14 | Again I'll just do a simple cylinder;
| | 06:15 | it doesn't really matter what shape.
| | 06:18 | You're going to see that that rule
bears out that I just described to you.
| | 06:22 | So again, imagine you were standing here on
the left endpoint looking toward the right point;
| | 06:28 | the extrusion went to the left.
| | 06:32 | Now another interesting little
behavior is that I can actually select this
| | 06:36 | and if I decided that the direction is
not what I wanted, I can actually grab
| | 06:41 | this little endpoint and start to basically
reverse the direction by pulling it the other way.
| | 06:47 | So you notice how once I kind of
reversed it on itself and got past the other
| | 06:53 | endpoint here, the form that's on
that Reference Plane actually flipped.
| | 06:58 | So the rule continues to bear out.
| | 07:01 | Now I'm standing here looking toward
this direction and the extrusion is
| | 07:06 | still going to the left.
| | 07:08 | Okay, so again just always imagine
you're standing at the start point, looking
| | 07:12 | toward the endpoint and the
extrusion will go to the left.
| | 07:15 | Let me reverse it again.
| | 07:17 | See how it flipped around to the other side.
| | 07:21 | Another way you can kind of look at this is
the label tends to be at the second point;
| | 07:26 | it tends to be at the end you're looking at.
| | 07:29 | That's the part that's not terribly
consistent and I wish that it were.
| | 07:34 | So there is a wonderful Revit blog
called Revit OpEd, that's O-P-E-D for Revit
| | 07:41 | Opinion and Editorial, and I have it
open right now to an article that's
| | 07:45 | actually a few years old, it goes back
to 2006 actually, and it's called, Once
| | 07:50 | Upon a Reference Plane.
| | 07:51 | This is a nice little description of the
behavior that we're witnessing right now.
| | 07:56 | It talks about the start point of the
Reference Plane, the endpoint of the
| | 07:59 | Reference Plane, and what direction is
positive or the normal direction and so
| | 08:02 | forth, and there are even some
illustrations down here, and Steve the author of
| | 08:08 | this blog, refers to this as the Tail
and this as the Head and this being the
| | 08:11 | Positive Direction, and this is
what we have sort of just born out.
| | 08:14 | And I'm telling you if you stand at the
Tail and you look toward the Head, that
| | 08:17 | the Positive Direction will be on your left.
| | 08:19 | I'm just kind of saying it that way
because you're not always going to be
| | 08:21 | looking at these things in Plan.
| | 08:23 | sometimes you're going to be looking
at them in Elevation or other views.
| | 08:26 | Anyway, this is worth a read.
| | 08:28 | I would recommend that you go to this post.
| | 08:30 | If you have access to the Exercise Files,
I've provided a shortcut to this link
| | 08:35 | directly, otherwise go to your favorite
search engine and just put in Once Upon
| | 08:39 | a Reference Plane and it
will come up with this blogpost.
| | 08:42 | That's definitely a good
reference material for you to look at.
| | 08:46 | What Steve goes on to say at the end of
that post is talk about a little anomaly
| | 08:50 | here that's somewhat disturbing is that,
if we stood here and looked here and we
| | 08:56 | follow the rule that says that the
label is at the end as we've seen with the
| | 09:00 | ones that we drew, okay, there is the
label at the end, here is the label at the
| | 09:04 | end, positive direction, positive direction.
| | 09:06 | Well, here's the label at the end.
| | 09:08 | This should've extruded up rather than
down because if I'm standing here and
| | 09:12 | looking here, my left, it would've been up in
this case and it didn't prove to be the case.
| | 09:18 | So some of the Family Templates that
ship with the software, that default
| | 09:23 | built-in Reference Planes
don't really respect the rule.
| | 09:28 | With all the testing I've been able
to do is best I can tell is that's only
| | 09:31 | really an issue with some of
the built-in Reference Planes.
| | 09:35 | So it's something I want you to be
aware of, because as you get serious about
| | 09:40 | creating forms here in the Family
Editor, you have to be aware of this issue.
| | 09:44 | The fact that I showed you here that
you can actually reverse the Reference
| | 09:49 | Plane is one way that you can correct that.
| | 09:51 | To reverse one of the built-in ones,
you'd have to actually unpin it and flip it
| | 09:56 | around this way, and then you see it
flips over, and then I could sort of
| | 10:00 | stretch it back, and then I could repin it.
| | 10:02 | So it is possible to even reverse one
of the built-in Reference Planes to kind
| | 10:07 | of correct the problem, but it's
something that I recommend that you do first
| | 10:11 | before you build any serious geometry.
| | 10:13 | You really don't want to be reversing
the Reference Planes after you started
| | 10:17 | creating geometry because
things will move in funny ways.
| | 10:20 | Now you at least have seen what we
mean by a normal direction and a positive
| | 10:24 | direction on Reference Planes, you
know that that matters and that helps you
| | 10:28 | control where the positive extrusion or
depth is going to be, because otherwise
| | 10:33 | without that you'd have to actually
make this a negative, which is another
| | 10:36 | opportunity that you have;
| | 10:37 | you can actually use a negative depth.
| | 10:39 | So there are a few different ways to
deal with the issue, but now you're at
| | 10:42 | least aware of what the Reference Planes
do in that behavior and with that we'll
| | 10:46 | be able to move on to the next several
movies here where we talk about each of
| | 10:50 | the individual forms.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating extrusions| 00:00 | So let's get into our inventory of forms.
| | 00:02 | We're going to start with an Extrusion.
| | 00:04 | The extrusion, we've already been
introduced to, in the previous chapter.
| | 00:09 | It's a basic sketch-based form.
| | 00:11 | You draw out a shape;
| | 00:12 | any shape you like.
| | 00:13 | It does have to be an enclosed shape,
so you can have any open chains of lines
| | 00:17 | or anything, but it doesn't
have to be a regular shape;
| | 00:19 | you can make it any irregular shape you like.
| | 00:22 | And you actually can create holes in
your extrusion by creating more than one
| | 00:27 | form nested within one another.
| | 00:29 | The only rule is each form has to be
closed and they can't overlap one another.
| | 00:33 | But as you can see from my illustration here,
it's just basically a form with a height.
| | 00:37 | So that height is actually numeric;
| | 00:39 | you type it in so it's not something we draw.
| | 00:41 | So we're only drawing the one form.
| | 00:44 | So to illustrate some of the features
of the extrusion I'm going to create a
| | 00:47 | brand-new Family and this is
going to be a throwaway Family;
| | 00:50 | I'm not actually going to save this at the end.
| | 00:51 | So feel free to follow
along in any file you like.
| | 00:55 | I'm going to just use a
Generic model for this example.
| | 00:58 | A Generic model is sort of a non-category.
| | 01:00 | It's good if you're really not sure
what category you need, or if the category
| | 01:04 | that you're thinking of
doesn't really exist in Revit.
| | 01:08 | So I'm going to tile the windows, zoom them all.
| | 01:10 | I just hit W+T for Window
Tile and Z+A for Zoom All.
| | 01:15 | So we've discussed Reference Planes
and Work Planes and we know that the view
| | 01:19 | they're active in will help establish that.
| | 01:21 | For this example, I'm going
to just work in Plan view;
| | 01:23 | I don't really care so
much about the Work Plane.
| | 01:26 | I'll go to Extrusion, and we're going
to look at these different shapes here.
| | 01:31 | So we've done Rectangles already.
| | 01:32 | Let me just switch to maybe something a
little different, so I'll do a Polygon.
| | 01:37 | The default is 6 Sides.
| | 01:39 | I'll draw it right here at the
center and maybe out to a 2 foot radius.
| | 01:44 | What I've been doing up until now
has been ignoring the Depth Parameter.
| | 01:48 | That is controlling how tall this
extrusion is and so you do have a few options.
| | 01:52 | You can actually change the Depth
before you finish the form, maybe I want this
| | 01:56 | to be 4 feet tall, so I can plug in the
number 4 here before I click finish, and
| | 02:01 | you'll see that the height of this
thing will be a little larger than what it
| | 02:05 | has been previously.
| | 02:06 | But of course, you can
always change that Depth later.
| | 02:10 | The depth is also expressed
here on the Properties palette.
| | 02:13 | So this is something we haven't really
looked at too much before and I'd like to
| | 02:16 | kind of discuss this now.
| | 02:18 | We have talked about the
Work Plane in other movies.
| | 02:21 | So in this case we see the Work
Plane is on the Reference Level.
| | 02:26 | The Extrusion itself, the height of the
extrusion, even though it's expressed as
| | 02:29 | a Depth right here, is actually two numbers.
| | 02:33 | There is the Extrusion
Start and the Extrusion End.
| | 02:36 | So if we direct our attention to one
of the elevation views, and I start
| | 02:42 | fiddling with some of these
numbers, you'll see how this behaves.
| | 02:45 | Suppose I set the Extrusion Start to
-2 feet, and click Apply, what will
| | 02:51 | happen is if you look down in the Front
view or the Left view at the bottom of
| | 02:54 | my screen, you'll notice that this
extrusion has just dropped below the ground
| | 03:00 | plane, and if you look on the Options bar
you see that the total Depth is now 6 feet.
| | 03:06 | So Revit kind of does the math for us.
| | 03:08 | So I can start in any absolute point
and I can end at any absolute point, and
| | 03:13 | then the result is just the
math being done between those two.
| | 03:16 | So either of these can be a
positive or a negative number.
| | 03:20 | So this is one more thing to consider
in addition to your Work Plane, is both
| | 03:25 | the positive and negative extrusions.
| | 03:27 | In some of the future movies, we're also
going to look at these little buttons over here.
| | 03:32 | I just want to point them out right
now though, and say that this is a way
| | 03:36 | that you can actually link up Parameters to
this extrusion and make these values parametric.
| | 03:43 | You could put dimensions on the form,
as we saw in the last chapter, but if I
| | 03:47 | click this little button here, I
have the ability to actually link up a
| | 03:52 | Parameter directly to that value, and
again that Parameter would be a number and
| | 03:56 | it could be either a
positive or a negative number.
| | 03:59 | If I have a reason to do that, to
drive and control the shape of this form,
| | 04:03 | that's another option
that I have available to me.
| | 04:05 | So the way that you structure the Work
Plane, the Start point, the Endpoint, all
| | 04:11 | kind of factor into your overall
strategy for how you want to build this form.
| | 04:15 | But otherwise, a pretty
simple, straightforward form.
| | 04:18 | If I create another one, of course we
have really any shape we like, but just
| | 04:23 | remember, the shape must be closed.
| | 04:27 | If you try to finish it before you close
the form, you'll get this error message here.
| | 04:31 | So I can click Continue and say, oh yeah,
I need to finish up my form and that
| | 04:35 | gives me the extrusion.
| | 04:37 | If I decide I want to cut a hole in
this form, I can do Edit Extrusion, and
| | 04:42 | I can add another form inside of it, and
then it will extrude as a hollow basically.
| | 04:49 | You can have as many closed loops
as you want inside that extrusion.
| | 04:53 | It's all in the single sketch.
| | 04:55 | But what they can't do is overlap one another.
| | 04:58 | If I took this circle and I did
this and I try to finish it, Revit will
| | 05:02 | complain about that too.
| | 05:05 | As long as you make a valid sketch,
really pretty much any shape that you
| | 05:08 | like is acceptable.
| | 05:10 | It's by far our simplest form.
| | 05:11 | The extrusions are the
simplest of our five forms.
| | 05:15 | We need only the single sketch, as
we've seen, to create them, and an
| | 05:18 | appropriate Work Plane.
| | 05:20 | But despite their simplicity,
extrusions are widely used in most Families, and
| | 05:24 | really are the staple of form creation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating revolves| 00:00 | In this movie we will look at the Revolve form.
| | 00:03 | A Revolve rotates a sketch
shape around an Axis Line.
| | 00:07 | The result is pretty similar to the
effect of turning a form on a lathe and
| | 00:11 | we did an example of that
in the previous chapter.
| | 00:14 | So we are going to take a little
more detailed look at it right now.
| | 00:18 | So as with the previous movie I simply
have an empty Family file on screen here.
| | 00:23 | This was created with Generic model, but
you could follow along in really any template.
| | 00:27 | All the forms work the
same in any template file.
| | 00:31 | The first thing that we want to do is
decide, what's the most logical view to
| | 00:34 | build this thing in.
| | 00:35 | Now if I worked in Plan view,
then I am going to be spinning around
| | 00:40 | an axis that's going to
be within the plan plane.
| | 00:44 | It's probably, easier to
just illustrate than to explain.
| | 00:48 | So click on the Revolve form and
you'll see that there are two buttons here:
| | 00:52 | Boundary Line and Axis Line, and if you
did the previous chapter than you have
| | 00:55 | already seen an example of this.
| | 00:57 | We have all the same sketch
tools that we had for extrusion.
| | 01:00 | So these are pretty common tools.
| | 01:02 | For this one I'm going do a simple Rectangle
and I'm going to draw just in plan over here.
| | 01:07 | Then I'm going to switch over to my Axis
Line and you can either draw it or pick it.
| | 01:11 | I'm going to draw it over here somewhere.
| | 01:14 | Now when I deselect this, what you're seeing
is the axis is here, the sketch is over here.
| | 01:19 | So in order to spin this shape around this
axis, it's essentially going to orbit around
| | 01:26 | that line and you are going to get a
donut shape or a ring when we're done.
| | 01:30 | When I click finish, because we're
working in plan and it spun around this axis,
| | 01:37 | it's actually spinning up towards in and
away for me, and when you look at it here in 3D,
| | 01:41 | you see that I sort of have this ring
shape that's been created vertically.
| | 01:47 | Elevation is probably the easiest
way to see this in the Front Elevation.
| | 01:51 | So the shape that we drew was here
and it spun all the way around the axis
| | 01:55 | that was right there.
| | 01:56 | Now if you edit the form, you can
edit either the shape or the Axis Line.
| | 02:03 | So I could come in and change the shape,
but I've got to make sure it's enclosed.
| | 02:09 | If I tried to finish right now,
I'm going to get an error.
| | 02:12 | Just like we saw with extrusions,
the revolves have to be closed shapes.
| | 02:17 | So I'll make sure that I snap that over
here and I click finish and we still end
| | 02:22 | up with the donut shape here,
| | 02:23 | but now it's got a little
taper to it, as you can see.
| | 02:27 | It's following that new form that I created.
| | 02:29 | Let's edit it again.
| | 02:31 | What would happen if I took the
Axis Line and moved it a little closer?
| | 02:35 | Well, now I get a much tighter circle.
| | 02:38 | Naturally, if I edit it again and move
it further away, I get a much bigger ring,
| | 02:45 | and perhaps I change the angle and
you'll get a ring at another angle.
| | 02:52 | So you can see without changing Work
Plane at all or really doing anything to the
| | 02:57 | overall form itself, just by changing the Axis
Line sketch or the sketch of the shape itself,
| | 03:03 | there is a wide variety of possibilities.
| | 03:06 | So part of the challenge when
breaking down the form you're creating is
| | 03:10 | to break it down into these simpler forms.
| | 03:12 | Like to look at the object that you're trying
to build in the Family Editor and think about
| | 03:17 | which forms it should be constructed from
and break it down into those smaller parts.
| | 03:21 | So maybe you can use an
Extrude for a little piece over here,
| | 03:24 | and revolve for some other piece over there,
| | 03:26 | and then when you bring them
together you get the completed form.
| | 03:30 | In the Extrude we looked at the
Properties palette and we saw that there
| | 03:33 | were some properties.
| | 03:34 | We saw there was Work Plane as we
have here and I'm again using the
| | 03:37 | Reference Level work plane.
| | 03:39 | But now instead of a Start and an End
Extrusion, I have a Start Angle and an End Angle.
| | 03:45 | So I can do some interesting things right here.
| | 03:47 | What would happen if I changed
the End Angle to 180 degrees?
| | 03:51 | Well now instead of getting a
full circle, I get a half ring.
| | 03:54 | I can put in any angle I like
and get smaller and smaller chunks.
| | 04:00 | I can even put a negative
and make it go the other way.
| | 04:05 | The concept of work plane and the
direction of the work plane that was
| | 04:10 | discussed in the first movie in
this chapter, applies here as well.
| | 04:14 | The direction that the angle is
going to be measured from is going to be
| | 04:18 | in that positive direction of the work plane.
| | 04:21 | If you want to reverse that
you can use a negative angle.
| | 04:24 | But you can do both a
Start Angle and an End Angle.
| | 04:28 | If I change the Start Angle here to
20 and the End Angle to -45, you see
| | 04:33 | what starts to happen.
| | 04:34 | It starts down here, and then it
goes past and ends up over here.
| | 04:38 | So the work plane is in the middle
somewhere, but by changing the two angles
| | 04:44 | you can influence the way
the overall form gets created.
| | 04:48 | Then in a similar fashion to what we
saw in Extrusions, these forms can also
| | 04:54 | use multiple shapes.
| | 04:56 | The same rules apply, as long as the
shapes don't intersect one another.
| | 04:59 | And now I've carved a hole in
the middle of my form there.
| | 05:06 | So that's our Revolve form.
| | 05:07 | A lot of similarities to the
Extrusion, but it rotates along an axis
| | 05:11 | rather than extruding along a straight path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating blends| 00:00 | In this movie, we will look at the Blend form.
| | 00:03 | A Blend is essentially an extrusion
but between two shapes rather than one.
| | 00:07 | You sketch a base, and a top, and then
Revit blends between the two forms along
| | 00:13 | the depth of the blend. Let's take a look.
| | 00:15 | I'm in a generic model Family Template
again, just a regular blank template.
| | 00:20 | Again, you could really do
this in any template you like.
| | 00:23 | We've got a Solid Blend tool here on
the Home Tab, and like all the other forms
| | 00:28 | we've seen so far, when you click
on it, it takes you into Sketch mode.
| | 00:32 | So we've got all our normal shapes and
I'll keep this one relatively simple here.
| | 00:36 | I'll just draw a little
rectangle down on the Floor Plane.
| | 00:40 | In order to complete this form, notice
the green check box isn't even available.
| | 00:44 | So that's your little clue
that you're not done yet.
| | 00:47 | You have to do something else to this form.
| | 00:50 | The other thing you have to do
here is you have to switch to the top.
| | 00:53 | So your Blend is two sketches.
| | 00:57 | We sketch the base, and then we sketch
the top, and then Revit will just sort of
| | 01:01 | interpolate between the two.
| | 01:02 | So let's go to Edit Top and that puts
us in another sketch mode, and the button
| | 01:07 | changes to Edit Base, so you can sort
of flip back and forth between the two.
| | 01:11 | The base is currently grayed out.
| | 01:13 | And I'm just going to do a little
tapered pyramid sort of shape there, so I'm
| | 01:16 | going to draw a second square.
| | 01:18 | Probably the first thing that's a
little confusing conceptually about the Blend
| | 01:23 | is notice that I've drawn
both shapes in the same plane.
| | 01:28 | So at first, it sort of seems like that
might not be right, like why would you do that?
| | 01:32 | But notice there is a depth property here.
| | 01:35 | It's kind of using that same
methodology that the extrusion used, so that
| | 01:40 | Depth is going to get applied and
there will be a 1-foot difference between
| | 01:44 | these two sketches.
| | 01:46 | So let's go ahead and click Finish, and
we'll see what it does, and then we'll
| | 01:49 | manipulate it later.
| | 01:50 | So we can sort of see the tapered
here in Plan View, but of course it's a
| | 01:54 | little easier to understand if we look
at it in some of the other views like 3D
| | 01:59 | or Elevation views.
| | 02:01 | The 1 foot depth we can see right here.
| | 02:05 | I'm just putting the dimension in
just so you can see that, that's
| | 02:07 | definitely the 1 foot there.
| | 02:09 | I'm not going to do anything with
that dimension, other than just have it
| | 02:12 | there for information.
| | 02:14 | So if I change the depth here to
maybe 4 feet or something, notice that the
| | 02:19 | shape of the sketches, the base and the
top doesn't change, what happens just is
| | 02:25 | the height of this thing changes and
the sides of the taper end up changing
| | 02:30 | angle to accommodate.
| | 02:31 | So we're still doing the same base and
the same top, but we're ending up with a
| | 02:36 | different taper on there and of
course it says we're 4 feet here.
| | 02:40 | So even though both sketches were drawn in
the same work plane, the height gets applied.
| | 02:44 | Now some interesting things start to
happen if you build the two sketches in
| | 02:48 | different work planes.
| | 02:50 | Let me show you an example of this.
| | 02:51 | I'm going to do a Reference Plane,
and I'm going to make it a little
| | 02:55 | more rational here.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to make it 3 feet off the floor.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to select it, and
I'm just going to name this Top.
| | 03:04 | So it's got a name and so
now that can be a work plane.
| | 03:07 | We've seen this in previous movies.
| | 03:09 | There are two ways that you could use that Top.
| | 03:13 | If I wanted to make the height of this
Blend parametric, the easiest thing to do
| | 03:19 | would be to put a dimension between
here and here, select this dimension, label
| | 03:25 | it with a parameter, call this Height,
and then take this blend and stretch it
| | 03:32 | down, snap it to that, and lock it.
| | 03:34 | Notice I haven't edited anything about
the Blend itself, its sketches, its work
| | 03:39 | plane, but over here if we look at the
Properties palette, the properties look
| | 03:44 | very similar to our previous
extrusion and revolves that we looked at.
| | 03:47 | We've got our Work Plane listed, we've
got our First End, we've got our Second
| | 03:51 | End, here's our depth and you can see
it's doing the math correctly, and now of
| | 03:55 | course if I wanted to flex this
parametrically, I can just move that Reference
| | 03:59 | Plane, and because I previously
locked it, it's going to lock and adjust.
| | 04:04 | I think that's probably the
best way to control a Blend.
| | 04:08 | Don't try to put the two sketches on
two different work planes, but let's
| | 04:12 | just say, for the sake of argument,
could we put the two sketches on two
| | 04:16 | different work planes?
| | 04:17 | And the answer is, yes we could,
but some interesting behaviors.
| | 04:19 | The first thing I want to do is remove
the Parameter, because otherwise we'll
| | 04:24 | get a Constraints not satisfied
error message if we try to proceed.
| | 04:28 | Let me unlock that, and then let
me just move this up a little bit.
| | 04:33 | So we're kind of removing all the
previous constraints that we just applied and
| | 04:36 | let's look at the alternative approach.
| | 04:38 | So I'm going to select the Blend in Plan
View and notice you get two buttons now;
| | 04:43 | Edit Base and Edit Top.
| | 04:45 | The base is already fine;
| | 04:46 | the base is drawn on the ground plane.
| | 04:48 | So we don't need to edit that.
| | 04:49 | I'm going to jump right to
Edit Top and there is the sketch.
| | 04:53 | Now I want you to watch it
here in 3D and in Elevation.
| | 04:57 | I can do set Work Plane;
| | 05:00 | from the dropdown here I can
choose Reference Plane: Top.
| | 05:02 | I'm going to click OK, and notice the
sketch has moved up, moved up, and there
| | 05:09 | it is, it's moved up.
| | 05:11 | Now that seems like the more
logical way to do it, right?
| | 05:14 | Because we now have one sketch that's
down on one work plane and the second
| | 05:18 | sketch up on the other work plane.
| | 05:20 | Let me click Finish.
| | 05:21 | But what in fact happens is, it sort of
does an additive situation here, because
| | 05:28 | notice the Second End is
still the full depth of the Blend.
| | 05:34 | If I change this to a more rational
number, what you see is Full Depth is
| | 05:41 | now being measured from that secondary work
plane, which gets a little confusing here.
| | 05:48 | Now the real question is, could I make it so that
it essentially snaps to this? Well, you can try.
| | 05:54 | You can put 0 for the Second End and apply it.
| | 05:57 | You're usually going to get an error
message that the Blend is too thin.
| | 06:00 | This is kind of funny because it says
it can be ignored, it doesn't like it,
| | 06:05 | and generally, if Revit complains about
something, you should probably heed the warning.
| | 06:09 | It doesn't like it, but I can click
OK and basically get that end result.
| | 06:14 | Now if I took this and moved it, it does work.
| | 06:18 | But personally, there was an error
involved in this approach and there wasn't an
| | 06:24 | error involved in the
previous approach with the parameter.
| | 06:26 | So personally, it's my recommendation
that you use the first approach, where you
| | 06:32 | draw both sketches on the same work
plane and use either Parameters or the
| | 06:37 | Properties directly here on the
Properties palette to control the height rather
| | 06:42 | than trying to put the two
sketches on two different work planes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating sweeps| 00:00 | In this movie we'll look at a Sweep.
| | 00:02 | A Sweep takes a Sketch
shape and moves it along a path.
| | 00:05 | The path can be drawn directly
on screen as a second sketch.
| | 00:09 | So in some respects it's a
little bit more flexible than
| | 00:13 | what we were able to do with
either a Blend or an Extrusion
| | 00:15 | where the path was just a simple
straight line controlled by height.
| | 00:19 | Here we get to actually
draw it any shape we like.
| | 00:21 | So I'm going to do a couple of examples.
| | 00:23 | For the first example, go
to Sweep on the Home tab,
| | 00:26 | I'm just going to draw everything.
| | 00:28 | So the first thing that you see on the
Sketch tab is two options for creating the path.
| | 00:34 | You can either sketch a path or pick a
path, and we're going to look at both,
| | 00:37 | but we'll start with Sketch.
| | 00:38 | So I'll click that, and that
introduces me to the familiar tools.
| | 00:44 | Now here's the most important thing
about the Sweep that's a little different
| | 00:46 | than the other shapes we've looked at so far.
| | 00:49 | The path can be any shape you like;
| | 00:51 | it does not have to be closed.
| | 00:53 | So this is a perfectly valid path.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to press Escape and I've
got this three segment open path,
| | 01:00 | so if I were to click Finish, it's not
going to complain this time and tell me
| | 01:03 | that I've got to enclose the shape.
| | 01:06 | Now what I'm going to do is show you here
in some of the other views what we're seeing.
| | 01:11 | Go ahead and click Modify here.
| | 01:13 | There is this green dashed plane that
appeared on the first segment that I drew.
| | 01:19 | That plane is the sketch plane for the
shape that's going to move along this path.
| | 01:25 | Kind of keep that in mind
when you're drawing your path is
| | 01:27 | that the first segment that you
create determines where that plane goes.
| | 01:32 | So if I go to the Sketch tab
and I click the Green check box,
| | 01:37 | the mode I'm actually
finishing is actually the path.
| | 01:41 | So notice that that keeps me in the Sweep and
I could return to the sketch if I wanted to,
| | 01:47 | the path turned black to indicate that
it's complete and what I can over here now is
| | 01:51 | tell Revit how I want to create the
profile or the shape that's going to
| | 01:57 | move along the path.
| | 01:58 | And I have a few options here but the
one I'm going to do is to do it by Sketch
| | 02:02 | and just simply Edit the Profile.
| | 02:04 | So when I do that will ask me
what view I want to work in.
| | 02:08 | It's important to make sure
you're looking at this plane,
| | 02:13 | so it's offering me a few views to
choose from like the Left and the Right view.
| | 02:18 | Well since we already have
the Left view open over here
| | 02:21 | I'll go ahead and choose
that one and click Open View.
| | 02:24 | Now it is possible to work in 3D
View as well but I think it's easier to
| | 02:27 | sketch in these parallel views
than it is to sketch in the 3D view.
| | 02:32 | This red dot represents the
insertion point of the profile.
| | 02:36 | You could really draw directly on
this insertion point which is a pretty
| | 02:39 | logical thing to do,
| | 02:40 | or you could draw relative to it, it's
really depends on the shape you're trying to draw.
| | 02:44 | But in this case, I'll just
go ahead and do something.
| | 02:47 | Okay, so it doesn't really
matter what shape I'm drawing.
| | 02:51 | This shape does need to be closed, so
this is going to form solid geometry,
| | 02:56 | so we're back to the same rules that
we had with the Blend and the Extrusion
| | 03:00 | where it's got to be an enclosed
shape, but it also could have internal
| | 03:04 | shapes if you wanted to.
| | 03:05 | So now I'm going to make like
a hollow tube along that path;
| | 03:08 | that's fine, but again same rules apply.
| | 03:11 | When I click Finish I'm finishing that sketch
and you see that I'm still in the Sweep command,
| | 03:17 | so I could return to the path
and change the shape of the path,
| | 03:21 | I could return to the profile and change
the shape of profile, or I could finish it.
| | 03:26 | So let's go ahead and click Finish
and that extrudes along the path now.
| | 03:30 | So that's another way to think of a Sweep is
it's basically an extrusion along a custom path
| | 03:36 | that you get to sketch, and if I
spin this around you can see it there.
| | 03:42 | Now I did a three segment path, but I
could have just as easily done a one
| | 03:45 | or many segment path;
| | 03:47 | it's really up to me.
| | 03:48 | That's one of the advantages of the Sweep,
| | 03:50 | and sometimes folks will
actually use a Sweep to do things that
| | 03:53 | they could otherwise do with an
Extrusion, and why would we want to do that?
| | 03:57 | One of the advantages of the Sweep is, if I
just go ahead and create one real quick here,
| | 04:03 | I'm going to do a Sketch Path and I'm going
to just do a single segment path, Finish that.
| | 04:10 | One of the advantages is
you can use a Profile, and so
| | 04:13 | sometimes folks will do that as a
way of making the Sweep more complex.
| | 04:19 | Now for this example I'm just going to
stick with a shape that I'm going to sketch
| | 04:24 | and you can see that when I finish,
it doesn't look much different
| | 04:27 | than what I could create with an Extrusion.
| | 04:29 | So the two main differences are, if I would
prefer to sketch the path and have grip points
| | 04:35 | and be able to draw it graphically on
screen rather than use properties on the palette.
| | 04:40 | Notice that there are no numbers over here now.
| | 04:43 | You can't type in a depth
like you could with an extrusion.
| | 04:47 | That's one difference in the Sweep and
the other is the different options that
| | 04:50 | you have for the profile.
| | 04:53 | We will do a Swept profile
example in the later movie,
| | 04:57 | so for now I'm going to skip that
one and just stick with the Sketch.
| | 05:00 | I have one last example I'd like to show you.
| | 05:03 | When I started this file I had this
simple Extrusion here in the file.
| | 05:07 | This is just an Extrusion, default depth,
it's 1 foot tall and it's just a hexagon shape.
| | 05:12 | You can draw any shape you like.
| | 05:14 | One of the nice features of the Sweep
is instead of sketching the path, you can
| | 05:20 | actually do Pick Path.
| | 05:22 | Now when I do that the default
behavior is going to be to pick 3D edges,
| | 05:26 | and so it might be easiest to do
this right here in the 3D view.
| | 05:31 | And what I can do is I can start to
click on the edges of this 3D form.
| | 05:36 | You don't have to be limited to just one plane.
| | 05:41 | So I can actually find edges that go
down along the sides and wrap around.
| | 05:46 | You can do your path anywhere in 3D Space.
| | 05:49 | When I click Finish, Edit my sketch,
and in this case I'll keep it simple and
| | 05:55 | just do a simple circle here, a little tube.
| | 05:59 | Click Finish again, notice that I was
able to draw that in 3D and one more time,
| | 06:05 | and now my shape is following
along the edges of this 3D form.
| | 06:11 | Even better if you edit this 3D form and
change its shape a little bit and click Finish,
| | 06:19 | notice that the Sweep will
continue to adhere to that form.
| | 06:23 | So that can be a really powerful way
to create a complex form in your Family
| | 06:29 | where one form drives the
shape of the second form.
| | 06:32 | So in this case the Extrusion is
driving the shape of the Sweep.
| | 06:36 | So as you can see the Sweep offers as
many unique features not available in the
| | 06:40 | other 3D forms and so this makes it a
preferred choice of many Family authors.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating swept blends| 00:00 | So let's go to our fifth and
final form, the Swept Blend.
| | 00:04 | The Swept Blend is sort of a combination
between the Sweep and the Blend. Thus, its name.
| | 00:09 | We get two shapes, two sketches;
| | 00:11 | one for the start and one for the end.
| | 00:13 | Then they move along a sketched path.
| | 00:16 | So it's more like a Sweep,
because you get to sketch the path.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to start here in a
Generic model Family like the others.
| | 00:24 | I'll go to my Home tab and
click the Swept Blend tool.
| | 00:29 | Like the Sweep, we're introduced with
a couple of ways to create the sketch.
| | 00:34 | We can either sketch the path or pick the path
and in this case I'm going to do Sketch Path.
| | 00:40 | One little challenge that we have with
the Swept Blend is that the path has to
| | 00:44 | be a single segment.
| | 00:46 | So that's a little bit of a limitation.
| | 00:49 | If I draw with a straight line, then that's it;
| | 00:52 | it's just a straight path.
| | 00:54 | It's basically a Blend, which
would make you kind of wonder what the
| | 00:57 | usefulness of this would be.
| | 00:59 | Well, let's undo that and look at one of
the other shapes here, for example, a curve.
| | 01:05 | Now if I do that, we start to see that,
okay, now we're getting a form that we
| | 01:10 | wouldn't really be able to do with a
normal Blend, because a normal Blend would
| | 01:14 | just go along a straight line.
| | 01:15 | So you do get some flexibility, and
we'll do a few other examples in moment.
| | 01:20 | If we look over here in the 3D view,
what we see is two of these green planes
| | 01:27 | where previously with the Sweep we only saw one.
| | 01:29 | So we're actually going to have two
shapes that we're going to sketch and like
| | 01:32 | the normal blend it will transform
from the one shape to the other along the
| | 01:39 | path which is curved in this case.
| | 01:42 | If you look here on the Sketch panel, we
see that there are two profile buttons.
| | 01:48 | We've got Profile 1 and Profile 2 and
they can both be By Sketch, or they can
| | 01:52 | be by loaded profile.
| | 01:53 | And as I mentioned in the Sweep movie, we will
be doing profile examples in at later chapter.
| | 02:00 | So we're going to stick with sketches for now.
| | 02:02 | So I'm going to choose Edit
Profile for the first sketch.
| | 02:06 | I'm going to keep these sketch as
fairly simple which means I should be able to
| | 02:10 | work relatively successfully here in
the 3D view, but what you start to see if
| | 02:16 | you look at each of the views is if my
sketch was more complicated and require a
| | 02:21 | little bit more precision, it would
become rather difficult to work on it in any
| | 02:26 | of the views that I have available to me.
| | 02:28 | Down here I'm skewed to the angle of
the plane, here I'm skewed to the angle of
| | 02:32 | the plane, the Plan
obviously is not a choice at all.
| | 02:35 | 3D is okay, but it's not fantastic.
| | 02:38 | Well, let me finish this and
switch to the second profile.
| | 02:43 | So I'm just going to click this button
and do Edit Profile just to show you one
| | 02:48 | alternative that we have here.
| | 02:50 | If I click the Modify tool, if I
click this Viewer button, it's called the
| | 02:55 | Workplane Viewer, you'll get
this secondary window here.
| | 02:59 | I'm going to move it out of the way
and make it a little larger so I can
| | 03:02 | actually see what I'm doing.
| | 03:04 | Now you can see that I'm
looking right at that plane.
| | 03:08 | If the angle of the plane is not
conducive to giving you a proper sketch, then
| | 03:15 | you can use this Workplane Viewer
feature and it should make it a little easier.
| | 03:19 | Let's do something a little
different this time. I'll draw an oval.
| | 03:23 | So we're going to transform from a
circle to an oval along that curved path.
| | 03:27 | So we've just got curves
in every direction here.
| | 03:30 | Now you can close the Viewer
whenever you're done with it.
| | 03:33 | You can see the path here.
| | 03:34 | I can click finish.
| | 03:36 | So now I have my first sketch, my
second sketch and my path and one more time
| | 03:40 | Finish again and there is my Swept Blend.
| | 03:45 | Maybe it's a piece of ductwork or something.
| | 03:46 | I'm not really even sure what that is.
| | 03:48 | It's a horn but there is that curved form.
| | 03:51 | So that's the basic
concept behind the Swept Blend.
| | 03:54 | So getting back to the issue of the path
it's somewhat limiting this notion that
| | 04:00 | we can only have a single segment path,
but if you're somewhat creative and I go
| | 04:05 | to my Swept Blend, sketch my path,
then you'll notice that you do have some
| | 04:10 | other choices here like my Spline.
| | 04:13 | And it might take a little bit of
effort here to build this, but if you are
| | 04:19 | a little creative with your choice of
path it actually is possible to create
| | 04:25 | a much more complex path and get
around the limitation, the multi-segment
| | 04:30 | limitation, because technically this is
a single object here, this Spline object.
| | 04:35 | So I'm going to click
Finish and this is now my path.
| | 04:40 | Come over here, and again I could use
the Workplane Viewer if I wanted to, but
| | 04:45 | in this case I'm just going to
use some really simple forms.
| | 04:51 | Click Finish and Finish again and it is
definitely possible to get some fairly
| | 04:57 | complex forms even working within the
limitation that the Swept Blend imposes on
| | 05:03 | us with a single segment path.
| | 05:05 | You just have to be a little
bit more creative about it.
| | 05:09 | So that's our five overall shapes,
any of those can be solid forms or void
| | 05:15 | forms, and so in the final movie in
this chapter we're going to look at all of
| | 05:18 | the forms together both solids and
voids, and compose them into a single
| | 05:24 | unified design.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using void forms| 00:00 | Each of the five solid forms that we've
explored so far in this chapter can also
| | 00:04 | be created as voids.
| | 00:05 | Void forms carve away from the
solid forms to which they are joined.
| | 00:09 | If you create a void form in the same
physical location as a solid, Revit will
| | 00:13 | automatically join the two forms for you.
| | 00:16 | As an alternative, you can create the
void freestanding and then move it into
| | 00:19 | place and join it to the solids later.
| | 00:21 | The choice is up to you.
| | 00:23 | What I have on screen is a file that
brings together a sample of all the forms
| | 00:26 | we've been talking about so far.
| | 00:28 | Some of this I'm going to leave as a
practice exercise for you to explore further.
| | 00:32 | What I'm going to focus on is
the void forms in this file.
| | 00:35 | So I'm going to start here at the
top of this wrought iron bracket with
| | 00:41 | this form right here.
| | 00:42 | This is a Blend that just goes from a
simple square shape at the bottom, to a
| | 00:46 | long thin square shape at the top.
| | 00:48 | I'd really like to kind
of round off that top edge.
| | 00:51 | Now you wouldn't be able to achieve a
form like that directly with any one of
| | 00:56 | the other solid forms.
| | 00:57 | So it really requires the
combination of two forms.
| | 01:01 | So in this case, we're going to start
with the overall solid, and then we're
| | 01:05 | going to carve away from it with a void.
| | 01:08 | Now I've provided some lines here to
get us started and to make it a little bit
| | 01:12 | easier to create this form, but feel
free to experiment on your own and create a
| | 01:17 | different shape if you like.
| | 01:18 | We create voids in much the same
way that we create the solid forms.
| | 01:22 | If we look here on the Home Tab of the
Ribbon, we've got our five solid forms
| | 01:27 | here, and a Void Form tool next to
it that lists out the same five forms.
| | 01:32 | So you can create any one of the five shapes
that we've previously explored as a void form.
| | 01:37 | In this case, we'll just
do a simple Void Extrusion.
| | 01:40 | Now like we did with other forms, we
want to pay attention to our work plane.
| | 01:45 | So if we look at the other views of
this project, what we see here is there's a
| | 01:49 | Reference Plane along the
back edge of this bracket:
| | 01:54 | Center (Front/Back).
| | 01:56 | If we look at the back view, we're
looking right at that Reference Plane.
| | 02:01 | Now, if you want to be sure that Revit
is choosing that correct Reference Plane,
| | 02:05 | we can click the Set tool as we've done
in previous movies, we can open up the
| | 02:09 | list, and we can choose the
Center (Front/Back) Reference Plane.
| | 02:13 | Now, this will be confirmed
for us here in the 3D View.
| | 02:16 | You'll see that we're now using the
plane in the back of that steel bracket as
| | 02:21 | our work plane, and I'm
going to go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:24 | Then we're going to zoom in a little
bit on this top edge here, and create an
| | 02:29 | extruded void form here at the top.
| | 02:33 | Now, if I go to Void Forms and I choose
Void Extrusion, I could trace over these
| | 02:38 | shapes, or I can just use the Pick
Lines and actually pick them directly.
| | 02:43 | So that's what I'm going to do.
| | 02:44 | What I'm mainly interested
in is this curve right here.
| | 02:47 | The shape of this stuff out
here is not terribly important.
| | 02:51 | It just needs to be big enough to cover over
the part of the form we want to carve away.
| | 02:57 | So in other words, it needs to be big
enough to capture these little corners
| | 03:01 | that we want to carve off.
| | 03:02 | So if I do the form that I have
sketched here, it's more than big enough to
| | 03:07 | achieve that result.
| | 03:09 | If I click Finish and create the
form, we're going to see something a
| | 03:12 | little strange here.
| | 03:13 | Now first of all, the Depth of the
form is defaulting in this file to 12.
| | 03:19 | So it looks like it's doing something
different than what we've seen previously.
| | 03:23 | Well, if we go to the Manage Tab and
we look at Units, I've just simply taken
| | 03:27 | the units in this file and
changed them to Decimal inches.
| | 03:30 | So it's still the default 1-foot
depth that we were seeing in other files.
| | 03:33 | It's just now expressed in inches.
| | 03:35 | So you can feel free to change the units
in any of your Family files that you like.
| | 03:39 | Secondly, if you recall from our
discussion at the beginning of this chapter
| | 03:42 | about work planes that there is a positive
and a negative direction of each work plane.
| | 03:47 | So in this case, the Extrusion is
actually going in the wrong direction.
| | 03:51 | Now, we have a few ways we can deal with that.
| | 03:52 | We could of course reverse the work plane,
but if you recall, I recommended that
| | 03:57 | you not do that late in the design process.
| | 04:00 | In other words, if I came over here and
tried to reverse this work plane now, it
| | 04:05 | would probably have a detrimental
effect on some other geometry in the file.
| | 04:09 | So that's really not a good choice.
| | 04:11 | Instead, all I have to do is just deal
with this one void that's going in the
| | 04:15 | wrong direction, and I can do that here
with the numbers, or I can just simply
| | 04:19 | do it here with the grips.
| | 04:20 | It's really up to you.
| | 04:22 | It depends whether you want to have
some more rational numbers here or whether
| | 04:25 | or not the more random
numbers are acceptable to you.
| | 04:28 | Either way, it's not terribly important
because what we're going to see is when
| | 04:32 | the void is done, the void actually
becomes invisible, and we see the result of
| | 04:38 | the void interacting with
the solid that it's joined to.
| | 04:42 | So I like rational numbers, so I'm
going to go ahead and change these to 2
| | 04:48 | and -2 and click Apply.
| | 04:50 | That will reduce the size of this
overall void down, and you see that it does
| | 04:54 | intersect now the 3D form.
| | 04:57 | When I deselect it, it will
immediately apply itself to the underlying form.
| | 05:02 | I can come in here, select these
model lines, and just simply delete them;
| | 05:06 | they're no longer necessary,
and you can see the end result.
| | 05:10 | I have this nice little curve here
at the top of the finial and a more
| | 05:14 | finished-looking result.
| | 05:16 | So we have a similar
condition down toward the bottom.
| | 05:19 | So let me just pan this
down into this location here.
| | 05:23 | Here, I already have a void
form that was previously created.
| | 05:28 | This void form is created in exactly
the same way as the one we had up above.
| | 05:32 | The difference is this void is already
here, and so when we come in and create
| | 05:37 | the new solid form underneath it,
it won't automatically apply itself.
| | 05:41 | So we'll get to see that
different workflow in that situation.
| | 05:44 | Now, what I want to build here is a swept blend.
| | 05:47 | So I'm going to use this curve that
I've provided in the file as the path, and
| | 05:52 | then I'll create my two shapes to
finish off this curve down at the bottom.
| | 05:56 | I'm going to go to the Home tab, and I
want to make sure that my work plane is
| | 06:01 | set before I get started.
| | 06:02 | So I'm going to go to Set.
| | 06:03 | If I know the work plane that's
passing through this bracket, I could use the
| | 06:09 | center work plane, there is one here,
Center (Left/Right), but I want to show
| | 06:13 | you another option here.
| | 06:15 | There's actually this Pick a line, and
use the work plane that was sketched in.
| | 06:18 | I just want point that out to you as an
alternative option that you can use in your own work.
| | 06:23 | So since I have a line right there, I
can click on that, and you'll see there is
| | 06:27 | a work plane right there;
| | 06:29 | six of one, a half-dozen
of the other in this case.
| | 06:31 | So I've got that work plane.
| | 06:33 | I'm going to choose my Swept Blend,
and I'm going to sketch my path.
| | 06:37 | I'm going to choose the Pick Lines
option, and I'll click on this curve
| | 06:41 | that we've created.
| | 06:42 | That gives me my path.
| | 06:44 | So I'll finish that.
| | 06:46 | Here, what I'm going to do is
something that I alluded to in the Swept Blend
| | 06:49 | movie and in the Sweep movie.
| | 06:51 | We're going to do it sort of in pieces
and parts throughout the training series.
| | 06:54 | So I've already provided some
Profile Families here in this file.
| | 06:59 | We mentioned in those previous movies
that you can create a Swept Blend or a
| | 07:03 | Sweep using Profile
Families instead of sketches.
| | 07:06 | So it defaults to By Sketch.
| | 07:08 | But if you open up this list, you see
there are actually some items here on the list.
| | 07:13 | These are nested Profile Families.
| | 07:16 | Now, in a future chapter, we're going
to actually create the Profile Families
| | 07:20 | ourselves from scratch.
| | 07:21 | So we will learn how to do that.
| | 07:23 | Here to focus more on the void forms,
I've just provided the Profile Families
| | 07:28 | for us to use, so we can
just choose them off the list.
| | 07:31 | So for our Profile 1, I have this
one called Bracket Finial Profile1.
| | 07:37 | If we just take a quick look at that,
it's just a pre-drawn shape, it's a 2D shape.
| | 07:44 | The insertion point was planned
carefully, so that it ended up right on the
| | 07:47 | curve and it has the subtle little
concave curve here to give a little bit more
| | 07:52 | interesting finish to our form.
| | 07:55 | I'm going to go to Select Profile 2,
open up the list, choose my Profile2,
| | 08:01 | and that one is just a simple rectangle, so
that it matches up with the existing form.
| | 08:05 | So it'll look like it's smoothly going
from the arc curve into the Swept Blend.
| | 08:12 | So I've got my two shapes, it's
going to blend from this one to this one.
| | 08:15 | I'm going to finish that.
| | 08:18 | If we spin around, you
can kind of see the result.
| | 08:22 | Now by itself, that's an interesting
form and we could leave it like that.
| | 08:26 | But using the void, you can
kind of see the way they intersect.
| | 08:30 | We can actually cut off those hard
edge corners there and make it a little
| | 08:34 | smoother, a little bit less sharp
edge, maybe a little more interesting.
| | 08:39 | So we can use the void to do that.
| | 08:41 | Because the void already exists,
it doesn't automatically apply.
| | 08:45 | So what we do is we use the Cut
Geometry tool for this purpose.
| | 08:49 | This just simply allows us to come in and
apply the void to the form after the fact.
| | 08:54 | So we click Cut Geometry, we select
the geometry that we want to cut, and
| | 09:00 | then we select the void.
| | 09:02 | When you do, the void will disappear and
the effect will get applied to that form.
| | 09:07 | So if I escape out of that command,
notice that there is the Swept Blend.
| | 09:13 | If you move your mouse around here
somewhere, there's the void form.
| | 09:18 | So you can always get back to the
original forms, select them, and edit them
| | 09:22 | in any way necessary.
| | 09:23 | But when they're deselected,
you get the final result.
| | 09:26 | So we're going to leave this file at
this stage and I'm going to leave these
| | 09:32 | shapes over here for you to
further experiment with this.
| | 09:36 | Over here, you can add a sweep to
finish off this end of the bracket.
| | 09:40 | Here's the path of the sweep
and you can sketch the shape.
| | 09:43 | And then if you look at these little
collars over here, these are just Revolves.
| | 09:47 | I've given you the starting point
of one of those collars right here;
| | 09:51 | here's the form and there's a
path buried in there somewhere;
| | 09:55 | there it is right there,
that you can use as the axis.
| | 09:58 | So feel free to practice with this
file and using these forms, feel free to
| | 10:03 | modify any of the forms that I've
provided here and practice any of the forms
| | 10:07 | that we've looked at in the previous
movies and even add some more voids if you like.
| | 10:12 | So while the focus of this movie
has been on the void forms, the larger
| | 10:16 | purpose of the file that we're working
in here is to give you an opportunity
| | 10:19 | to experiment with all the forms that
we've been discussing throughout this chapter.
| | 10:22 | So I do encourage you to spend some
time and practice in here each of the
| | 10:26 | features that we've looked at
over the last several movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Beyond GeometryWorking with identity data| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll return to the basic Table
Family that we created earlier in the course.
| | 00:05 | Family is Parametric with
flexible dimensions, but little else.
| | 00:09 | Parameters are not limited to just dimensions.
| | 00:11 | In this chapter, we're going to
look at some of the other kinds of
| | 00:13 | Parameters that are available.
| | 00:14 | We're going to learn how to add Family
Types, and a variety of other ways to
| | 00:18 | make our families more robust.
| | 00:19 | We're going to start pretty simple in this
movie by just talking about Identity Data.
| | 00:24 | If we go to the Home tab, and locate
our Family Types button, we've previously
| | 00:29 | been in here to flex our Family with
our dimensional Parameters, and you can
| | 00:32 | see those listed here.
| | 00:34 | Beneath that, you're going to
see an identity data grouping.
| | 00:37 | Now, this grouping is
part of the default template.
| | 00:40 | If I come over here to the right-hand
side, there are these little triangles
| | 00:43 | here, and I can click on that
and that will expand the group.
| | 00:46 | You're going to see things like
Model and Manufacture and URL.
| | 00:49 | These fields are built into the
Family from the Family Template and all the
| | 00:53 | model Families have these.
| | 00:55 | So we can simply come in here and start
inputting data, like perhaps the Model
| | 01:00 | Number for this is TBL123 and the
Manufacturer might be Office Systems and
| | 01:08 | perhaps it has a web site
that we want to put in here.
| | 01:12 | I wouldn't recommend trying to go to
this web site because I'm making it up, and
| | 01:17 | perhaps that's the Cost.
| | 01:20 | So we fill in this information.
| | 01:21 | But there maybe other information that
you're interested in knowing about this
| | 01:25 | Family or attaching to this
Family that you also want to add here.
| | 01:29 | So right in the Family Types dialog, we
can actually add additional Parameters.
| | 01:34 | Now, previously when we added
Parameters, we did it from the dimensions
| | 01:37 | directly on screen.
| | 01:39 | But when I click Add over here in the
Family Types box, I get pretty much the
| | 01:43 | same window that we saw
before, with a slight variation.
| | 01:46 | Previously, the type of Parameter was
filled in for us and it was grayed out.
| | 01:51 | That's because we started
with a dimension on screen.
| | 01:53 | When you do it this way, you get to
choose the kind of Parameter that you want
| | 01:57 | to create from this available list here.
| | 02:00 | Now I'm going to start with something
really simple, just a Text Parameter,
| | 02:04 | and put it under the Identity data, so
that it falls in with all of the other
| | 02:09 | items that I've added here, and
perhaps I want to just have a little text
| | 02:13 | field here that's going to alert my
team as to whether or not I've finished
| | 02:17 | with this Family yet.
| | 02:18 | I could put in something like Progress.
| | 02:22 | What I'm intending somebody to put
in here is, is it in progress, is it
| | 02:26 | finished, is it complete?
| | 02:28 | This is like a text field that I'm
going to use to alert my team as to what
| | 02:32 | stage this Family is at.
| | 02:34 | I'm going to assign that at the Type
level, because if one instance of the
| | 02:40 | Family is in progress, then they all are.
| | 02:42 | So it wouldn't make sense to
have this go instance by instance.
| | 02:45 | So we'll go ahead and put that in there,
and over here, I'll type-in In Progress
| | 02:50 | because we're clearly not finished
with this guy yet, and we'll click OK and
| | 02:55 | we've now added that bit of data to this Family.
| | 02:59 | When you create your first Families,
it's easy to focus on only the geometry,
| | 03:02 | and kind of forget about the data.
| | 03:04 | But remember, the data is the I in BIM
and it is often as important if not even
| | 03:10 | more important than the graphics.
| | 03:11 | Identity Data is already a part of
every Revit Family template, [00:03:16.O1]
| | 03:15 | and we can add additional data as required.
| | 03:18 | So make sure to consider this kind
of non-graphical data that you will
| | 03:21 | frequently wish to track in your
projects, and be sure to include those in
| | 03:25 | your Families.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding family types| 00:00 | You've taken many trips to the Family Types
dialog to flex our Family as we've refined it.
| | 00:05 | But why is it called the
Family Types dialog anyway?
| | 00:08 | In this movie, we'll take a look at
the answer and create some Family Types
| | 00:11 | for the custom Family.
| | 00:13 | It's called Family Types, because we
can save all the collection of Parameters
| | 00:18 | that we create here in the Family
Types dialog and give it a name, and that
| | 00:22 | actually becomes a type for our Family.
| | 00:25 | So a type is really just a saved
and named variation of our Family.
| | 00:31 | When you're working in a project and
you open up the Type Selector and you're
| | 00:33 | choosing a type, what you're actually
choosing is a saved variation like you
| | 00:37 | see here on this list.
| | 00:39 | So all we have to do here is come over
here to the New button, click on that,
| | 00:43 | and give a descriptive name to this.
| | 00:47 | Now, the default convention used by
Revit is to name the Family type based on
| | 00:52 | the overall dimensions.
| | 00:54 | So that's the strategy that we'll employ here.
| | 00:56 | The width of this Family is 4 feet.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to describe this one as 48
inches by the length which is 6 feet, 72 inches.
| | 01:05 | Now, if there were some other important
defining characteristic that I wanted to
| | 01:09 | include in here, I could
certainly add that to the name.
| | 01:11 | But I think in this case those are the
two most important Parameters in this
| | 01:16 | Family, so I'm just going to
include only those two in the name.
| | 01:20 | That describes the one that I have here.
| | 01:21 | Now I'm going to click New again,
and I'm going to create another size.
| | 01:26 | So I'll call this one a 40"x84", click
OK and now I need to make the numbers
| | 01:36 | actually match the name.
| | 01:37 | Simply naming it doesn't actually flex it;
| | 01:40 | you've got to make the numbers match.
| | 01:42 | So this is 40", this is 84".
| | 01:47 | I am putting the inch symbol because
otherwise it will be 84 feet, keep that in mind.
| | 01:53 | If the longer size required a
different Leg Inset, I could make
| | 01:57 | that modification here.
| | 01:59 | But I'm going to leave the
same Leg Inset and height.
| | 02:02 | But I'm going to come down here and
based on the previous movie where we talked
| | 02:05 | about identity data, I'm going to
change whatever data here is appropriate to
| | 02:10 | change, such as the model number which
instead of 123, let me make these model
| | 02:16 | numbers now a little bit more rational,
how about a 40x84 for this and perhaps
| | 02:21 | there's a slightly
different cost for this, it's 850.
| | 02:23 | I am going to apply that.
| | 02:26 | You'll see in the background, in
all my views, that the dimensional
| | 02:31 | Parameters did flex.
| | 02:32 | So that's good, and then I'm going to
open this up and return to the other size.
| | 02:36 | Go ahead and click Apply.
| | 02:39 | You'll see it flex again, and I should
probably take this model number now and
| | 02:43 | make it match the new
standard that I've decided on.
| | 02:46 | So we'll apply that one more time.
| | 02:49 | Let's go ahead and add one more type here.
| | 02:50 | I always like to make a square one.
| | 02:54 | So let's do a 48x48, put in a size
there, modify this, click Apply, and again
| | 03:05 | everything seems to be flexing correctly.
| | 03:07 | So now when you want to flex the Family,
it's a simple matter of opening the
| | 03:10 | list, choosing the size you want,
clicking Apply, going to another size,
| | 03:16 | clicking Apply and everything flexes for you.
| | 03:19 | So it definitely is going to save you a
little bit of effort as opposed to the
| | 03:22 | previous approach where we were going
in and changing each and every Parameter.
| | 03:26 | The more Parameters you start to
get, the more tedious that becomes.
| | 03:29 | So it's usually a pretty good idea to
start adding some Family Types once you
| | 03:33 | start solidifying the Family a little bit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating type catalogs| 00:00 | If your Family requires many types, you
can use a Type Catalog to manage them.
| | 00:04 | In the previous movie we added a few
types using the Family Types dialog, but
| | 00:08 | a Type Catalog is a text file that
contains many type variations for a single Family.
| | 00:13 | Users are presented with a Type
Catalog in a dialog box when they load the
| | 00:18 | Family into their projects, and
therefore, they can choose just the type or
| | 00:22 | types that they want to bring into
their project rather than being forced to
| | 00:25 | load the entire list.
| | 00:27 | So let me start by showing
you an out-of-the-box example.
| | 00:29 | I have a folder here open to the library
that shows the structural steel framing
| | 00:33 | Families that come with Revit out of the box.
| | 00:36 | And what you will see here is that for
each Family, there is actually text file
| | 00:39 | sitting next to it with the same name,
so you've got this BG Joist Girder here
| | 00:44 | and then right next to it there is
another BG Joist Girder text file.
| | 00:48 | Now, this text file actually contains
the instructions for how to create all of
| | 00:53 | the required Family Types that this Family uses.
| | 00:57 | If you try and load that Family into
your project, Revit will see that text file
| | 01:03 | and it will present it in a dialog and
allow the users to choose just the type
| | 01:07 | or types that they're interested in.
| | 01:09 | Now a new feature that we have here
in Revit 2012 is the ability to quickly
| | 01:14 | create a Type Catalog from our existing Family.
| | 01:18 | So I'm here in a file called Type
Catalog which is just another variation of our
| | 01:23 | Table Family that we've been working on
in the last few movies and I'm going to
| | 01:26 | go to the Application menu here in Revit,
go to Export, scroll all the way down
| | 01:31 | and you're going to see the Family
Types option, Export > Family Types and you
| | 01:36 | can see there from the description
that this is going to create the text file
| | 01:39 | for us to create a type catalog
that goes along with this Family.
| | 01:43 | Now, as you saw in the Windows
Explorer window, it's very important that you
| | 01:48 | keep the name the same.
| | 01:50 | So the name of our Family is called
Type Catalog.rfa, the Type Catalog must be
| | 01:55 | called Type Catalog.txt in order for
Revit to understand that this Type Catalog
| | 02:00 | belongs with this Family and they
both have to be saved in the same place.
| | 02:03 | So I'm putting this in my
Chapter05 folder with the Exercise Files.
| | 02:07 | So that's the first step;
| | 02:08 | I've created the Type Catalog.
| | 02:10 | Now, if I wanted to simply go ahead and
load this Family into a project, I would
| | 02:14 | see that Type Catalog, but if you
recall from the previous movie, we only have
| | 02:18 | three types in there right now.
| | 02:20 | So let's instead open the Type
Catalog, take a look at it, understand the
| | 02:25 | structure a little bit and
then maybe add a few types.
| | 02:27 | Now you can do that by just simply
double-clicking the text file in Windows
| | 02:31 | Explorer, or if you've got a program
like Excel, you can actually open the file
| | 02:35 | there and it makes it a little easier to
work on it in a column format, than you
| | 02:39 | would get in say Windows Notepad.
| | 02:42 | So let's go ahead and try that.
| | 02:43 | So I'm here in Excel and I'll click
Open and I'll browse out to the Chapter 05
| | 02:48 | Exercise Files and locate my Type Catalog.
| | 02:51 | If you don't see the file listed,
make sure it says All Files here.
| | 02:55 | So if it's looking for Excel files
exclusively, change the File Type here to All
| | 02:59 | Files, and then your Type
Catalog should be listed.
| | 03:03 | And when it opens, it will recognize
that it's a delimited text file, and it
| | 03:07 | will bring in the Text Import Wizard.
| | 03:09 | The first page here, there's
nothing to change; I'll click Next.
| | 03:13 | On in this page I want to change the Delimiter.
| | 03:16 | It's not a Tab Delimited file;
| | 03:18 | it's a Comma Delimited file, so I want
to choose that and you'll see that will
| | 03:20 | format everything into columns.
| | 03:22 | I want to also make sure that it
doesn't misinterpret the quote marks that
| | 03:26 | are in the file for the inch symbol, you can
see here there are some double quote marks.
| | 03:31 | So for Text Qualifier, I'm
going to change that to {none}.
| | 03:35 | Now unfortunately we have discovered
a little anomaly in the way that this
| | 03:39 | file gets generated and the cost column is
not cooperating when we are working with this.
| | 03:45 | So here on the next page, I'm going to
unfortunately have to skip the import
| | 03:50 | of the Cost column.
| | 03:52 | Now I don't know the exact details of
whether or not this will be addressed in
| | 03:56 | the service pack with future versions of
Revit, but for the meantime we're going
| | 03:59 | to have to skip that if we want to
be successful here with this process.
| | 04:03 | The rest of it I'm going to leave at
the default, and I'm going to click Finish
| | 04:06 | here, and you'll see the file
get imported here into Excel.
| | 04:10 | We've got our three types listed over
here in Column A that we created and then
| | 04:15 | the column header for each Parameter
in the text file that we chose to import
| | 04:20 | will have the name of the Parameter,
and then they use these number signs here
| | 04:24 | to separate the type of Parameter and
the unit that's being used to import it.
| | 04:30 | Don't change any of this formatting
here, this all needs to be preserved in
| | 04:34 | order for the file to function properly.
| | 04:36 | And all we really need to do is just
come down here to a new row and begin
| | 04:41 | adding the next type that we want to create.
| | 04:44 | So to simplify this a little, I'm
going to select all of the items in row 4,
| | 04:49 | and paste that down here into row 5,
and then I'll just simply edit the data
| | 04:53 | that I want to change.
| | 04:54 | So I'm going to make this next size
36 x 60, and then I'm going to tab over
| | 05:00 | into cell B, and make sure that my
numerical values actually match the name
| | 05:06 | that I've just given it;
| | 05:07 | so this is a 3-foot wide.
| | 05:09 | Now notice up here that the column is in feet.
| | 05:12 | So even though I used inches over here,
I'm going to be putting in values in
| | 05:16 | feet in both this field and
in this field, the Length here.
| | 05:20 | So this one is going to be 5 feet here.
| | 05:24 | So I've added several types here.
| | 05:25 | You can feel free to add more if you
like, and once we've added all the types
| | 05:30 | that we need, we're ready to save the file.
| | 05:33 | Now, we want to make sure that we're
saving the file in the correct format that
| | 05:36 | Revit will understand.
| | 05:37 | So I'm going to come back here to the
File tab and click on Save As, and I want
| | 05:42 | to make sure that the file format that
I'm using here is a Comma delimited text
| | 05:47 | file, that's the format that
Revit understands for a Type Catalog.
| | 05:51 | I want to make sure that it has a txt
extension, because that's also required.
| | 05:56 | So I'm going to just type that in myself;
| | 05:59 | .txt there at the end.
| | 06:00 | I'll go ahead and save this.
| | 06:02 | Once I save it in that format,
Excel will alert me to make sure that I
| | 06:07 | actually want to use a non-Excel
native format and it's warning me that I
| | 06:12 | might not be able to save all the
features and that's just fine, so I'm just
| | 06:14 | going to answer Yes for that.
| | 06:16 | And then I want to close this file.
| | 06:19 | So when I close it, Excel is going to
ask me again if I want to save it in
| | 06:23 | Excel's native format, and I know this
is a little confusing, but I've already
| | 06:27 | created the text file, that's what I
needed, so I don't want to Save because
| | 06:31 | again it will try and upgrade
it to the Excel format. Alright.
| | 06:36 | So let's return to Revit and we want to
bring forward our Sandbox file, which I
| | 06:41 | have minimized down here.
| | 06:44 | So here is my file right
here and let's test this out.
| | 06:47 | So on the Home tab I'm going to click
on the Component tool, and then I'm going
| | 06:51 | to click the Load Family button.
| | 06:53 | I'll browse out to the Exercise Files
folder, Chapter05, and I'll select my Type
| | 06:59 | Catalog Family file.
| | 07:02 | When I click Open, the Type Catalog that
we've just created will be presented to
| | 07:06 | me in this dialog, Specify Types, and
you're going to see each of our Type names
| | 07:10 | listed here in the list, and each of
the sizes and other information that we
| | 07:15 | filled in listed along there.
| | 07:17 | You can select one type or several,
using either the Ctrl or the Shift keys, and
| | 07:23 | when you click OK, it will
load that Family or Families.
| | 07:27 | If I open up the list here, you'll see
Type Catalog is the Family name, and then
| | 07:32 | just the two types that I
asked for, loaded on the list.
| | 07:36 | Go ahead and place it in and
you see that there is that file.
| | 07:41 | So that's creating a Type Catalog.
| | 07:43 | You can imagine that if you've got
lots of types to create that the Type
| | 07:47 | Catalog, creating it externally in a
separate text file can be a way to do that
| | 07:51 | a lot more quickly and efficiently and
actually manage it ongoing as well, if
| | 07:55 | you have to make changes to it in the
future, and it also prevents you from
| | 07:58 | having to load in dozens or
hundreds of types that you don't need.
| | 08:02 | You can specify just the ones
you're interested in when you load the
| | 08:05 | Type Catalog.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using material parameters| 00:00 | So let's return our
attention to the Model itself.
| | 00:03 | We're back in a file called Assign
Materials, which is just another version of
| | 00:06 | our table Family that we've
been working on in this chapter.
| | 00:09 | And currently the Model
appears as a uniform dull gray.
| | 00:12 | That's what I like to call
plain old gray cardboard.
| | 00:14 | We would probably like to have a
little more control over what our table
| | 00:18 | is actually made from.
| | 00:20 | Materials can be assigned to the
elements in our Family to give them a more
| | 00:23 | realistic appearance.
| | 00:24 | We have two ways we can do this.
| | 00:26 | We can assign the materials directly
on the geometry itself, or we can use
| | 00:30 | a material Parameter.
| | 00:32 | So let's take a look at both of
these options here in this file.
| | 00:36 | So I'm going to work over here in
my 3D View and I'm going to change my
| | 00:40 | vantage point slightly.
| | 00:42 | I'm just holding down my Shift
key and dragging with the wheel;
| | 00:45 | that should be something
you're fairly familiar with.
| | 00:48 | And I'll go ahead and zoom in a little bit.
| | 00:50 | I want to assign some different materials here.
| | 00:52 | So I'm going to start with this little
keystone Extrusion that we put up on top
| | 00:56 | of the table, and I'm going to
assign a material directly to that object.
| | 01:01 | So not via a Parameter;
| | 01:02 | I'm just simply going to change the geometry.
| | 01:05 | So like you might expect, you just
simply select the object, you come over here
| | 01:09 | to the Properties palette, and you
just simply change that property.
| | 01:13 | So here under Materials and Finishes, the
Material is currently listed as By Category.
| | 01:19 | Now By Category is just the default setting;
| | 01:21 | so what it's basically saying is I'm
the same material as anything that's
| | 01:25 | assigned to furniture, and that's
why we're getting the gray cardboard.
| | 01:29 | So if we just click in this field here, a tiny
little Browse button will appear. I'll click that;
| | 01:34 | that will open up the list of
materials, which if you're familiar with the
| | 01:38 | list of materials in the Project
Editor, you're probably noticing that this
| | 01:42 | one is a little bit lean.
| | 01:43 | That's by design in the Family Editor
to keep the size of families small and to
| | 01:49 | keep the size of the Family templates small.
| | 01:51 | Revit has actually purged
out most of the materials.
| | 01:54 | But you can add some back in, if you
want to, and I've taken the liberty to
| | 01:58 | do that in this file.
| | 02:00 | In the next movie I'll actually go into
the process that I used to do that, but
| | 02:04 | for now we're just going to work
with the materials that are here.
| | 02:07 | I'm going to assign that keystone
to this Brushed Aluminum material.
| | 02:11 | So Metal Aluminum, Brushed, click OK.
| | 02:14 | And if I deselect it here in the 3D View,
the only real indication that I'll get
| | 02:18 | that I've made that change is it will
change to a white color, because that's
| | 02:21 | the shaded color for that material.
| | 02:23 | So that's pretty simple, pretty straightforward.
| | 02:25 | Of course, doing it that way, the end-user has
no control over the material of that keystone.
| | 02:31 | So by assigning it directly to the geometry,
I'm saying this keystone only comes this way.
| | 02:37 | You can't get it any other way.
| | 02:38 | Now if you imagine you're paging
through a product catalog and the spec sheet
| | 02:43 | for the product in question only made
the keystone in that one material, it
| | 02:47 | wasn't an option that you could order
differently in the catalog, then that
| | 02:50 | would be a perfectly
appropriate way to handle this.
| | 02:52 | But let's say that the legs and
the tabletop are a little different.
| | 02:57 | Let's say that when we're looking
through that product catalog, there
| | 02:59 | are actually choices.
| | 03:01 | You can choose different kinds of
wood maybe for the tabletop, and maybe
| | 03:04 | different kinds of metal for the legs.
| | 03:06 | So if that's the case, then what
we want to do is set those up as
| | 03:09 | material Parameters.
| | 03:10 | Okay, so we're going to ahead and
walk through that step right now.
| | 03:13 | I'm going to start with the Extrusion,
so I'll select the tabletop, and I'm
| | 03:17 | going to return to the Properties
palette, but instead of clicking in the By
| | 03:21 | Category field this time, I'm going to
locate this tiny little button here over
| | 03:25 | on the right-hand side
of the Properties palette.
| | 03:28 | So when I click on that, we're
going to see the Associate Family
| | 03:32 | Parameter dialog appear.
| | 03:34 | Now it currently says that the Parameter
type is Material and it currently shows
| | 03:39 | me a list that's empty.
| | 03:41 | So we don't have any material
Parameters currently in this file.
| | 03:44 | But I can click this Add button right
here, and then I see what should now be
| | 03:50 | familiar, Parameter Properties dialog
box that we've been looking at so far, and
| | 03:55 | you'll notice here that the Type of
Parameter is Material and it's grayed out;
| | 03:59 | that's not something we can change here.
| | 04:00 | And all we have to do is
basically give it a name.
| | 04:03 | So I'm going to call this Tabletop Material.
| | 04:09 | I'm going to assign it as a Type-
based property, because again, I'm going
| | 04:13 | to assume that I'm taking my cue
from our product catalog and that I can
| | 04:17 | either order these legs as bronze or as
aluminum and it would apply to that Model number.
| | 04:24 | So to me, that's more of a Type-based parameter.
| | 04:27 | You would choose Instance parameter
if each table was going to be uniquely
| | 04:30 | manufactured to your specifications.
| | 04:32 | And so if you were going to create one
using one kind of wood for the tabletop
| | 04:36 | and another kind of wood for the
tabletop, you could choose Instance.
| | 04:39 | But that doesn't seem like the best
choice for me here in this context.
| | 04:42 | So I'm going to click OK, click OK again.
| | 04:46 | If you deselect, you're not going to
see any outward change take place yet.
| | 04:51 | The reason for that is all we've really
done is created a material placeholder.
| | 04:55 | That's essentially what
the material Parameter is;
| | 04:57 | it's a placeholder.
| | 04:58 | Now if I reselect the tabletop and I
look over here in the Properties at the
| | 05:03 | result, the Material is now grayed out,
we can no longer edit it, and there's a
| | 05:07 | tiny little equals sign on that button.
| | 05:10 | And that's really the only clue they
we're going to have in the Family Editor
| | 05:13 | that we've linked up this
parameter with a material property.
| | 05:17 | So I'm going to repeat the
process with the legs here.
| | 05:20 | I'll select all four legs, click the
little icon again, Add another Parameter,
| | 05:26 | give it a name, make it a Type
Parameter, and again click OK.
| | 05:29 | So you see that's my
Parameter designation, click OK.
| | 05:35 | Again, it'll still stay gray cardboard,
but if we go back to Family Types,
| | 05:40 | you'll now see the two Parameters
that we've just created - Tabletop
| | 05:44 | Material and Leg Material;
| | 05:46 | currently they're both set to By Category.
| | 05:49 | But this is where I could go in and
give them a default setting if I want.
| | 05:53 | I can assign the Tabletop to Wood - Cherry,
and the Leg to this Bronze material. Click OK.
| | 06:00 | Now when I click OK, you're going to see both
of those materials get applied to the object.
| | 06:06 | So now when I save the Family and I load
it into the project, it will have those
| | 06:10 | material assignments by default.
| | 06:12 | But because those are Parameters, the end-
user will be able to make those changes.
| | 06:16 | So let's go ahead and save this and take a look.
| | 06:20 | So I have a version of the office
building that we were working with earlier in
| | 06:23 | the course loaded already and
minimized down at the bottom of my screen.
| | 06:28 | So I'm going to go ahead over here
and click the Load into Project button.
| | 06:31 | And that will bring that project forward,
it'll run the Place Component command,
| | 06:37 | and you'll see that the
table is now on my cursor.
| | 06:41 | And I'm going to come over here into
this conference room area and I'm just
| | 06:44 | going to click to place that Family.
| | 06:48 | You can't really tell what
material it's made out of in this view.
| | 06:51 | I mean I can certainly click on it,
Edit Type, and you'll see the material
| | 06:56 | designations are here, they're listed here.
| | 06:58 | We can also see all of that information
that we put in the previous few movies.
| | 07:01 | It would probably be better to actually
take a look at it, so let's do one more thing.
| | 07:07 | We'll go and create a camera, stand
right here by the door and kind of look
| | 07:12 | at our table, just kind of widen the view
just a touch here, and let's turn on Shading.
| | 07:21 | And you can see the materials
are now showing in the view.
| | 07:25 | Now that it's loaded in the view, if my
user wanted to select the table and edit
| | 07:29 | the type and click here, because
they're in the project environment, you would
| | 07:34 | see the much more robust material list
to choose from, and they could reassign
| | 07:39 | the material to just about anything they want.
| | 07:41 | So the way that we set it up back in
the Family, we just kind of set what we
| | 07:45 | wanted the default material to be,
but it's still flexible for the end-user
| | 07:49 | to make the change.
| | 07:50 | But notice that there is no way for the
end-user to change the keystone material.
| | 07:55 | The keystone there on the top of the
table is going to stay permanently as that
| | 07:59 | aluminum color, because of the
way that we assigned the material.
| | 08:02 | So those are the two ways you
can assign materials in the Family.
| | 08:05 | You can either assign them explicitly,
directly to the geometry, or you can
| | 08:09 | assign them as material parameters,
which are essentially material placeholders
| | 08:13 | that then can be modified later.
| | 08:15 | In the next movie, we'll look at how we
actually imported those materials over
| | 08:18 | into the Family editor to start with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sharing materials| 00:00 | In the previous movie we assigned
materials to the geometry in our Family.
| | 00:04 | As we saw, the Family Editor usually
contains very few materials from which to choose.
| | 00:08 | In this movie, we will look at
ways to address this situation.
| | 00:11 | We have basically two options, we can
create the materials directly in the
| | 00:15 | Family Editor from scratch, or we can
copy and paste them from other projects.
| | 00:21 | Now I've reset back to the default
version of our table Family here to
| | 00:26 | illustrate the process.
| | 00:27 | If we look at the Manage tab and click
on the Materials button, you'll see that
| | 00:33 | the Default template
starts with very few materials.
| | 00:35 | There are just a few that
are named Default, and so on.
| | 00:39 | So there's very little in here.
| | 00:40 | If you wanted to create your own
material, you really can't click new;
| | 00:45 | there is no New button.
| | 00:45 | What you have to do is
select an existing material.
| | 00:48 | So one of these really simple ones
that are either just a plain color or
| | 00:52 | something or other, and down here at the
very bottom there's a Duplicate button.
| | 00:56 | You would click Duplicate, and then
you'd work your way through the tabs over
| | 01:00 | here to modify the material to suit your needs.
| | 01:03 | It's not necessarily difficult to do
that, but you run the risk of creating
| | 01:07 | redundant materials, because there's a
pretty good chance that the material you
| | 01:11 | want already exist back
in the project environment.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to restore my sandbox which
is minimized down here at the bottom of
| | 01:18 | the screen, go to the Manage tab, and
take a look at the Materials in here.
| | 01:22 | You can see that we have quite
an extensive list of materials.
| | 01:26 | Again, there is a pretty good chance
that the material I'm looking for is
| | 01:30 | already here on this list.
| | 01:31 | The challenge is how do I get a
material that's already predefined from this
| | 01:35 | list and bring it over to my Family environment.
| | 01:38 | Unfortunately, there's no Import/
Export button in this dialog anywhere;
| | 01:42 | that would be the ideal scenario.
| | 01:44 | Revit does offer a command here called
Transfer Project Standards which you can
| | 01:49 | also find on the Manage tab.
| | 01:50 | The trouble with Transfer Project
Standards is you can choose which category of
| | 01:56 | item you want to transfer, here is
Materials, but it doesn't offer me the list
| | 02:01 | of materials and allow me to pick and choose.
| | 02:03 | So it's either all the
materials or none of the materials.
| | 02:06 | So I go from having a very lean Family
with just the three or four materials
| | 02:11 | that it starts with to a Family that
suddenly has 200 materials when I only
| | 02:15 | needed two or three.
| | 02:17 | Transfer Project Standards
is not a great option either.
| | 02:20 | So let's talk about the solution.
| | 02:23 | We either have to create the
materials from scratch; that's no good.
| | 02:27 | Transfer them all over; that's no good.
| | 02:29 | What do we are going to do instead?
| | 02:30 | Copy and paste is usually the best
scenario, because you can select just what
| | 02:35 | you want from the one file, copy it,
and paste it over to the other file.
| | 02:39 | The trouble is there's no copy and paste here.
| | 02:42 | You're not going to get a copy
and paste in the Materials dialog.
| | 02:46 | So what you have to do is sort
of fake Revit out a little bit.
| | 02:49 | So we're going to go to the Home tab,
we're going to click on the dropdown of
| | 02:53 | the Component button, and you're going
to find a Model In-Place option here.
| | 03:00 | This is going to run the In-Place Family Editor.
| | 03:03 | So it's actually possible to create what
we call an In-Place Family and build it
| | 03:08 | directly in our project.
| | 03:09 | Now the category you choose here
is not important for this example.
| | 03:12 | So I'm just going to choose Generic Models.
| | 03:14 | The name is not important;
| | 03:16 | I'm just going to accept the
default name Generic Model 1.
| | 03:19 | The drawing will gray out and it puts
me in the Family Editor and you can see
| | 03:24 | kind of similar Family Editor tools
that we've been working with all along.
| | 03:27 | I want to create a simple Extrusion.
| | 03:30 | I'm just going to make a box and I'm
going to make it rather small sized, a foot
| | 03:34 | or a foot and-a-half, something like
that, and I'm going to finish the box.
| | 03:38 | Now if I zoom in, I have just got
this simple little piece of geometry.
| | 03:43 | Come over here to the Properties
palette at and just like we learned in the
| | 03:46 | previous movie, I can click over here
in By Category list, open up, choose a
| | 03:51 | material that I want, like perhaps here
under metals, I can choose Metal-Chrome,
| | 03:57 | select OK, and now I've
assigned a chrome material to this box.
| | 04:02 | Now this box is really just a carrier.
| | 04:05 | Think of it like an envelope. It's the UPS guy.
| | 04:07 | I'm going to select this thing, do
Ctrl+C; that puts it on my clipboard.
| | 04:13 | Then I'm going to switch back over
to my Family here and just anywhere do
| | 04:17 | Ctrl+V, and I'm pasting that
box into this other Family.
| | 04:22 | I'll finish the paste and now if I go
to Manage and I look at my Material list,
| | 04:27 | you're going to see that Metal-Chrome
has been brought over to this Family.
| | 04:32 | So it's a little strange as a
process, but it works. It's effective.
| | 04:36 | It's much better than doing Transfer
Project Standards and bringing in hundreds
| | 04:40 | of materials you don't need, and it also
is much nicer than having to create the
| | 04:44 | material completely over again from scratch.
| | 04:46 | A little bit of a work
around, yes, but it's effective.
| | 04:49 | The trick is though, really important, I
have to be in the Family Editor when I do it.
| | 04:55 | So that was why over here in the
sandbox we made sure we went into
| | 05:00 | In-Place Family first.
| | 05:01 | You can't just simply grab a wall or
some other object and copy and paste
| | 05:05 | that between the Family.
| | 05:07 | If you try and do that, Revit will complain.
| | 05:09 | If I try and grab an object here, do a
Ctrl+C, and switch over to my Family,
| | 05:19 | Revit will complain that you can't
copy between a Family and project.
| | 05:22 | So make sure you're copying from
Family to Family and it will work out
| | 05:26 | just fine.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating visibility parameters| 00:00 | An interesting property of all the
solid forms in the Family Editor is
| | 00:03 | the Visible Property.
| | 00:05 | This property appears as a check box on
the Properties palette and it makes the
| | 00:09 | selected element invisible.
| | 00:11 | Now, at first, you may wonder, why
would you bother to create a solid element
| | 00:14 | only to hide it by
unchecking the Visible Checkbox?
| | 00:17 | Well, in most cases, you wouldn't do this.
| | 00:19 | However, like all the properties on the
Properties palette, the Visible Property
| | 00:23 | can be controlled parametrically.
| | 00:26 | Now this opens up all
sorts of useful possibilities.
| | 00:28 | So in this movie, we'll explore a
really simple example of when you might want
| | 00:32 | to use this powerful feature, and we'll
see some other examples throughout the
| | 00:35 | training series as well.
| | 00:37 | So I'm back in my Table Family.
| | 00:40 | I've got a version of it called
Visibility, if you're following along with
| | 00:43 | the Exercise Files.
| | 00:45 | What I'm going to do is use the
Visibility Parameter to take this keystone that
| | 00:51 | we've been working with on top
of the table and make it optional.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to create some versions
of the Family that show the keystone and
| | 00:59 | other versions that don't.
| | 01:01 | So when you're flipping through your
product catalog, you can buy it with the
| | 01:04 | power option, or you can buy it without
the power option, and so we'll be able
| | 01:08 | to check and uncheck that option.
| | 01:09 | So that's our goal here.
| | 01:11 | So if we look over here on the
Properties palette, we're simply going to
| | 01:13 | control this check box right here
under Graphics > Visible, you can see there
| | 01:17 | is a check box right here.
| | 01:18 | We're going to control it parametrically.
| | 01:20 | If I just uncheck it, it's off all the time.
| | 01:23 | If I leave it checked, it's on all the time.
| | 01:25 | But if I use this button right over here
on the right-hand column, I can control
| | 01:31 | this object's visibility
with a Yes/No Parameter.
| | 01:36 | So a Yes/No Parameter just controls a check box.
| | 01:38 | If it's yes, it's checked.
| | 01:40 | If it's no, it's unchecked.
| | 01:42 | So let's click Add Parameter
and I'm going to give this a name.
| | 01:48 | It wants to group it under Other by default.
| | 01:51 | I tend to prefer to put that under Graphics.
| | 01:53 | It seems like a better place for it.
| | 01:55 | But you can really put it under any
one of these categories that you like
| | 01:59 | that makes sense to you.
| | 02:01 | I am going to control this as a Type
Parameter, because again, I'm assuming that
| | 02:05 | this is an option that I would
purchase out of the catalog that way;
| | 02:08 | I either want to buy it
with the keystone or without.
| | 02:10 | Click OK and click OK again.
| | 02:14 | This will gray out the Visible Parameter.
| | 02:16 | It will put an equals sign on the
button to let us know that, that's now being
| | 02:20 | controlled parametrically, and
otherwise, there's not really any other clues
| | 02:24 | that you'll have on screen that this
is being controlled parametrically.
| | 02:27 | Now, let's do one other thing.
| | 02:29 | Let's return to Family Types, and let's
add a new type to our Family that uses
| | 02:35 | the keystone setting.
| | 02:36 | Now, you'll see under Graphics,
here is our Show Keystone Parameter.
| | 02:40 | For all of my existing
types, it defaulted to On.
| | 02:44 | So I'm going to switch to the type that
I want to create, 48" x 72", click New,
| | 02:51 | and that basically copies the existing one.
| | 02:53 | I'll call this 48 x 72, no Keystone, and
click OK and then just simply uncheck the box.
| | 03:05 | When I click apply, what you'll see is over
here in the 3D, it just simply grays it out.
| | 03:11 | The Family Editor does not
actually make it fully invisible.
| | 03:15 | If it did, they're concerned that
you wouldn't actually understand that
| | 03:18 | the object was there.
| | 03:19 | So in the Family Editor,
it just simply grays it out.
| | 03:22 | That's the way it conveys that
the object is actually invisible.
| | 03:25 | To really see it truly become invisible,
you have to load it into the project.
| | 03:30 | Let's switch to another Family type here, Apply.
| | 03:33 | You see it comes back to full intensity.
| | 03:35 | So it is working here in the Family Editor.
| | 03:37 | Let's go ahead and OK this and load it
in the project to really test it out.
| | 03:42 | So here we have our
Sandbox project loaded again.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to simply place
a version of it right here.
| | 03:48 | Let me place another one right next to it.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to select the first one.
| | 03:56 | I open up the list.
| | 03:59 | You'll now see a no Keystone option is
available on the list, and already here
| | 04:06 | in the Plan View, you can see
the keystone has disappeared.
| | 04:13 | If I open up my 3D view of the
conference room, you can see that one of them
| | 04:17 | shows the keystone and one of them doesn't.
| | 04:20 | So this is a really simple example of
controlling the visibility of an object
| | 04:23 | with a Yes/No Parameter.
| | 04:25 | This is not the only place that
a Yes/No Parameter can be used;
| | 04:28 | we can use it for other things as well.
| | 04:30 | We'll see some other examples
later in the training series.
| | 04:33 | But the use of the Yes/No Parameter
control visibility is a powerful way to add
| | 04:37 | variation to your Family Types that
would otherwise only be possible by creating
| | 04:41 | duplicate and often redundant
copies of the entire Family.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding subcategories| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going
to talk about subcategories.
| | 00:03 | Subcategories are a feature that allow
you to have global control over various
| | 00:06 | settings across multiple Families.
| | 00:08 | Now they can be a very powerful feature;
| | 00:10 | they can also sometimes be a double-
edged sword if they're not used correctly.
| | 00:13 | So working here in a simple file, let's
take a look at the Subcategory feature.
| | 00:17 | In this file, I have just some
doors from the out-of-the-box content;
| | 00:22 | double door and a single door
and a few other examples here.
| | 00:25 | Each of these doors has some common
components, they all have panels, they
| | 00:30 | all have door swings;
| | 00:31 | and if we zoom in a little bit on these
doors what you notice is that each one
| | 00:36 | has a panel and a door swing and the panel in
each case is slightly darker than the swing is;
| | 00:42 | even though this is a Family called
Double-Flush, this one is a Family called
| | 00:47 | Double-Uneven, and this one over
here is a Family called Single-Flush.
| | 00:52 | Now, each of these Families uses the
subcategory feature to control those
| | 00:57 | internal subcomponents.
| | 00:59 | The best way I can show you this is to
take a look at the Visibility Graphics dialog.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to type V+G. That's going
to open up Visibility Graphics, and we
| | 01:07 | see a list of all the
built-in categories in Revit.
| | 01:09 | Now, next to each category, there is a
little plus sign and if I expand that, we
| | 01:14 | see any Subcategories
that belong to that category.
| | 01:18 | The list of subcategories that we see
for doors is a pretty logical list that's
| | 01:23 | pretty self-explanatory.
| | 01:25 | Most doors have an elevation swing.
| | 01:27 | Most doors have some sort of a Frame, or
possibly some Glass, or a panel, or a Plan Swing.
| | 01:33 | What you see is that each of these
items has been given a subcategory and then
| | 01:37 | furthermore, those subcategories
have been assigned various settings like
| | 01:42 | projection line and cut line and
so on, and we can even turn those
| | 01:46 | subcategories on and off.
| | 01:48 | So the easiest way I can illustrate to
you the benefit of the subcategory is to
| | 01:52 | simply turn off the Plan Swing, click OK,
and then back here in the drawing, we
| | 01:58 | notice that all the swings have turned
off even though they're scattered across
| | 02:02 | several different Families.
| | 02:04 | If we didn't use the Subcategory
feature, we would have to build in some sort
| | 02:07 | of a visibility parameter into each
separate Family and then control each
| | 02:12 | Family independently.
| | 02:13 | The Subcategory gives us the global
control to do it across all of them except
| | 02:17 | for this guy over here;
| | 02:19 | this one is throwing us a
little bit of a curve ball.
| | 02:21 | We've got this dashed line over here which
I would assume would have been Plan Swing.
| | 02:26 | Let's take a look;
| | 02:26 | V+G. It turns out that, that one has been
assigned to the Elevation Swing subcategory.
| | 02:32 | Now that seems a little odd to me in
a plan drawing, and therein lies the
| | 02:37 | challenge that we have with subcategories.
| | 02:40 | Despite everyone's best intentions
to make things more flexible, more
| | 02:45 | universal, and more global, if they're not
planned out very carefully, you can get into problems.
| | 02:49 | You can have redundant subcategories,
you can have categories that aren't named
| | 02:53 | very well, and so this gets into the
realm of CAD standards and BIM standards
| | 02:57 | and being very careful about the
way that we assign these things.
| | 03:01 | It's even more acute when you look at
some of the categories that aren't quite
| | 03:05 | so obvious or aren't quite so easy to define.
| | 03:10 | Doors are pretty easy to define
but what about Specialty Equipment?
| | 03:14 | Well, if we looked at MasterSpec we
would find that Specialty Equipment includes
| | 03:18 | a whole host of things;
| | 03:20 | kitchen equipment, ladders, fire
extinguishers, protective coverings, you name
| | 03:24 | it, all falls under Specialty Equipment.
| | 03:27 | The challenge we have is if
manufacturers of each of these kinds of items create
| | 03:32 | their own subcategories for each of
their types of equipment, we could end up
| | 03:37 | with a very long list.
| | 03:39 | Furthermore, if they don't agree on
what to call those things, we could end
| | 03:43 | up with not only a long list, but we
could end up with a long list with a lot
| | 03:46 | of inconsistencies.
| | 03:48 | So for example, if I were a
manufacturer and I wanted to create such a
| | 03:52 | subcategory, how would I do it?
| | 03:54 | Well, I can access the Object Styles
dialog either from the Manage Tab on
| | 03:58 | the Ribbon or directly right here from V/G,
that will give me the same list of categories.
| | 04:03 | It looks a little different.
| | 04:06 | Scroll down, here is Specialty Equipment.
| | 04:10 | I select it, and then I click the
New Subcategory button over here.
| | 04:14 | Give my New Subcategory a name.
| | 04:17 | For example, earlier in the training
series we began creating our Awning Family
| | 04:22 | which we're going to look
at further in later chapters.
| | 04:25 | That would be under
Protective Covers in the MasterSpec.
| | 04:30 | So if I'm the manufacturer for that
piece of equipment, I might want to
| | 04:33 | create that subcategory.
| | 04:35 | I just simply click OK there,
and now I have that subcategory.
| | 04:39 | I could assign a Line Weight to it, a Color,
a Line Pattern, even a default Material.
| | 04:43 | So these are all the default
settings for that subcategory.
| | 04:46 | When I click OK, you'll now see it
listed here in the V/G dialog for each
| | 04:51 | view, and then it would be up to me to
assign the components in the Families
| | 04:56 | to that subcategory.
| | 04:58 | So when managed carefully, subcategories
can offer a level of control not easily
| | 05:02 | attained through other methods.
| | 05:04 | But do however exercise caution and
restraint when creating and maintaining them
| | 05:08 | and just talk it over with your team and
make sure that you're following a clear
| | 05:11 | and concise and consistent CAD/BIM standard.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. A Family in a FamilyUnderstanding nested families| 00:00 | Family content can be very
simple, or it can be very complex.
| | 00:04 | As the complexity grows it's a good
idea to consider using nested Families.
| | 00:09 | A Nested Family is simply a Family
that is inserted into another Family.
| | 00:13 | In this movie, we'll explore the process
and some of the advantages of using Nesting.
| | 00:18 | Now I have a blank screen here, we're
going to create a brand-new file from scratch.
| | 00:23 | So I'm going to go to Application
menu, go to New and choose Family.
| | 00:27 | I'm going to stick with furniture, so
I'm going to choose the Furniture template
| | 00:31 | like we've done in the past; open that up.
| | 00:33 | Do W+T for Window Tile, Z+A for
Zoom All, and we see our familiar two
| | 00:40 | Reference Planes and level.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to change the scale of few
of these views here to make things a
| | 00:47 | little bit more legible.
| | 00:48 | That will increase the size of the
annotation, and I'm going to save the file
| | 00:54 | right away, Save As > Family, and
I'll call this Table with Chairs, and go
| | 01:03 | ahead and Save that.
| | 01:05 | So the first thing I want to do is take
the table that we've been working on in
| | 01:08 | the previous chapters and I want to
bring it into this file as a component.
| | 01:13 | So on my Home tab there is a Component button;
| | 01:16 | this is the same Component button
we use in the project environment.
| | 01:19 | You can use the keyboard
shortcut C+M or just click the button.
| | 01:23 | Revit will alert me that I don't have
any Component Families currently loaded
| | 01:28 | and that's because we started from
scratch in a new Family here, and it will
| | 01:31 | offer to load one now, so I'm going to
say Yes, and browse out to my Exercise
| | 01:36 | Files, Chapter06 folder and I'm going to
select the Table Family and click Open.
| | 01:43 | So I'm going to take the Table and I'm
just going to kind of place it off to the
| | 01:47 | side for a moment here, and I'll cancel
out of there and just adjust my 3D view
| | 01:53 | here using the View Cube, get myself a
better look, turn on the Shading, and
| | 02:00 | maybe change the orientation just slightly.
| | 02:03 | Now I put it off to the side because I
want to show you one of the benefits of
| | 02:07 | using a Nested Family.
| | 02:09 | If all of the parts and pieces were
separate, the table slab, and the legs, and
| | 02:13 | the keystone, and I tried to move it
and position it on screen, I might leave
| | 02:18 | some of the parts behind, or I might
inadvertently flex one of the dimensions
| | 02:22 | and cause an error message, but when
it's a separate component like this, you
| | 02:27 | can just simply move it around as an object.
| | 02:29 | In fact, I can use the Align tool, pick
up my Reference Plane here in the Center
| | 02:33 | as my alignment point, and then notice
that I can highlight the Reference Planes
| | 02:38 | inside the table and I can even lock
that, and then I can do it again in this
| | 02:42 | direction and to the
center this way and lock that.
| | 02:46 | You see the entire table moves as a
unit and centers itself on those Reference
| | 02:52 | Planes that we have there.
| | 02:53 | So that's one of the
advantages of using the Nested Family.
| | 02:56 | And then the other is that now I can
add additional components to make a more
| | 03:01 | complete object, and so in this case
I'm going to bring in some chairs now to
| | 03:05 | start placing around my table.
| | 03:06 | I'm going to go back to the Home tab,
go back to the Component button, now this
| | 03:11 | time it won't prompt me to load a
Family because there is one loaded, but of
| | 03:15 | course the only one I have loaded is
the Table, so I'm going to want to go out
| | 03:19 | to the Library to find a chair.
| | 03:21 | So I'm going to click Load Family;
| | 03:23 | that takes me to the Imperial Library.
| | 03:25 | I'll go into the Furniture folder,
and there are several chairs here.
| | 03:29 | There's a Stacking chair and a
chair with arms, an Executive Chair.
| | 03:33 | I'm going to use this Breuer chair
right here, Chair Breuer, click Open, and
| | 03:37 | I'm just going to place it sort of right
about there, relative to where I want it to sit.
| | 03:43 | Tap the Spacebar to rotate it and
I'm going to place another one kind of
| | 03:48 | centered on the Reference Plane,
but I'll leave it offset away from the
| | 03:51 | table just a little bit.
| | 03:52 | I'm going to cancel out of
there and let me zoom in slightly.
| | 03:56 | Now what I want to happen is I want
to kind of position this chair and kind
| | 04:01 | of lock it in, so I want to take this
chair here and I want to move it maybe
| | 04:06 | in just a little bit.
| | 04:08 | I like that position relative
to the end of the table there.
| | 04:12 | So I want to fix that position and I
can do that by using some dimensions, just
| | 04:17 | like we did when we were
building the table itself.
| | 04:20 | I want a dimension off the end of the
table and I can locate the center of the
| | 04:26 | chair by just simply highlighting over
it,and I find that Reference Plane right
| | 04:31 | there in the center and it's currently
sitting at 1' - 6" away and I'm looking
| | 04:36 | at the spacing to the leg and that
looks like a pretty good spacing.
| | 04:39 | So I'm going to go ahead and accept that.
| | 04:41 | But what I'm going to do here is just
close the little padlock to lock that in.
| | 04:46 | So now the way this works is if I
select this table and I were to open up the
| | 04:51 | list here and choose a different size,
like maybe this 84 inch long size,
| | 04:55 | you'll notice that the chair actually
moves to maintain that 1 foot six offset
| | 05:00 | from the end of the table.
| | 05:02 | It didn't maintain in this direction,
so I'm going to reset that back to the
| | 05:06 | 72 inch size where I liked how far
under the table it was placed, and in order
| | 05:12 | to maintain that position I need to add
another dimension in that direction as well.
| | 05:17 | So I'm going to go off the face of the
table again, locate the centerline of the
| | 05:20 | chair, place it over here and again lock it.
| | 05:24 | Now let's flex one more time.
| | 05:26 | We'll select the table, go to the 84
inch size, you notice that it's moving.
| | 05:32 | I even have a really long size here,
a 48"x120" and you'll notice that it's
| | 05:38 | still maintaining the 1 foot 6 and the 3
feet regardless of which size I choose.
| | 05:43 | So I've got that one positioned pretty
well, and I can repeat the same on the
| | 05:47 | chair here at the end.
| | 05:48 | So I'll just kind of move that out a little bit.
| | 05:53 | It's currently associated with this
Reference Plane but it's not locked, so let
| | 05:57 | me go ahead and lock that
and then associate it here.
| | 06:04 | Before I lock it I want to adjust that
slightly, maybe pull it out to about four
| | 06:11 | inches, and then I'll lock it.
| | 06:14 | And let's test it out one more time,
go back to the 84 inch size and you see
| | 06:19 | both tables are flexing in the correct location.
| | 06:23 | Nesting Families is easy, simply load
the Component Families into the host
| | 06:26 | Family in the same way
that you would in a project.
| | 06:29 | You can move and copy them around as needed.
| | 06:31 | When you select or move or assign
Parameters to them they apply to the entire
| | 06:34 | selected nested Family rather than the
separate individual components within the Family.
| | 06:38 | The main goal of using nested Families
is to break apart a more complex piece of
| | 06:43 | content into logical sub-components.
| | 06:46 | Several common Family strategies rely
on nesting and we'll see several examples
| | 06:50 | in the next few movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Building parametric arrays| 00:00 | Now that we have some nested
Families, what can we do with them?
| | 00:03 | Well, just about anything we
can do with other geometry.
| | 00:06 | In the previous movie we nested a
chair and a table into our Family that we
| | 00:09 | see here on screen.
| | 00:10 | The next logical thing to do would be to
copy and array those chairs around the table.
| | 00:16 | In this movie, we'll make an array of
chairs along the length of the table, and
| | 00:19 | then we'll make the array parametric
so that it can adjust with the length of
| | 00:22 | the table as we flex it.
| | 00:24 | If you like you can continue with the
file, if you're following, along that
| | 00:27 | you've used in the last movie;
| | 00:29 | otherwise, I've provided a file here
that you can open up and let's go ahead
| | 00:32 | and get started here.
| | 00:34 | So we have this chair here at the end
and I'm going to actually maximize up my
| | 00:39 | Plan view here, just so we can
see things a little bit better.
| | 00:43 | We can always go back to the multi-view later.
| | 00:46 | And I'm going to take my table and go
to the longest size that I have, the
| | 00:52 | 120-inch long size to give myself a
little bit more room to work here.
| | 00:56 | We're going to take this chair and array
it along the length of this table here.
| | 00:59 | So I'm going to select the chair and
over here in the Modify tab, I'm going to
| | 01:04 | go to Array command.
| | 01:05 | Now if you've used the Array command
before in the Project Environment, it's
| | 01:08 | exactly the same here in the Family Editor.
| | 01:11 | It has this Group And Associate feature.
| | 01:14 | So we can either do a Linear or a Radial array.
| | 01:17 | We're going to do Linear in this
case and it has this Group And Associate
| | 01:20 | feature and that will actually place
the arrayed elements in a group and then
| | 01:26 | array the group and keep them connected
and associated to one another, and this
| | 01:30 | is what is going to allow
us to make it Parametric.
| | 01:33 | So we definitely want to
have that feature turned on.
| | 01:36 | In my experience when you're trying to
set up a Parametric array it's best to
| | 01:40 | start with a quantity of 2 here.
| | 01:42 | Don't change the quantity yet.
| | 01:43 | We'll figure out how many chairs we want later.
| | 01:46 | So we're going to start with 2
and I like to move to the last item.
| | 01:51 | The reason is I want you to think of
this as sort of laying out bookends.
| | 01:54 | So imagine this is the bookshelf and
we're going to put the two bookends and
| | 01:57 | that's going to establish how much space
we have to work with and then the array
| | 02:01 | will fill in, in between.
| | 02:03 | Okay, so we're going to choose the Last
item here and I'm going to pick my start
| | 02:07 | point of the array, really anywhere on
the existing chair, and the endpoint a
| | 02:11 | little counterintuitively I'm
going to stop just randomly right here.
| | 02:15 | Now the reason I say counterintuitively
is because you probably were expecting
| | 02:19 | that we should array all the way
over to 1 foot 6 off the other end.
| | 02:23 | We are going to do that, but again I want
to establish that relationship very clearly.
| | 02:28 | So I'm going to do that as a
second step after I create the array.
| | 02:33 | So at this point I have the array
and we can test it easily enough by
| | 02:38 | changing the quantity.
| | 02:39 | You can see that it's three chairs,
and then we'll go back to two chairs.
| | 02:43 | So that's working correctly,
but it's not Parametric.
| | 02:46 | If I were to select this table, adjust
the length, you'll see this chair stays put.
| | 02:51 | This one is moving, but this one
stays put right there where it was, and it
| | 02:57 | doesn't respond to the size or
location of the table at all.
| | 03:00 | So let's go back to our 120 size
and we want to address that now.
| | 03:05 | We want to kind of lock this thing down.
| | 03:06 | Now the easiest way to do that is
the same way that we did it over here.
| | 03:09 | So we'll come over here and
we're going to take a dimension.
| | 03:11 | We're going to dimension off the end of
the table, to the center of the chair,
| | 03:16 | and I'll line it up with the other
guy just to keep things nice and neat.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to select this item here at
the end, click on Activate Dimensions.
| | 03:25 | When I do that, that will
activate that dimension I just created.
| | 03:28 | We can make that value 1 foot 6.
| | 03:32 | That'll move that bookend over there to
the other side where it needs to be, and
| | 03:36 | then I'll lock that.
| | 03:37 | Now I also have to lock it in
the other direction as well.
| | 03:40 | So we'll go from here to the center and
it kind of gets a little messy here, so
| | 03:45 | let me move it over here.
| | 03:47 | I actually prefer to have this a
little neater, so let me pull that one over
| | 03:52 | there and pull this one over here.
| | 03:56 | Just a little fussy thing I like to do.
| | 03:58 | Okay, let's test it out.
| | 04:00 | So let's select this guy.
| | 04:04 | There, it seems to be working.
| | 04:05 | Let's try another size;
| | 04:08 | it seems to be working.
| | 04:09 | So we've locked down our bookends now.
| | 04:11 | We've got those associated the way we want,
but of course, we only have two chairs.
| | 04:15 | So if we had a table this long you'd
probably expect to get probably another two
| | 04:19 | or three chairs in there.
| | 04:20 | So what we need to do now is create a
way to parametrically control this value
| | 04:27 | right here, because our end user is
not going to have any way to be able to
| | 04:30 | click in there like we are
doing and change that number.
| | 04:33 | You can only do this in the Family Editor.
| | 04:34 | You see this line that appears here,
it's sometimes a little tricky to find it.
| | 04:38 | Sometimes it will flicker in and out.
| | 04:41 | If you just move your mouse in the
general vicinity of the number, you'll find
| | 04:44 | it and that's actually a dimension,
and it calls it the array, but it's
| | 04:48 | actually a dimension.
| | 04:49 | And if you look up here on the Options
Bar it's got the Label feature, same as
| | 04:54 | we saw for other
dimensions in the Family Editor.
| | 04:57 | So we just open this up, we add a Parameter.
| | 05:01 | We're going to call this Chair Quantity.
| | 05:05 | You'll notice here that the Type of
Parameter is an Integer Parameter.
| | 05:09 | So in order for it to be used as an
Array Parameter it has to be a whole number.
| | 05:14 | So Revit understands that and it
automatically sets the Type of Parameter as
| | 05:18 | an Integer Parameter.
| | 05:19 | It's grouping it under Other, but to
me the quantity of chairs seems sort of
| | 05:24 | like a graphical thing.
| | 05:25 | We're establishing the
graphics, how many chairs we have.
| | 05:28 | It might also be thought of as a constraint.
| | 05:30 | So it's really up to you.
| | 05:31 | You could put it under Constraints, you
could even make an argument for putting
| | 05:34 | it under Construction I suppose,
although I think they intended Construction for
| | 05:38 | like actual contractor, building
construction kind of thing, but you could argue
| | 05:42 | this is the construction of the table.
| | 05:43 | The point is that the grouping
here is really your preference.
| | 05:47 | I like it under Graphics, but if you
want to put it under another category,
| | 05:50 | that's perfectly fine.
| | 05:51 | I'm going to click OK here and now you'll
see the label appears in front of the number.
| | 05:56 | So the quantity of chairs is now set to 2.
| | 05:58 | So let's go to Family Types.
| | 06:00 | We kind of move this out of the way a little
so we can see, and there's our quantity now.
| | 06:04 | It's got a little spinner on it that we
can actually use to adjust the Quantity.
| | 06:08 | Now be careful, an array will
fail if you go fewer than two.
| | 06:12 | We're going to leave it at 2 or more.
| | 06:13 | Let's try 4 here, click Apply;
| | 06:16 | it seems to be working.
| | 06:17 | Let's increase it to 5. Apply again.
| | 06:19 | We can even fit 5.
| | 06:21 | I think at 6 or 7, we would start to
have a little bit of a problem there.
| | 06:25 | So we want to choose a logical number.
| | 06:27 | I'm going to try 5 and there we have it.
| | 06:30 | Let's click OK on that;
| | 06:32 | that takes care of that.
| | 06:32 | So now we have our Parametric array.
| | 06:35 | Now if I select this table and I
flex it, well, then 5 doesn't work so
| | 06:40 | great anymore, right.
| | 06:41 | So we still have more work to do.
| | 06:43 | So in the next movie, we're going to
talk about actually creating a little bit
| | 06:48 | more smarts around this to kind of
control the quantity of chairs as a
| | 06:53 | consequence of the overall size of the table.
| | 06:57 | But reiterating what we've done here, a
Parametric Array is simply an array just
| | 07:02 | like you would create in the Project
Environment, with the main difference being
| | 07:06 | that you select one of the arrayed items
and you can select the dimension string
| | 07:11 | that's created and actually associate
it with a Family parameter to control the
| | 07:15 | quantity of arrayed items.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a family type parameter| 00:00 | In the last movie we set up the
Parametric array of chairs along the bottom edge
| | 00:04 | of the table here and we flexed it and
found that the quantity of chairs needed
| | 00:10 | to have some sort of relationship
to the overall size of the table.
| | 00:14 | In this movie we are going to set up a
Family type Parameter which is going to
| | 00:17 | give us that ability.
| | 00:18 | So a Family type Parameter allows us to swap out
the table that we're using in a parametric way.
| | 00:23 | So our end user will be able to
actually select the final parent Family, which
| | 00:29 | includes both the table and chairs,
but choose a different table within that
| | 00:33 | Family from the Parameter we give them.
| | 00:35 | And then we're going to take the array
that we set up in the last movie and make
| | 00:38 | it respond to that change.
| | 00:40 | Now if you're following along with me,
I've already mirrored the end chair.
| | 00:44 | So you might want to go ahead and do
that if you're using your file, otherwise
| | 00:47 | you can open up the file Family Types
Parameters, which I've provided here.
| | 00:52 | So the first thing I want to do is take
the array that we have along the bottom
| | 00:56 | here and I want to mirror it.
| | 00:57 | I didn't do that one ahead of time,
because I wanted to make sure that you grab
| | 01:01 | everything correctly here.
| | 01:03 | So I'm not getting the Reference
Plane here but I do want to get all of the
| | 01:07 | chairs, all of the dimensions and the
array dimension here, so I want to make
| | 01:12 | sure you're selecting all the parts
before we mirror it over to the other side,
| | 01:16 | then we can simply mirror it from here,
over to there, and let's just do a quick
| | 01:21 | flex, just to make sure that
everything is behaving the way it should.
| | 01:25 | So I'll just choose one of my other
sizes here and you can see that everything
| | 01:28 | is adjusting, and then I'll go back to my 120.
| | 01:32 | Now what we want to do is talk about
the Family Types Parameter, and the Family
| | 01:37 | Types Parameter as I said, is going to
allow us to take this table and swap out
| | 01:41 | parametrically, and then we can create
types within this parent Family that will
| | 01:46 | control the quantity of chairs for us.
| | 01:48 | There are two ways we could set
up the Family Types Parameter.
| | 01:51 | We can actually do it in the Family
Types dialog using the Add Parameter button.
| | 01:56 | Now if we do it this way, it's
actually a little bit more roundabout.
| | 01:59 | We have to add the Parameter, we come
over to the Type of Parameter, we open the
| | 02:04 | list and we've looked
several of these types already.
| | 02:06 | We've seen Text, we saw Integer in
the last movie with the array, and we've
| | 02:10 | certainly done Length
quite a bit. We did Material.
| | 02:14 | Here is a Family Type Parameter
down at the bottom of the list.
| | 02:17 | Now when you choose this, what this
Parameter is doing is it's saying that you
| | 02:21 | want to create a reference to the
Families that you have built into this file
| | 02:26 | and it will say, which
category are you interested in?
| | 02:29 | And it will give you the list of categories.
| | 02:31 | And so when I scroll through the list
here, I'm going to find the Furniture
| | 02:34 | category and click OK and so
it will create a Family type:
| | 02:39 | Furniture Parameter.
| | 02:41 | So what this means is that this
Parameter will be associated with other kinds of
| | 02:46 | furniture that are already in this file.
| | 02:48 | Now you can group this wherever you want;
| | 02:50 | I'm going to put it under Graphics, but
you can put it in any category you want.
| | 02:54 | I'll call this Table Kind.
| | 02:57 | Now I've set it up here kind of the long way.
| | 02:59 | I'm going to click OK and I'm going
to click OK again, to get out of there.
| | 03:04 | Let me show you the alternative way,
which is actually a little bit easier, and
| | 03:07 | kind of consistent with the ways
we've created other Parameters.
| | 03:10 | Like if you wanted to create a Dimension
Parameter, you started by selecting the
| | 03:13 | Dimension, going up to the Label
dropdown and choosing Add Parameter.
| | 03:18 | We can do the same thing
with the Family Types Parameter.
| | 03:21 | You start by selecting a nested
Family component like this table, and then
| | 03:25 | you'll notice it also has a label
feature and you open up the dropdown and
| | 03:30 | there is Add Parameter.
| | 03:31 | Now Table Kind is already here because
I just set it up but if I went directly
| | 03:35 | to add Parameter, you see that it
would've chosen Family type: Furniture for me.
| | 03:41 | Now I wanted to show it to you the
long way first, just so you could kind of
| | 03:44 | appreciate where this short
way is a little bit nicer.
| | 03:47 | So if you start by selecting the
object that you want to swap, this table in
| | 03:51 | this case, then Revit will set up the
Parameter for you in the correct way.
| | 03:55 | Let me cancel here, go to Label and
choose the one I've already set up, because
| | 03:59 | it's already there, and notice that
that instantly flexed the table, and the
| | 04:03 | reason for that is, if I go to back to
Family Types, the Family Type Parameter
| | 04:07 | just defaulted to the first item on the list.
| | 04:10 | So it went to the 48 x 72 size table.
| | 04:13 | Now of course with the 48 x 72 size
table, and let's make this a little larger
| | 04:18 | here and adjust these columns so that we can
read this a little better, there we go, alright.
| | 04:23 | So with that size table a quantity
of five chairs just doesn't work.
| | 04:27 | So let's drop the quantity down, let's
try maybe 3, that's a little close quarters.
| | 04:32 | I can imagine feeling a little bit
uncomfortable sitting to the guy next to me.
| | 04:36 | So let's dropdown maybe to 2 and try that.
| | 04:39 | There, everybody has got plenty of room
now and let's make a Family Type out of that.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to call this 48" x 72"(2 Chairs).
| | 04:53 | So, that will appear here as a Family Type.
| | 04:54 | Now we did Family Types in the
previous chapter, so feel free to go back and
| | 04:58 | review that a little if you need to.
| | 05:00 | Now, the next size table that we
have in the list is our 40" x 84".
| | 05:04 | So I'm going to choose that one next,
create a New Family Type, and I think 3
| | 05:13 | chairs will probably work in an 84" length.
| | 05:16 | So let's try that and let's Apply it.
| | 05:19 | So you can see that the tables swapped,
everything adjusted, the chairs all
| | 05:24 | stayed positioned relative to the
table, the two Arrays are updated and we
| | 05:27 | now have that size.
| | 05:29 | You could do every size
you have in the list here.
| | 05:32 | One little word of caution:
| | 05:33 | you'll notice that the Chair-
Breuer is also on the list.
| | 05:36 | Unfortunately, the Family Type
Parameter in this case is Furniture and there's
| | 05:40 | no way to tell it that we're only
interested in tables and not chairs.
| | 05:43 | So hopefully the end user will be a
little but smart about this and won't choose
| | 05:48 | a Breuer chair in the middle there;
| | 05:49 | you'd end up with a chair sitting here in the
middle and all these other chairs around it.
| | 05:54 | Probably a little silly, but maybe
they will get a laugh out of it, and they
| | 05:57 | will realize that they probably
shouldn't have done it that way.
| | 05:59 | I'm going to just do one more
here, and I will do the 120" size.
| | 06:04 | Let's create New again.
| | 06:05 | 48" X 120" with ...
| | 06:10 | I think we can fit 5 chairs on that length.
| | 06:13 | So we'll do 5 chairs, increase the Size,
click Apply, and if you want to feel
| | 06:19 | free to add the remaining 2, but
hopefully you can see there that that does add
| | 06:25 | the level of flexibility
that we were looking for.
| | 06:28 | So using a Family Types Parameter
gives us a parametric way to control which
| | 06:33 | nested Family we have loaded in to
our overall parent Family, and therefore
| | 06:37 | allows us to set up types, in this case,
it allowed us to control very logically
| | 06:42 | the quantity of chairs we
have surrounding the table.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding shared families| 00:00 | In this chapter we've
focused on Nested Families.
| | 00:02 | An important aspect of Nested
Families is how they behave in the project.
| | 00:06 | The Shared feature determines
if the Nested Families will be
| | 00:09 | separately countable and
| | 00:11 | selectable in the project environment,
and that will be the subject of this movie.
| | 00:15 | I've opened up a file called
Office Building that I've provided with
| | 00:18 | the Exercise Files.
| | 00:20 | You can feel free to open
that file and follow along,
| | 00:22 | [00:00:22.9 5]
| | 00:22 | and I've renamed our conference table to a
more final name, so I have given it a name here,
| | 00:28 | you can see on this Furniture
Schedule, RFE Conf Table with Chairs
| | 00:32 | (RFC Conf Table w Chairs) and I
have created Furniture Schedule,
| | 00:34 | and it's currently showing us all the
quantities of furniture that we have
| | 00:37 | here in the project.
| | 00:39 | Down here in this conference room I
have our table inserted right here.
| | 00:44 | So there is our furniture
conference table with chairs,
| | 00:47 | and I have the 48" x 120" size
with the five chairs on each side.
| | 00:51 | So there's five chairs on this side,
five chairs on this side, two in the ends,
| | 00:54 | and so you can see here my total
quantity is 12 on the first floor.
| | 00:58 | Now if I select this object, it selects
as an entire unit, and I can move it around
| | 01:03 | and that's the advantage of the Nested
Families is it makes it convenient for me to
| | 01:08 | move this object around and to layout my
space, but the schedule starts to show me that
| | 01:15 | I probably also want to know that
even though I have this one thing,
| | 01:18 | I want to know how many chairs
are actually contained in there,
| | 01:22 | and I want to be able to order
those chair separately and so on,
| | 01:25 | and you could see that each of those chairs
is actually listing here with a count of 12
| | 01:29 | and when I select that and line out
them in the schedule, they all highlight.
| | 01:33 | Furthermore, if I come back here to the
drawing and I put my mouse over that general area
| | 01:38 | and press the Tab key, I can actually
reach into that Family and highlight,
| | 01:43 | and even select an individual chair.
| | 01:46 | Now I wouldn't be able to actually move
that chair, or change it, or modify it,
| | 01:50 | because it is still Nested within that
Family but I am able to reach in here and
| | 01:55 | see that Revit is seeing
it as an independent item.
| | 01:58 | That's being done by the Shared feature.
| | 02:01 | So this chair, if you recall, we
didn't create, we actually brought it in
| | 02:06 | from the out-of-the-box library, and the
Shared feature was already turned on in there.
| | 02:11 | Now, if put my mouse over the table and
Tab, I'm going to get an audible warning
| | 02:16 | from Revit saying, basically
there's nothing else there;
| | 02:19 | I've only got the one item, so it's not
going to tab in and find anything else.
| | 02:24 | So when we created this table, we
did not enable the Shared feature.
| | 02:29 | So let me show you.
| | 02:31 | I'm going to choose Edit Family
right here, and that will open up my
| | 02:35 | conference table with chairs,
| | 02:37 | and then this is our conference
table that we created together,
| | 02:41 | and again, I just renamed it to RFE Cofn Table.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to select it and do Edit Family
again, and now I'm actually in that file.
| | 02:49 | Right here is the individual extrusion,
here are the legs, here is our keystone.
| | 02:54 | Up here on the Properties panel is a
button called Family Category and Parameters,
| | 03:00 | and if I click on that when I'm in the Family
Editor, I can do a couple of things in here.
| | 03:04 | Now the first thing I see is this
is where the category of the Family
| | 03:07 | is actually listed.
| | 03:08 | Remember that this was furniture,
and so we can see that listed here.
| | 03:12 | Down here at the bottom are several overall
Parameters that apply to the Family as a whole,
| | 03:18 | and one of them is the Shared
feature, and I'm going to check that box,
| | 03:22 | click OK, Reload this into the
project, and I'm going to load it into the
| | 03:26 | Conference table first,
| | 03:28 | to update that and Revit
will give me this message,
| | 03:32 | which is telling me that
this Family already exists,
| | 03:36 | and basically it needs to
overwrite the one that's already here.
| | 03:39 | Now there are two ways I
can do that overwriting.
| | 03:41 | I can simply overwrite the
geometry, overwrite existing version,
| | 03:46 | and this would be important if in the
Host file you had made changes to the types
| | 03:52 | that you don't want to get
overwritten, you would choose just this.
| | 03:56 | The Shared feature would come across,
any geometric changes would come across,
| | 04:01 | but if you change the size of one of the
types or any of the specific Parameters of
| | 04:05 | one of the types that would not come across.
| | 04:07 | If you however, wanted to not only
overwrite the geometry, but all of the
| | 04:13 | type settings as well,
| | 04:14 | then you would choose this one.
| | 04:16 | So in other words, a way to think of this
is, this is overwriting just the Family,
| | 04:19 | this is overwriting the Family and the types.
| | 04:22 | Now in this case, I didn't change
anything about the types, it doesn't really
| | 04:24 | matter which one I choose.
| | 04:26 | I'll chose overwrite the existing
version, and then I'm going to Load into
| | 04:29 | Project one more time
| | 04:31 | and send it to the Office Building this time,
and then here I'll get a similar message.
| | 04:36 | I'll overwrite it again and over here in
the background, I don't know if you could see,
| | 04:41 | but the quantity just increased on
my schedule, and I now have a separate
| | 04:47 | line item over here,
| | 04:49 | RFE Conf Table 48"X120" and if I click on
that, it selects just the conference table.
| | 04:55 | Okay, this one includes the
chairs, here are the Breuer chairs,
| | 04:59 | but we see a slight problem here now,
which is that we've got 12 Breuer chairs,
| | 05:04 | we've got 1 table, but then we've
also got this now what's seems like
| | 05:08 | a redundant entry of the overall
parent Family which contains the two sets
| | 05:13 | of Nested Families.
| | 05:14 | So it actually may be better to not
enable the Shared feature for our table,
| | 05:19 | what I mainly wanted to do is to
actually show you how you would turn it on if
| | 05:24 | you needed to do that.
| | 05:25 | So we could certainly filter the
schedule, and if you'd rather have
| | 05:28 | the individual items
| | 05:29 | listed without the parent item, then you
could devise a filter on the schedule and
| | 05:34 | eliminate this item, and therefore,
get the correct quantity again.
| | 05:37 | But you would really have to think
that through and that becomes a matter of
| | 05:40 | one of your CAD's standards decisions.
| | 05:42 | Now you don't always have to
turn on Shared Parameters then.
| | 05:45 | So I just sort of alluded to that in this
example, but there may be other situations.
| | 05:50 | For example, over here I have a
completed version of the canopy design that
| | 05:56 | we're going to create later in the course.
| | 05:58 | We're going to build this thing in
much the same way that we have built
| | 06:02 | the table and chairs.
| | 06:03 | It's going to be a collection of
Nested components and parts and so forth,
| | 06:06 | but I'm probably only interested in
whether or not I have the awning and how
| | 06:10 | many awnings I have.
| | 06:11 | In other words these dash lines here
represent the bracket supports that are
| | 06:15 | actually holding up the Family
and I don't necessarily need to see
| | 06:19 | those independently.
| | 06:20 | So if I tab here, you can see that I
can't actually tab in and select those
| | 06:24 | individual brackets,
| | 06:25 | and that may be okay, because all I'm
interested in is just do I have an awning
| | 06:29 | or not have an awning.
| | 06:30 | So the primary purpose and benefit of the
Shared feature is to enable the Nested Families
| | 06:35 | to be separately selectable and countable.
| | 06:37 | So if the Nested Families are an item that you
want to have direct access to in the project,
| | 06:43 | you want to be able to
independently select them and have them list as
| | 06:45 | a separate line item
| | 06:46 | in your schedule, then turning on the
Shared feature is what you want to do there.
| | 06:51 | If you have a situation
where you don't need that,
| | 06:54 | then it may be best to actually
leave the Shared feature turned off.
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| Creating a profile family| 00:00 | In an earlier chapter we explored the
five geometric forms that we can create
| | 00:04 | in the Family Editor.
| | 00:05 | All five forms use at least one
sketch to determine their shape.
| | 00:08 | Two of those forms, however, the Sweep
and the Swept Blend, offer an alternative
| | 00:13 | to drawing the sketch directly in the form.
| | 00:15 | They can instead use a nested Profile Family.
| | 00:18 | Profile Family is just a two
-dimensional closed shape.
| | 00:21 | You can use them to draw any shape that
you wish to apply to the Sweeps and the
| | 00:25 | Swept Blends in your Families.
| | 00:26 | The advantage to using the Profile
Family is that common typical shapes
| | 00:30 | can easily be reused and shared among
multiple forms and even among multiple Families.
| | 00:36 | So I have my table open on screen that we've
been working on in the last several movies.
| | 00:40 | And we're going to create a profile
that we are then going to sweep around the
| | 00:46 | edge of the table, to kind of
represent a molding maybe, or a sculpted edge
| | 00:51 | around this table,
rather than just a square cut.
| | 00:54 | So to start, we're going to go to the
Application menu and we'll highlight New
| | 00:58 | and we're going to create a new Family.
| | 01:00 | Now we've seen this box before.
| | 01:02 | Here are all our Family templates and
if we scroll down, we will notice that
| | 01:07 | there are several Profile Families.
| | 01:10 | We have just a generic Profile Family template.
| | 01:12 | We have a generic Hosted
template, a Mullion profile, Rail,
| | 01:15 | Reveal, Stair-Nosing.
| | 01:17 | So obviously these are very specific.
| | 01:19 | This is the one you would use if you
were creating a Mullion, and this is the
| | 01:22 | one you'd use for a Railing,
for Stair-Nosing, and so on.
| | 01:25 | You have two choices here for
profiles that can be used in more
| | 01:29 | generic situations.
| | 01:30 | A Hosted Profile is really what you
would use if you were creating a Wall
| | 01:34 | Sweep or a Wall Reveal.
| | 01:36 | It's a little difficult to see in the
illustration over here, but there is
| | 01:40 | some text on there telling you where the wall
would be versus where you would draw your Profile.
| | 01:45 | So there's just some little text cues there.
| | 01:48 | For our case to just create a Profile
that we're going to use in Geometric
| | 01:52 | Sweep in a Family, we can just simply use the
simplest one, the simple Generic Profile Family.
| | 01:57 | So we're going to go ahead and Open
that up and it will open up a single view
| | 02:02 | and you're looking at what should now
be the familiar two Reference planes,
| | 02:06 | Center Front/Back and Center Left/Right.
| | 02:09 | The intersection of these two Reference
Planes is the insertion point of the profile.
| | 02:14 | So we're going to see that that's
actually going to be important when we use
| | 02:17 | this profile shape in the Family.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
| | 02:21 | And I'm going to imagine that this
intersection is the corner of the tabletop.
| | 02:27 | So I want to draw the shape that I'm
creating relative to that point and
| | 02:31 | that tabletop edge.
| | 02:33 | Let me go ahead and maximize this up.
| | 02:35 | If you look at the Ribbon here, you
can see that because we're in a Profile
| | 02:39 | Family, this is just a 2D family.
| | 02:41 | It's kind of similar to the Tag Family
that we created at the start of the course.
| | 02:45 | You only have 2D shapes here;
| | 02:46 | you can bring in lines and
detail components and that's about it.
| | 02:49 | Well, lines is all we need,
we can draw any shape we want.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to click that tool and you
can draw a line or a rectangle or a
| | 02:56 | polygon, or circle, whatever
shape you want your Profile to have.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to start right here and I'm
going to move over maybe about an inch and a half.
| | 03:05 | I'm going to come down,
zoom in a little bit closer.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to come down about half an
inch, come over a little bit, maybe
| | 03:13 | switch to a curve and I'll just draw a little
curve shape here and I'll end up with a line.
| | 03:25 | We can use this shape as either an
additive shape or subtractive shape when we
| | 03:31 | use it back in the Family.
| | 03:32 | I've kind of drawn it with a
subtractive shape in mine, but it really could be
| | 03:37 | used for either one, just by
simply rotating it and flipping it.
| | 03:41 | The whole point of a Profile Family is
it's meant to be a little bit more universal.
| | 03:46 | If you want, you can actually add
dimensions here, and I can try and lock down
| | 03:52 | the sizes a little bit.
| | 03:53 | So I could start to put dimensions
on here, and you can even take these
| | 03:58 | dimensions and make them
Parametric if you want to.
| | 04:01 | Now for this example I
don't really need to do that.
| | 04:03 | But what the advantage of that would be,
is I could then go to Family Types and
| | 04:08 | I could Add types to this and some of
this same basic molding shape came in two
| | 04:12 | or three or four different sizes, then
using all the same techniques that we've
| | 04:16 | learned elsewhere in the
Family Editor would apply here.
| | 04:19 | We could place the dimensions, label
those dimensions and then create types.
| | 04:23 | For this example as I say, I'm going
to keep it at just the one size here, so
| | 04:27 | basically doing a one off, and let me
save it as a Family, and I'm going to
| | 04:32 | call this Table Edge.
| | 04:37 | And I will then load it into my project
and that will take me back to my Table
| | 04:44 | Family, and we're ready to start
creating solid or void forms from this Profile,
| | 04:51 | and that will be the subject of the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a parametric table edge| 00:00 | So in the previous movie we created a
Profile Family that we're going to apply
| | 00:04 | as an edge to our table using a Sweep.
| | 00:07 | We can do this in one of two ways.
| | 00:08 | We can take an additive approach, or
we can take a subtractive approach.
| | 00:13 | With an additive approach you can
literally think about how this thing
| | 00:16 | would actually be built.
| | 00:17 | It would be as if somebody took a
molding and was going to actually attach it
| | 00:21 | around the edge of the table.
| | 00:24 | If rather they were going to take
the edge of the table and put it on a
| | 00:27 | router and cut away the shape of
the edge, then it would be more of a
| | 00:31 | subtractive approach.
| | 00:33 | So if we wanted to do it additively we
would use the Sweep command, and if we
| | 00:37 | wanted to do it subtractively, we
would use the Void Sweep command.
| | 00:40 | And I'm actually going to
demonstrate both in this movie.
| | 00:43 | So let's do the Sweep first.
| | 00:46 | When I choose that it's going to put
me in a Sketch mode and I'm going to
| | 00:50 | maximize up my 3D view here just so that
I can get a good look at what we're doing.
| | 00:56 | The first thing you need to do
with a Sweep is determine the path.
| | 00:59 | So you can either Sketch the
Path, or you can Pick the Path.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to choose the Pick Path
option because it's more convenient, and it
| | 01:08 | will keep the path associated with
the edge of the table which is what we
| | 01:12 | ultimately want here.
| | 01:13 | So I'll choose Pick Path, and then
you can just reach in and highlight the
| | 01:18 | Edges of the table.
| | 01:20 | The first edge you pick you want to
use a little bit of strategy on, because
| | 01:25 | you'll notice that's where the
plane of the profile is going to go.
| | 01:30 | So this green dashed box
represents where the profile goes.
| | 01:34 | So it's more important if you're going
to sketch it, because that's the plane
| | 01:37 | you would need to look at in
order to sketch this profile.
| | 01:40 | In this case, because we're using a
Profile Family it's not as important, but
| | 01:45 | you still probably want to plan it out.
| | 01:47 | So I've picked all four edges and that gives
me the Sweep path, and I'm going to finish that.
| | 01:53 | Now I'm still in the Sweep command,
I've just completed the path and now I have
| | 01:58 | to tell Revit what I want the profile to do.
| | 02:02 | If I want to sketch the profile then
what I would want to do next is get a view
| | 02:07 | that looks at this plane here at that
point, and then I would want to choose
| | 02:11 | this Edit Profile button here and that
would put me in Sketch mode and give me
| | 02:14 | all the normal tools and I
could draw the profile in place.
| | 02:18 | But because we've created the profile
and loaded it into this Family in the
| | 02:22 | previous movie, when I open up the
list here you will see Table Edge is
| | 02:27 | already here on the list.
| | 02:29 | If it's not, if you forgot to load it,
you can come over here and click Load
| | 02:34 | Profile, or right here and
click Load Profile, same thing.
| | 02:37 | And that will take you to a dialog box
which will allow you to browse out to
| | 02:41 | your hard drive and find the
Profile Family that you want.
| | 02:44 | So because we already have it loaded,
I'll just choose it off the list, and if I
| | 02:48 | zoom in here, you can see that I
intended this one as a subtractive edge.
| | 02:53 | So it's oriented within the
thickness of the table Family.
| | 02:56 | Well, for this first demonstration
I'm just going to kind of Flip that,
| | 02:59 | because we're treating it as an additive edge,
as a molding that we're tacking onto the tabletop.
| | 03:05 | So let me go ahead and do that, click
Apply, click this Finish button right
| | 03:10 | here, and then you'll see the Sweep
added around the edge of the table.
| | 03:16 | Now the only disadvantage to doing
it this way is as you can see this has
| | 03:21 | actually increased the size of the table.
| | 03:25 | If I return to my Floor Plan view, you
can see that that will definitely have an
| | 03:28 | impact on the way we set up our Parameters.
| | 03:31 | Notice the Length is referenced back to
this edge inside and now the edge is an
| | 03:37 | inch and-a-half larger all the way around.
| | 03:39 | So I'm actually going to delete this
profile, because we're going to reapproach
| | 03:43 | this in a subtractive way.
| | 03:46 | So I'm going to go back to my 3D view,
and essentially repeat the same process
| | 03:52 | except that this time I'm
going to do it as a Void Sweep.
| | 03:55 | So when I choose Void Sweep, I
get the same options. Pick Path.
| | 04:00 | I'll do the same table edges, finish
that, go to the Modify Sweep tab, choose
| | 04:11 | Table Edge as my profile, and you'll
see that it's oriented correctly here and
| | 04:16 | when I finish, the way that a Void
works is when it selected it kind of looks
| | 04:21 | solid, but if I deselect it, you'll
see that it immediately applies to the
| | 04:26 | solid geometry here.
| | 04:27 | So this edge has now been applied to
the edge of the table and is cutting
| | 04:33 | away from that material.
| | 04:35 | And if I look at it from Plan view, we
haven't actually added to the overall
| | 04:40 | length or width of the table.
| | 04:43 | Profile Families offer a convenient
way to create both Solid and Void Sweeps.
| | 04:47 | Creating a profile externally in a
separate family is easier than sketching it
| | 04:51 | in place directly in the sweep.
| | 04:53 | As we demonstrated here, the same
profile can be reused in both Solid and Void
| | 04:58 | forms giving it an additional advantage.
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| Modifying a profile| 00:00 | So we've created a Profile.
| | 00:02 | We've added it as both a Solid
and then changed it to a Void.
| | 00:05 | There's one more key
advantage to using Profiles.
| | 00:08 | If you decide you want to edit the
shape, you can simply reopen the Profile
| | 00:11 | Family, make modifications to the
shape, and then reload it into any Family
| | 00:15 | that's using that Profile and all of
the solid forms or void forms that are
| | 00:20 | using that shape will update accordingly.
| | 00:22 | If I zoom in here on the profile edge,
the edge I drew is a little bit large for
| | 00:28 | the thickness of the table.
| | 00:29 | So I would like to actually keep
essentially the same shape, but I want to
| | 00:32 | reduce the overall size of the shape so
that the edge isn't quite as dramatic.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to come over here to the
Project Browser, expand Families, scroll
| | 00:42 | down and locate the
Profiles, and here is Table Edge.
| | 00:46 | And I'm going to right-
click on that and choose Edit.
| | 00:49 | That will re-open my Table Edge family here,
and take me to the shape that I drew earlier.
| | 00:56 | What I want to do here is just simply take
these shapes and maybe reduce it a little bit.
| | 01:02 | So I'm going to drop the size of this
circle down to about three quarter inch
| | 01:06 | radius and I'm going to drop this guy
over to about 1 inch and then perhaps
| | 01:14 | take the entire shape here and move
that up just a little bit, kind of half
| | 01:19 | that size a little bit.
| | 01:21 | So I have essentially got the same
shape, but I've just compressed the entire
| | 01:25 | shape down and it now fits
into this 1 x 1 shape right here.
| | 01:29 | I'll reload that into my project and I
will get that now familiar Family Already
| | 01:35 | Exists dialog and I can Overwrite the
existing version or both the existing
| | 01:39 | version and its types.
| | 01:40 | Now again in this case I don't really
have any types so it doesn't matter so
| | 01:44 | much which one I choose.
| | 01:46 | So I'm going to choose the bottom one in
this case, but either one would give me
| | 01:49 | the same result, and you can see that
the profile has immediately updated to
| | 01:54 | reflect that change.
| | 01:56 | A little tough to see here,
so let's change the scale;
| | 01:58 | that'll reduce the scale of the line weights
there to make that little bit easier to see.
| | 02:03 | One of the main advantages of
using Profile Families is simply their
| | 02:07 | flexibility that you can go back to the
Profile Family at any time, open it up,
| | 02:12 | make a change, and then reload it into
each of the Families that use it and the
| | 02:16 | forms that are referencing those
Profiles will immediately update to reflect
| | 02:19 | the new change.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Controlling VisibilityUnderstanding symbolic lines| 00:00 | Architectural communication involves
many abstractions and established industry
| | 00:04 | drawing conventions.
| | 00:06 | In many cases, the way we draw
something in Plan Views is different from how we
| | 00:09 | want to see it in elevation or in other views.
| | 00:12 | In this chapter, we will look at
several ways to vary element display under
| | 00:16 | different viewing conditions.
| | 00:17 | We will start in this movie with Symbolic Lines.
| | 00:21 | Symbolic Lines are two-dimensional
drafted lines that display in views parallel
| | 00:25 | to the one in which they were created.
| | 00:28 | If you draw them in Plan View, for
example, they will only show in other Plan
| | 00:31 | Views in your project.
| | 00:33 | Likewise, Symbolic Lines drawn in
elevation will only show in other elevations
| | 00:37 | that are parallel to the one
in which they were drawn in.
| | 00:40 | Symbolic Lines provide a handy way to
convey drafting conventions that would
| | 00:44 | otherwise be difficult or impossible to model.
| | 00:47 | Perhaps, the easiest way to start
looking at symbolic lines is to start with
| | 00:51 | some of the out-of-the-box Families
and a great example is door Families.
| | 00:56 | Almost every door Family that comes
with Revit uses Symbolic Lines in both
| | 01:00 | plan, and in elevation.
| | 01:01 | So I'm going to select one of the
doors here, this just the standard
| | 01:04 | Single-Flush door, and choose Edit Family.
| | 01:08 | Now, when you come into this Family, it kind of
looks like we're looking in an elevation view;
| | 01:11 | this is actually the 3D view.
| | 01:13 | See how I can actually orbit it in
3D, and if we look over here on the
| | 01:16 | Project Browser, under 3D Views, you'll see
the View 1 is bold, so that's the active view.
| | 01:21 | Where we're going to see the Symbolic
Lines is in Floor Plans and in Elevations.
| | 01:25 | So let's go to the Ground Floor plan,
zoom in a little bit, and you'll see
| | 01:30 | that this arc right here, this is just
a simple arc, and if I hover over it,
| | 01:34 | it is a Symbolic Line.
| | 01:36 | Likewise, these lines right here are
just Symbolic Lines, and if we open up one
| | 01:40 | of our elevation views, we'll find the
same thing, that this line work here,
| | 01:45 | this dashed line, and this
dashed line are both Symbolic Lines.
| | 01:48 | Now some of the stuff is 3D Geometry,
so this is the actual 3D geometry, but
| | 01:53 | they're using the Symbolic Lines
here to represent the elevation swing.
| | 01:57 | So let's do a variation of this Family.
| | 01:58 | Let's save this Family under
another name and change it a little bit.
| | 02:02 | So what I want to do is for the two
bathrooms that we have back in our project,
| | 02:06 | I want to show that there's a
louver down at the bottom of the door.
| | 02:10 | Now, there is a few ways we could approach that.
| | 02:11 | We could actually model the louver three-
dimensionally as a full-blown 3D model.
| | 02:16 | That might be a little bit overkill.
| | 02:18 | It would be a little bit heavier, it
would increase the file size, and it might
| | 02:22 | show too much line work and it wouldn't
look so good when we print it, or when
| | 02:25 | we display it at smaller scales.
| | 02:27 | So instead, we could make a simplified
two-dimensional version of this louver
| | 02:31 | just to represent that it's there in
the views that need it, for example, in
| | 02:35 | the Elevation view.
| | 02:37 | So we'll use Symbolic Lines for this
demonstration, but it might also be nice to
| | 02:42 | at least indicate that there's
something there in 3D and other views, but
| | 02:46 | perhaps not in all the detail.
| | 02:48 | So what we could actually do is we
could start with a model line to represent
| | 02:53 | the outline of the louver and then use the
Symbolic Lines to show the additional detail.
| | 02:58 | Now, in both cases, whether you're
drawing model Line or Symbolic Line, Revit
| | 03:01 | will want to know what plane
you're drawing these lines on.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to do Pick a Plane here,
click OK, and I'm going to draw these
| | 03:08 | lines relative to just the surface of the
wall there, go over here and choose Rectangle.
| | 03:13 | I'm going to do this a little sloppy
for this example, and I'm just going to
| | 03:17 | eyeball a rough shape, and I'm not
going to set it up parametrically or
| | 03:22 | dimension it, you can do
that as an exercise if you like.
| | 03:25 | I'm just simply going to get
the general idea across here.
| | 03:28 | I'm going to switch to the Annotate Tab,
choose Symbolic Lines next, change the
| | 03:33 | line style that I'm using for these
Symbolic Lines to panel in projection.
| | 03:38 | Okay, so I'm going to treat them as
part of the Door panel, and projection,
| | 03:42 | because I want them to be the lighter
line weight that I'm looking at, and I'll
| | 03:46 | just start drawing some lines here.
| | 03:49 | Now, to speed this up, I could
switch over to Copy and select this and do
| | 03:54 | a Multiple Copy, stop right about there
and that gives me the overall representation.
| | 04:06 | Perhaps I need to change the line style
right here, this is Doors and Projection.
| | 04:10 | So let's make that panel and Projection as well.
| | 04:13 | And that kind of gives me the rough
overall shape, and I should have something
| | 04:17 | that in 3D gives me just a simple
rectangle, but in elevation actually shows the
| | 04:23 | more detail of the individual louver blades.
| | 04:26 | Now, I don't want to save this
Family and update the Single-Flush Family.
| | 04:31 | What I'd rather do, just to save
this Family as another Family, and we'll
| | 04:37 | just simply add a prefix to the name, RFE,
Save it, and then load it into our Project.
| | 04:45 | I'm going to close these views, and
get it out of the way, and rather than
| | 04:50 | create a new one, I'm simply going to
take these two doors that I already have,
| | 04:56 | open up my list, and there is my RFE
Single-Flush, there is the type I want, and
| | 05:03 | when I swap that in, no change in plan
of course, in the 3D view, I'll get the
| | 05:08 | overall rectangle and here in the
elevation we see the Symbolic Line version.
| | 05:13 | So as you can see, Symbolic Lines offer
a convenient way to manage the display
| | 05:17 | of view-specific
elements in your Family content.
| | 05:20 | Often the inclusion of symbolic
lines will be coupled with other
| | 05:23 | view-specific display settings.
| | 05:25 | Configuring such settings is the
subject of the next few movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing elementvVisibility| 00:00 | In this movie we'll configure the
display of various elements in our Family to
| | 00:04 | hide them in certain view-specific conditions.
| | 00:06 | For example, often the 3D geometry
will prove too detailed for Plan view.
| | 00:11 | So we can instruct our Family to hide
some or all of the 3D geometry in Plan and
| | 00:16 | then using the techniques covered in
the previous movie, we can draw a simpler
| | 00:19 | version of the object using Symbolic Lines.
| | 00:22 | So what I have on screen here is the
out of the box kitchenette Family that we
| | 00:26 | had loaded our office building before
and you can see that this file is actually
| | 00:31 | made up of several nested Families.
| | 00:33 | So it's got the refrigerator and the
dishwasher and the sink, and I'm going to
| | 00:36 | take this sink file here and I'm going
to choose Edit Family and that's going to
| | 00:40 | open that up and I want to do a
little window management here.
| | 00:43 | So I'm going to minimize the original
kitchenette here and then open up the Floor Plan.
| | 00:50 | Let me just W+T for Window Tile and then
Z+A for Zoom All, and let's take a look
| | 00:56 | at the Floor Plan here and the 3D view
here, and we're going to discuss some of
| | 01:01 | the visibility settings that
have been used in this file.
| | 01:04 | Now this file actually uses both
Symbolic Lines that we talked about in the
| | 01:08 | last movie and the visibility settings that
we're going to discuss here in this movie.
| | 01:12 | So if we start over here in the 3D view,
we have some simple solid forms being
| | 01:17 | used to sculpt the sink.
| | 01:19 | So we have a Sweep here for the
faucet and just a simple Extrusion for the
| | 01:23 | handles and some other Extrusions over
here and we've got the bowl, and so on.
| | 01:27 | And if you look over here in the
Plan view, you can see that most of that
| | 01:31 | geometry is actually gray.
| | 01:32 | So if I select this you see it selects
the base of the sink, for example, and if
| | 01:36 | I select this one right here, you
can see that selects the faucet.
| | 01:40 | So the geometry that we're seeing in
Plan is a little different than what
| | 01:45 | we're seeing in the 3D.
| | 01:47 | Now, overlaid on top of
that are the Symbolic Lines.
| | 01:51 | So what they've done is the gray in
the Family Editor represents a hidden
| | 01:56 | element and we talked about this
briefly in a previous chapter, but there we
| | 02:00 | used a visibility Parameter.
| | 02:03 | Here the visibility is being
applied a little differently.
| | 02:06 | Here the visibility is being
applied as a view-specific setting.
| | 02:10 | So if I select this 3D element right
here and then go up here on the Ribbon to
| | 02:15 | the Visibility Settings button, you're
going to see that this particular item
| | 02:20 | has been disabled in Plan and
reflected Ceiling Plan views.
| | 02:24 | So it's saying display it 3D views and
only the front and left and right and
| | 02:30 | back elevations, not in Plan or RCP.
| | 02:33 | So that's why it's turned
gray here in our Floor Plan.
| | 02:37 | That would be the same for
any of this gray geometry.
| | 02:39 | All of it has the plan box unchecked.
| | 02:43 | In its place they've simply drawn
Symbolic Lines to represent what that geometry
| | 02:48 | should look like in the more simplified
two-dimensional version of this Family.
| | 02:53 | So when we load this family into the
project what we actually see, and we can
| | 02:58 | kind of see that here if I go back to
the host version of the Family, is that
| | 03:02 | when I look at this thing in Plan
I'm actually seeing a very simple
| | 03:07 | two-dimensional representation of
that sink rather than the more detailed
| | 03:12 | complicated version which would have
double lines around the bowls here and
| | 03:16 | perhaps some lines for the shape of the faucet.
| | 03:19 | It's just a simpler representational view.
| | 03:22 | Now the same has been done
over here with this cook top.
| | 03:25 | The 3D geometry has mostly been
turned off and what we're actually seeing
| | 03:30 | are the Symbolic Lines.
| | 03:31 | Now if I select this and I go to
Edit Family, you can see there is the 3D
| | 03:36 | geometry, and if I look at the Plan
view here, you can see it's a little
| | 03:44 | difficult to see, because the
Symbolic Lines are actually right on top of
| | 03:48 | the Reference Planes.
| | 03:49 | If I went to Visibility Graphics and
click on the Annotation Categories tab,
| | 03:54 | then right here I can turn off the
Reference Planes and that's just temporary
| | 03:59 | and that'll make it a little easier to see
these Symbolic Lines that have been drawn here.
| | 04:04 | Now what I want to do is make a small
modification to this cooktop Family.
| | 04:08 | I think it's great that they've
got this simple two-dimensional
| | 04:12 | representation here in Plan and I
agree mostly with the notion that we don't
| | 04:17 | need to see this 3D geometry like the
Blend here which is using Visibility
| | 04:22 | Settings to turn it off in Plan.
| | 04:24 | But if you look down here at the
bottom there's also the Detail Levels.
| | 04:28 | So what I'm going to do here is I'm
going to select all of these lines.
| | 04:33 | That's going to a couple
selections to get them all.
| | 04:37 | I'm just using my Ctrl key and I'm going
to select all those lines there and I'm
| | 04:42 | going to go to the Visibility Settings
and I'm going to tell Revit that I'm only
| | 04:47 | interested in seeing those when
I'm set to a fine level of detail.
| | 04:50 | So I'm going to uncheck both Coarse and Medium.
| | 04:53 | When I click OK those lines are also
going to turn gray, which is letting me
| | 04:57 | know that there's some sort of
visibility condition assigned to those.
| | 05:02 | Here the view is currently set to Coarse.
| | 05:05 | If I change it to Medium, they'll
still be gray, but if I change it to Fine
| | 05:09 | they'll go back to being solid, because
I'm only displaying them in that view.
| | 05:13 | Now let's go ahead and load this back
into our Kitchenette, click OK, overwrite
| | 05:19 | the existing version, and what you'll
see is all those lines will disappear,
| | 05:23 | because this view is displaying in
Coarse and if I change it to Medium, it still
| | 05:28 | disappears and if I change
it to Fine, it now reappears.
| | 05:31 | Now I'm going to back out just to touch.
| | 05:34 | Here in Coarse you'll see that they
actually had a feature like that already
| | 05:39 | built into this Family.
| | 05:40 | Notice that there's a label here for
dishwasher and refrigerator that only
| | 05:45 | displays in Medium or above.
| | 05:48 | So using the Visibility Settings
allows us to control not only how the object
| | 05:55 | displays in Plans or Elevations, but
also allows us to control how it displays
| | 06:01 | in Coarse, Medium, and Fine, and when
you get to your project environment, when
| | 06:05 | you change views from either Plan or an
Elevation or change the level of detail
| | 06:09 | to Coarse, Medium, and Fine, the
Families will respond accordingly with the
| | 06:13 | correct and appropriate level of detail.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ensuring the display of overhead items in a plan| 00:00 | Revit determines what to display in
a Plan view by the View Range dialog.
| | 00:04 | Any element that is at or below the Cut
Plane will display in Plan and typically
| | 00:09 | those items that are
above the Cut Plane will not.
| | 00:12 | There are a few exceptions notably
generic models, casework, and windows;
| | 00:18 | those three categories can actually
display automatically above the Cut
| | 00:21 | Plane, but everything else cannot
display above the Cut Plane unless you
| | 00:25 | employ a little trick.
| | 00:27 | So the subject of this movie will be how
do we deal with element categories that
| | 00:32 | we want to see above the Cut Plane when
they don't automatically by Revit, and I
| | 00:37 | have one such example here on screen,
this is our bracket Family that we started
| | 00:41 | back in our earlier movie when
we were talking about modeling.
| | 00:45 | If you may recall at that time we
added the Swept Blend and a few other
| | 00:50 | features to this item.
| | 00:51 | This is largely the same Family
unchanged from that point, and its category, if
| | 00:57 | I look up here at the Family Category
and Parameters dialog, its category is
| | 01:02 | Specialty Equipment.
| | 01:04 | So it's not one of those three -
generic models, casework or windows - that
| | 01:09 | would automatically display above the Cut Plane.
| | 01:12 | Now in the background I have these
Sandbox loaded, so if I did Load into Project
| | 01:19 | and I try to place the element I'll get
a warning from Revit saying that none of
| | 01:24 | the elements are visible in this view
and it's giving me several things I can
| | 01:28 | look into and check and cancel that, and
of course the reason for that is pretty
| | 01:34 | obvious, this is not one of those
categories that displays above the view, and
| | 01:39 | if we look at the North Elevation, we
can see the bracket is clearly here, it
| | 01:45 | just happens to be above that 4 foot mark.
| | 01:48 | So I'm going to delete this guy and
return back in my Family and let's talk
| | 01:55 | about how we can kind of fake
Revit out here and make this occur.
| | 01:59 | So the trick involves understanding the rule.
| | 02:02 | The rule is, if you're not one of those
three magic categories and if you don't
| | 02:06 | occur at or below the cut
plane you don't display.
| | 02:09 | So what do we need to do?
| | 02:11 | We need to create an object in this
Family that's either at or below the Cut Plane.
| | 02:15 | When we do that Revit will see that
object, and then it will trigger the
| | 02:18 | display of this element.
| | 02:20 | The easiest way to do that is to work in
my Elevation View, I go to my Home tab,
| | 02:25 | click on the Model Line tool and I'm
going to set the subcategory of the Model
| | 02:30 | Line to the built-in Invisible Lines category;
| | 02:33 | as the name implies Invisible Lines are
invisible and so even though I'm going
| | 02:38 | to draw a line here, it's not actually
going to display anywhere in the Family.
| | 02:44 | You can see it show up in the telltale
gray that's typically what Revit uses in
| | 02:48 | the Family Editor to let us know that
that object is invisible, so we've got
| | 02:51 | that line there which now intersects the
cut plane which would occur right about
| | 02:55 | here, and that will trigger the
display of elements in our Plan View.
| | 03:01 | In the previous movie we talked about
Symbolic lines, and so what you can see
| | 03:06 | here if I open the Floor Plan in this
Family is that all of the 3D geometry is
| | 03:11 | grayed out, I have previously gone in
and taken all of the 3D geometry and
| | 03:16 | done these steps that we did in the
last few movies to select it and edit the
| | 03:21 | visibility settings and turn it off in
Plan, and that leaves just the symbolic
| | 03:26 | lines here and here, and there is a short
one at the end that display in Plan View.
| | 03:32 | So let's go ahead and load this
Family into our project and see how we did.
| | 03:38 | I previously brought it in so I'll
overwrite the existing version, place it as a
| | 03:44 | component right here, and you can see
that the bracket now displays in Plan
| | 03:50 | View, even though when I look at the
elevation it is in fact still above the Cut
| | 03:56 | Plane, and if you highlight it you
actually see that ghosted in invisible line,
| | 04:00 | so that's what's
actually triggering the display.
| | 04:04 | So if you're not one of the three
categories Revit displays automatically and
| | 04:08 | again one more time those are casework,
windows, and generic models, then the
| | 04:13 | object will not display by default,
but if you just employ this simple little
| | 04:16 | trick and add an invisible line
cutting through the Cut Plane directly in the
| | 04:20 | Family, you can make those elements display.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Building a Complex Parametric Model FamilyIntroducing complex families| 00:00 | Any of the concepts covered so far
in this course would make for a robust
| | 00:03 | and powerful Family.
| | 00:05 | However, the real power of the
Family Editor lies in combining techniques
| | 00:09 | for maximum effect.
| | 00:10 | In this chapter we're going to take a
look at a complex model Family design.
| | 00:14 | We are going to look at an Awning
structure that's held up by a series of
| | 00:18 | brackets and I have the final version
here onscreen called Canopy Complete,
| | 00:24 | you can find this in the Finished Files folder
of the Excess Files if you have access to those.
| | 00:28 | All I'm going to do in this movie
is just sort walk you through the
| | 00:31 | final results, so you have an idea
of where we're going to be going in
| | 00:34 | the next several movies.
| | 00:35 | So here is the overall design.
| | 00:37 | You can see it here in the 3D View and
it has several little parts and pieces.
| | 00:43 | And we're going to assemble these as a
series of Nested Families and various arrays.
| | 00:48 | So let's look at each one of
the Families in particular.
| | 00:51 | Now we've already seen the Bracket Family;
| | 00:53 | let's open that one up first.
| | 00:55 | We saw this earlier in the training
series when we were looking at Solid Forms.
| | 01:00 | And so just to reiterate how
this thing is put together.
| | 01:04 | This guy is an Extrusion right here.
| | 01:06 | We would edit that Extrusion, you would
see it's just a simple shape that's been
| | 01:10 | extruded to a thickness of 2 inches.
| | 01:13 | This guy is a Sweep, right here, so
it's just a curly shape here for the path.
| | 01:18 | If I edit that Sweep, you can
see there is the path right there.
| | 01:22 | And this green line is where the profile
was sketched and that profile shape is,
| | 01:29 | I zoom in there, just a small rectangle.
| | 01:32 | Pretty straightforward shape there, but
it makes very nice effect when it's done.
| | 01:37 | This is also a Sweep;
| | 01:38 | a little more complex.
| | 01:40 | It's got a little bit of a curved shape to it;
| | 01:42 | that one is using a Profile.
| | 01:45 | So when we click on Select Profile,
there is a Profile here called Bracket Shape
| | 01:49 | and so that's a nested Profile
Family that's been loaded in.
| | 01:52 | I kind of spin the view around right there;
| | 01:55 | you can get a better look at it.
| | 01:56 | It sort of looks like that.
| | 02:00 | The advantage of using a Profile shape
there is that that same Profile shape can
| | 02:05 | be used for other sweeps like this
one and it can even be used in other
| | 02:08 | Families, if you wanted to.
| | 02:10 | So if you were going to create
several versions of this bracket you could
| | 02:12 | reuse that Profile.
| | 02:15 | For these sort of finials at the end
here, we're using a Blend with a void
| | 02:19 | to round off the top.
| | 02:21 | So this is just a simple Blend
between two rectangles and then the top is
| | 02:25 | rounded off with this
void form out here, like so.
| | 02:30 | And then there's a Revolve
here for this little collar.
| | 02:33 | So that's the complex
bracket or just the Bracket Family.
| | 02:37 | There is also a Simple Bracket right here.
| | 02:41 | This is when we become victims of
value engineering and they tell us that we
| | 02:47 | can't afford the nice complex bracket,
so we'll go to this one which is made up
| | 02:52 | of just a simple extrusion, in this
direction and then the cross brace here is
| | 02:57 | also just a simple extrusion.
| | 02:58 | So not only is it a simpler looking
design, but it's also a simpler construction
| | 03:04 | using just two extrusions;
| | 03:06 | we'll close out of that one.
| | 03:07 | I can show you here by highlighting
and tabbing, both of those use that
| | 03:12 | invisible line trick that we talked
about in a previous movie to make them
| | 03:16 | display overhead, because both of
those are Specialty Equipment category.
| | 03:21 | The final Family is the Awning Family.
| | 03:25 | Go ahead and edit that one and it
has this glass canopy right here which
| | 03:31 | is actually a Blend.
| | 03:32 | If I do Edit Base it starts off as a
rectangle, and then if I do Edit Top, it
| | 03:38 | goes to this sort of eyebrow shape right here.
| | 03:41 | at a depth of about 5 feet and so I'll
cancel that, and then that gives us this
| | 03:47 | shape here where it goes from flat
to this sort of subtle curve shape.
| | 03:51 | And then to round off the end there's
just this Void Extrusion right here that's
| | 03:56 | cutting off those corners.
| | 03:58 | These support structures here are
also just Blends, Edit the Base.
| | 04:03 | It's just a rectangle here and Edit the
Top, another rectangle here which gives
| | 04:07 | it the slight taper and then
materials have been applied.
| | 04:11 | Now the other thing to point out in
the Awning Family here is it takes into
| | 04:15 | account the thickness of the
bracket that we're going to be using.
| | 04:18 | So there is a 1-inch dimension here
that's been locked in with a Reference Plane
| | 04:23 | and that allows space for that 2 inch
thick piece of material there that we're
| | 04:26 | going to slip in for the bracket.
| | 04:28 | And when all these parts and pieces
are combined together, we'll end up with
| | 04:33 | this assembly right here.
| | 04:35 | So with that introduction
let's go ahead and get started.
| | 04:37 | In the next movie, we'll begin
creating our complex canopy design.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding reference planes and importing nested families| 00:00 | In the previous movie we showcased
the result of the complex canopy design.
| | 00:04 | In this movie we'll begin the first
phase of building it in the same way that we
| | 00:07 | build most Families;
| | 00:08 | laying down the Reference Planes and
applying some dimensions and Parameters.
| | 00:11 | So let's go ahead and get
started with a New Family.
| | 00:14 | So I'm going to use the New
link here on the Recent Files page.
| | 00:18 | You can also use the Application menu and
choose New > Family there if you prefer.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to see all of our Template
choices and I'm going to scroll down and as
| | 00:27 | we've discussed previously in the course,
the Awnings or canopies are actually
| | 00:33 | in master spec under Specialty Equipment.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to go ahead and choose the
Specialty Equipment template for this.
| | 00:39 | I want it to be associated with a wall, so
I'm going to choose the wall based template.
| | 00:45 | Go ahead and type W+T for Window Tile
and then Z+A for Zoom All and you can see
| | 00:50 | that this template like many
others starts with four open views.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to back up here in the
Floor Plan view and select this wall.
| | 00:57 | This is kind of like a stand-in wall,
it's used as a framework for you to
| | 01:00 | build your Family from.
| | 01:01 | This wall doesn't actually go into
the project when the Family is loaded.
| | 01:05 | It's just simply used for reference here.
| | 01:06 | It has a dimension right here and I'm
going to make it significantly longer.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to increase that to about 50'.
| | 01:12 | When I do that, the Reference Plane
right here it is a little bit short for the
| | 01:17 | scale of the drawing, so I'd like to
lengthen that and of course you'll see that
| | 01:20 | Revit is not allowing me
to do that until I unpin it.
| | 01:24 | So, I'll just unpin it there, stretch it
out a little bit longer, and then it is
| | 01:29 | a pretty good idea to repin it.
| | 01:30 | This is the origin of the Family,
so I don't want it to be able to be
| | 01:34 | accidentally moved and you could see
pinning prevents that from happening.
| | 01:38 | Now interestingly enough, even though
that's really the origin of the Family,
| | 01:43 | over here on the Properties pallette,
they actually forgot to check the
| | 01:46 | Defines Origin box.
| | 01:48 | Now as long as you don't check Defines
Origin on some other Reference Plane,
| | 01:53 | this centerline would still be used as
the origin, but just to make sure, let's
| | 01:56 | go ahead and check that anyway.
| | 01:58 | Now there is this label here placement
side, I'm going to just move that out of
| | 02:02 | the way to give myself some room to work.
| | 02:04 | This is letting us know what side of the
wall the items we're drawing will be placed on.
| | 02:09 | So that's a little handy little label there.
| | 02:10 | And it doesn't appear in the project
either, so you can leave it in the file,
| | 02:13 | there is no need to feel like
you have to erase it or something.
| | 02:16 | Let's go back to Home tab, create some
Reference Planes and place one over here
| | 02:21 | on the side, change this to a nice
round number like 20', click Modify, select
| | 02:27 | that Reference Plane and I
will mirror it to the other side.
| | 02:30 | I'm going to select the one the
left and over here on the Properties
| | 02:33 | pallet, I'll call this Left Edge, and
then I'll select the one on the right
| | 02:39 | and name that Right Edge.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to add some dimensions,
I'll do continuous dimension across here
| | 02:50 | and toggle on the equality and then
in overall, click between the two and
| | 02:55 | click Modify, select that overall dimension
and I want to label that with a new Parameter.
| | 03:00 | I'm going to call this Parameter Canopy Length.
| | 03:06 | Accept all the other defaults;
| | 03:07 | it's a type-based Parameter
and I'll put it under Dimensions.
| | 03:09 | You can see that it does label it
there as Canopy Length, and then it's best
| | 03:14 | practice for us to go ahead and open up
Family Types and just give that a quick flex.
| | 03:19 | So let's try a value of 30'.
| | 03:21 | You can see the two Reference Planes move,
they stay centered on the middle with
| | 03:25 | the equal-equal, that's exactly what we
want, set it back to 40' and click OK.
| | 03:31 | So our next step is to bring in the
components that we want to start using in this Family.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to go back to the Home tab
and click on the Component button to load
| | 03:39 | in and play some component Families.
| | 03:42 | Now Revit will alert me that I don't
have any Component Families currently
| | 03:45 | loaded in this project.
| | 03:46 | It will offer to allow me to load them,
so I'll go ahead and answer Yes there.
| | 03:50 | And I'm going to browse out to the
Exercise Files folder and bring in the
| | 03:58 | three Families that we want to use in this
file, so Awning, Bracket and Bracket-Simple.
| | 04:02 | I can use my Ctrl key to select several.
| | 04:07 | When I click Open it will load all
three and it will place the bracket on my
| | 04:12 | cursor which is fine, we can start with that.
| | 04:14 | Let me zoom in a little bit here in
Plan and I'm going to place it so that it
| | 04:18 | attaches itself to face of the wall there.
| | 04:20 | You can see that it will highlight the
edge of the wall when we start to place it.
| | 04:23 | Let's open up the list and for the
Awning, I'm going to choose 60 Wide type
| | 04:29 | and this one comes in and it will also
highlight the wall, but you notice it's
| | 04:32 | pointing the wrong way, so I'm just
going to tap the Spacebar a couple of
| | 04:35 | times to flip it around, and then
I'll highlight the wall and go ahead and
| | 04:39 | place it right there.
| | 04:41 | And I'm not going to actually
place the Bracket-Simple right now.
| | 04:43 | I just want to make sure that that one is in
the file, so we'll just start with those two.
| | 04:49 | Okay, all that leaves us with is saving,
so let's go to the Application menu,
| | 04:55 | we'll go to Save As and we'll choose Family.
| | 04:58 | I'm going to go to the Chapter08
folder and I'm going to name this, let's
| | 05:03 | just call this Canopy.
| | 05:06 | Now, over here in the right-hand corner,
we have this Options button and I want
| | 05:11 | to open that up before I actually save
and dismiss this dialog and show you a
| | 05:15 | couple of options in here
that you might find useful.
| | 05:18 | One is the maximum number of
backups that will be saved with this file.
| | 05:22 | All project files and Family files
create backups when you save them and Revit
| | 05:26 | will just take the last version and it
will increment it with a number and keep
| | 05:30 | it as a backup and it will keep doing
this until it hits the maximum number, and
| | 05:33 | then it'll take the
oldest one and throw it away.
| | 05:35 | Now you can increase this
number or decrease this number.
| | 05:38 | You have to have at least one.
| | 05:39 | Probably, you wouldn't want to go less
than one anyway, it's always good idea to
| | 05:42 | have backup along the way.
| | 05:43 | But when I'm working in Families, I tend
to actually reduce this number down to one.
| | 05:47 | My attitude here is that I build the
Family, I get it all correct, and then
| | 05:52 | we're going to back it up in the Office
Archive and it's not going to change too often.
| | 05:57 | So I don't sort of need as many backups
as I might want with a project file, but
| | 06:02 | it's really up to you and your CAD standards.
| | 06:04 | If you feel more comfortable with more
backups, by all means, do that, but in
| | 06:08 | this case I'm going to drop it down to 1.
| | 06:11 | For the Preview, we can actually change
the Source of the Preview to any one of
| | 06:15 | the views in the project.
| | 06:16 | So I'm going to choose the 3D view,
so that no matter what I save the file
| | 06:20 | as, it's always going to use the 3D
view to generate the preview from which
| | 06:24 | is a little bit nicer.
| | 06:25 | So we'll go ahead and OK that, click
Save and we now have all the raw materials
| | 06:30 | we need to progress with our Family here.
| | 06:33 | In the next movie we'll
begin assembling everything.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Building arrays and applying rules| 00:00 | Continuing on our Canopy design, in
this movie we will add a parametric array
| | 00:05 | and constrain all the parts and pieces.
| | 00:07 | So I've got a file here called Canopy Step2.
| | 00:10 | You can follow along with me in
this file, if you have access to the
| | 00:13 | Exercise Files, or you can continue in your
own version that you created in the last movie.
| | 00:18 | So we have our Bracket here and we have
our Awning here and what we want to do
| | 00:23 | is create an array of both of these and
this is somewhat of a review, but we'll
| | 00:26 | go through the steps anyway.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to start with selecting the
object that I want to array, and then I'll
| | 00:31 | click the Array button.
| | 00:33 | And as we talked about in previous
movie we can either do a Linear or a Radial,
| | 00:37 | obviously I want to do Linear in this case.
| | 00:40 | I do want to Group and Associate it,
because that's what's going to allow me
| | 00:42 | to make it parametric.
| | 00:44 | And I typically just start with a
quantity of two and adjust it later.
| | 00:47 | I want to make sure that I'm using the
Move To Last option, because I basically
| | 00:51 | set these up like bookends.
| | 00:52 | I want my first one and my last one,
because I find it easier to control that way.
| | 00:57 | So I'll pick my start point and my new
point and I've just sort of chosen those
| | 01:01 | randomly at some point.
| | 01:03 | Of course if I put in some other number,
the array would flex and we would see
| | 01:08 | it working from its current position.
| | 01:10 | But what I want to do is actually move
these brackets over and attach them to
| | 01:16 | the Reference Planes that we previously created.
| | 01:20 | So the easiest way to do that is
going to be to use the Align tool.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to select Align and I want to
highlight the Left Edge Reference Plane
| | 01:29 | as my point of alignment.
| | 01:32 | If I zoom in a little bit here on the
bracket what you'll notice is that in
| | 01:36 | addition to the edges which I could
certainly align to, in the center of this
| | 01:40 | bracket is a Reference Plane.
| | 01:42 | That's actually what I want to use as
the point to align to and that will line
| | 01:47 | up the bracket directly on the center
of this Left Edge Reference Plane and
| | 01:51 | I'm going to lock that.
| | 01:52 | Then I'll come over here and repeat
the step on this side, again, aligning to
| | 01:57 | the center and I'll lock that.
| | 02:01 | Then let's repeat the
whole thing with this Awning.
| | 02:05 | Go to array, Group And Associate to
go to the Last object, select it, use
| | 02:13 | my Align tool and this time again I want to
do Left Edge, don't align it to the bracket.
| | 02:21 | We don't want to relate it to the bracket;
| | 02:23 | we want the Reference Plane in the
host family, this Canopy Family to control
| | 02:27 | the position of this thing.
| | 02:28 | So make sure you're choosing that
Left Edge Reference Plane again.
| | 02:31 | And then notice here that there's a
Reference Plane in this Family just about an
| | 02:36 | inch away from the edge here.
| | 02:37 | So that's what I want to click and that
makes it line up nicely relative to the bracket.
| | 02:43 | Those two pieces have been
designed to fit relative to one another.
| | 02:47 | So repeat it to the other side, Right
Edge Reference Plane to the invisible
| | 02:54 | Reference Plane inside the
awning, and we'll lock that.
| | 02:58 | So at this point, if we were to flex
both of these and adjust the quantity,
| | 03:07 | you would see the quantity change, but those
two bookends would stay put there at the end.
| | 03:14 | Now what I want to do next is
actually create Parameters to control these.
| | 03:18 | So if I select my Awning, kind of
move my mouse around up here and look for
| | 03:22 | the Array Dimension, sometime you have to
move your mouse around to get it to he highlight.
| | 03:27 | We can select that and label it.
| | 03:29 | Let's add a Parameter and
I'll call this Number of Awnings.
| | 03:35 | I'm going to group this under Graphics,
again you can really group it anywhere
| | 03:40 | you like, but I like it under Graphics.
| | 03:43 | Number of Awnings, it's an integer
Parameter and it's a type-based Parameter.
| | 03:46 | You'll see that label appear right there.
| | 03:49 | Let's do the same thing with the Bracket.
| | 03:51 | Again, you might have to move
around to find that dimension.
| | 03:55 | Label it, add another Parameter,
Number of Brackets, put it under
| | 04:03 | Graphics, click OK.
| | 04:06 | So at this point we'll flex it;
| | 04:07 | I've got my Family Types dialog.
| | 04:10 | Currently, I have two Brackets and two Awnings.
| | 04:12 | Let's try some other numbers in here,
click Apply and you can see that it is working.
| | 04:18 | Of course I have chosen some rather
random numbers there and you can see that
| | 04:22 | nothing really quite matches
up except the two at the ends.
| | 04:25 | Well, if we look at the overall length
here 40' and we select this guy, notice
| | 04:30 | the name of the Awning within
that group is called 60 Wide.
| | 04:36 | If you really want to verify that, I
could do a measurement and measure it and
| | 04:41 | it's 4 foot 10 plus the inch gap on either side.
| | 04:45 | So the overall width of
this Awning is actually 5'.
| | 04:49 | So if we do the math that means
that we really need 8 Awnings.
| | 04:52 | And if we have 8 Awnings then that
means that we need 9 Brackets, one bracket
| | 04:57 | than we have Awnings, and if I apply
that you'll see that everything flexes, and
| | 05:02 | it all fits nice and neat and
everything is perfectly matched up with the
| | 05:06 | overall length of the canopy.
| | 05:08 | So that completes the setup of basic
array and in the next movie we'll look at
| | 05:13 | setting those array values up with a
little bit more intelligence using either
| | 05:16 | Family types or formulas.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding formulas| 00:00 | Let's continue on with
stage 3 of our canopy design.
| | 00:03 | In the last movie we created the
arrays and set up array Parameters to
| | 00:08 | control those arrays.
| | 00:09 | However, we left off with needing to do
the math manually to determine the right
| | 00:15 | quantity of awnings to go along
with the right quantity of brackets.
| | 00:19 | Furthermore, the length of the canopy
factors in to the decision of what the
| | 00:24 | quantity should be and it seems like
all of those things we can do just a
| | 00:28 | little bit smarter.
| | 00:29 | So there's really two approaches
we could take to clearing that up;
| | 00:32 | one is using a feature we already
know about which is Family Types.
| | 00:35 | So I could open up the Family Types
dialog and I could create a New Family Type
| | 00:40 | and the one that I have right now the
controlling dimension is 40" long, so I
| | 00:45 | could call this 40 Long and click OK
and that names what we have here and we've
| | 00:51 | already done the math and
figured out that we need 9 and 8.
| | 00:54 | Now suppose I wanted a 30 Long.
| | 00:56 | So I could go in here and put in 30
Long, click OK, change this to 30, but of
| | 01:02 | course when I do that, it
has no impact on my 8 and 9.
| | 01:05 | I would have to manually say, well for 30
" divided by a 5 foot awning, I need to
| | 01:10 | have six awnings and therefore to make
the Number of Brackets make sense, I need
| | 01:13 | one more of those and so I do 7 there.
| | 01:16 | And when I click Apply you will see
the whole thing update and it will do it
| | 01:20 | correctly, and so if you don't mind
doing a little bit of math, Family Types can
| | 01:24 | be an easy and effective way of
managing the various sizes and making sure that
| | 01:28 | everything comes out okay.
| | 01:30 | The trouble is, all three of these
Parameters has to be in exact sync with one
| | 01:34 | another in order for it to make sense.
| | 01:36 | If somebody accidentally puts in the
wrong quantity here, you're going to end up
| | 01:40 | with some strangeness.
| | 01:42 | So that's certainly one way that we can
do it, but there's a slightly better way.
| | 01:46 | So let's look at one really quick example.
| | 01:48 | Over here in the Formula column you
can actually write formulas using a
| | 01:53 | variety of techniques.
| | 01:55 | You can use simple arithmetic or even
more advanced trigonometry or if/then
| | 01:59 | statements and so on to relate one
Parameter's value to other Parameter's in the file here.
| | 02:06 | So if we know that the Number of
Brackets always has to be one more than the
| | 02:09 | Number of Awnings, probably the
simplest formula that we could write is
| | 02:13 | Number of Awnings + 1.
| | 02:18 | When I press Enter there, it will apply
that feature here so that if I were to
| | 02:23 | change the Number of Awnings here to
something else and just click anywhere else
| | 02:27 | to apply that, you'll see
that will automatically go to 8.
| | 02:30 | Now when you do a really simple
arithmetic formula like this, it's reciprocal.
| | 02:35 | Okay, it works both ways.
| | 02:36 | So if I change the Number of
Brackets, it will actually do the math in
| | 02:40 | reverse and I end up with Number of
Awnings always being one less than the
| | 02:45 | Number of Brackets, or to say that
another way, Number of Brackets is one
| | 02:48 | more than the number of Awnings.
| | 02:50 | This doesn't free me from having to
consider the right quantities here relating
| | 02:56 | to the canopy length;
| | 02:57 | it just simplified just a little bit by
making sure that I didn't have to do all
| | 03:02 | three things, so I now only
have two adjust two of the values.
| | 03:06 | Now using that same logic, you could
say well, if I know how many awnings and
| | 03:12 | brackets I want, then I could say
what if I take the Number of Awnings and
| | 03:19 | multiply that by the size of the awning.
| | 03:22 | So the Canopy Length could now be the
Number of Awnings * 5' and when I press
| | 03:33 | Enter here, what you're going to see
happen is that will change to 25, and so
| | 03:38 | now I've got myself a situation here
where if I dial in a new number here and
| | 03:43 | click Apply, everything else will
adjust, the Canopy Length and the Number of
| | 03:48 | Brackets, so it's all kind of tied together.
| | 03:51 | So I could certainly stop here and
it's a lot more intelligent than it was
| | 03:54 | just a few moments ago. A couple of tips;
| | 03:56 | #1, make sure that when you type your
Parameters in your formulas, you type them
| | 04:00 | in exactly the way they are written.
| | 04:04 | Number of Awnings has to be exactly
like it's written here, including case.
| | 04:09 | So I had to use uppercase N,
uppercase A, otherwise it will not work.
| | 04:13 | If I change even one letter and I
click somewhere else, it will say this does
| | 04:19 | not work and they are case-sensitive.
| | 04:21 | So that's the first thing and that would
be pretty obvious the first time you do it;
| | 04:25 | so check carefully.
| | 04:26 | There are lots of other little places
where formulas can break, so make sure you
| | 04:30 | dot all the eyes and cross all the teeth.
| | 04:33 | Now the other thing is there is
nothing about these formulas that prevents me
| | 04:38 | from choosing a bad Number of Awnings.
| | 04:40 | Now what would be a bad Number of Awnings?
| | 04:42 | Well, 3 is okay, Apply. 2 is okay, Apply.
| | 04:48 | What happens if I go to 1?
| | 04:51 | Well that's going to generate an error because
you can't have an Array with only one element.
| | 04:58 | Okay, so that basically breaks the entire Array.
| | 05:01 | So let me cancel that and let's set
this back to at least 2 and talk about
| | 05:07 | how we can fix that.
| | 05:08 | Now there is two ways you can approach
it, you could just simply tell all your
| | 05:11 | users, don't do fewer than two awnings
and create Family Types that are set to
| | 05:16 | valid values and just hope that they
don't break it or if you want to actually
| | 05:20 | have the software do some of the error
checking for you, we can actually create
| | 05:25 | a really simple conditional statement
using an if Parameter to have it checked
| | 05:31 | the Number of Awnings that we place
in there and put in the correct value.
| | 05:36 | And it would go something like this:
| | 05:37 | if the Number of Awnings is less than
two then make it 2, otherwise go ahead and
| | 05:45 | use whatever the Number of Awnings is
that the user input and what I've done is,
| | 05:50 | something that I like to do as a
strategy, is you have got this tiny little
| | 05:53 | formula field over here.
| | 05:55 | It could sometimes be tough to type in
there especially when errors are being
| | 05:58 | generated and so forth.
| | 05:59 | So I like to figure that out a lot of
times in a simple text file or even in an
| | 06:04 | Excel spreadsheet, just somewhere
outside of Revit, write it out and make sure I
| | 06:09 | have got it right and then copy and
paste it into Revit and check it that way.
| | 06:13 | So here I have that if statement in a
Notepad and it just says if Number of
| | 06:19 | Awnings, again being case-sensitive is
less than two and then use a comma and
| | 06:24 | then this is the condition if true,
and this is the condition of false, so if
| | 06:29 | the Number of Awnings is less than two
and then what we are saying here is use
| | 06:33 | the value of two, don't let it go less than two.
| | 06:36 | Otherwise it can just use the Number of Awnings.
| | 06:39 | So I'm going to go ahead and copy that,
Ctrl+C and I'm going to come back here
| | 06:44 | to Revit and I'm going to add
a whole new Parameter for this.
| | 06:48 | You may have seen in Notepad
that I was calling it ArrayParam.
| | 06:53 | This has to be an integer property
because the array parameter (ArrayParam) is
| | 06:58 | just a whole number and usually these
error checking ones, you'll see a lot of
| | 07:02 | Family authors put them under Other.
| | 07:05 | That drops it all the way to the bottom
of the list and kind of hopefully keeps
| | 07:09 | snooping hands out of there.
| | 07:11 | You know they're trying to keep the
end user from messing with the formulas.
| | 07:14 | There is no way to lock them out.
| | 07:16 | So the best that you can do is,
just make it hard to get to.
| | 07:20 | So when I click OK here, there is Other,
it's currently set to 0, and I'm going
| | 07:24 | to do Ctrl+V right here and let me
enter that and see if I got it right, and
| | 07:31 | you'll notice that this grays
out and it went to number 2.
| | 07:36 | So now let's test it out.
| | 07:37 | Here is Number of Awnings.
| | 07:38 | Let me go to 4, click Apply.
| | 07:41 | Notice that changes to 4.
| | 07:43 | Let me go down to 1 and click Apply.
| | 07:48 | Now we haven't yet fixed what we need
to fix here, but notice that the Array
| | 07:53 | Parameter stayed too even though
we are getting the error message.
| | 07:55 | We're going to deal with the error
message next, but this says 1, and this said
| | 08:00 | one doesn't work, let me go to 2.
| | 08:01 | So let me Cancel here to reset this
back to valid value, let's apply that and
| | 08:07 | then let's click OK.
| | 08:08 | To use this now, what do we do?
| | 08:10 | Well, now what we do is we come in here,
now we go back to our Awning Family and
| | 08:15 | we select on it, highlight
its group and click the Array.
| | 08:20 | There is our Number of Awnings
parameter that's currently labeling that Array
| | 08:24 | and we're going to
change that to the ArrayParam.
| | 08:28 | So, instead of Number of Awnings driving
that parameter directly, we're going to
| | 08:32 | drive it with the ArrayParam which
does the error checking and so now if I go
| | 08:37 | back and let's test it out.
| | 08:40 | There is still one more
thing that we need to do here.
| | 08:42 | If we want the ArrayParam to now do
the error checking, we have to make sure
| | 08:48 | that that's the Parameter that's
actually driving the entire Family.
| | 08:52 | So notice here that the Number of
Brackets and the Canopy length are still being
| | 08:56 | driven by the Number of Awnings.
| | 08:58 | So we need to change that, so the
Number of Awnings will now use ArrayParam
| | 09:06 | and the Number of Brackets will also
use ArrayParam and again remember to type
| | 09:13 | them case-sensitive.
| | 09:14 | So let's apply that and let's
try some other values. Here is 5;
| | 09:20 | it should be working, Let's go all the
way down to 1 and apply it and you'll
| | 09:27 | notice that ArrayParam says, no,
can't go to 1, we got to go with 2 and the
| | 09:32 | Canopy will react accordingly and
still show us a valid array of two awnings;
| | 09:37 | we end up with three brackets.
| | 09:39 | So those are some examples of using
formulas to drive parameters both to
| | 09:44 | simplify your input and the math that
you have to do, make it a little easier to
| | 09:49 | let Revit do the math for you and also
using a simple if statement to actually
| | 09:54 | do some error trapping so that you can't
inadvertently put in a value that's not
| | 09:58 | valid and break your Family.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with family type parameters and flip controls| 00:00 | So we've made really good
progress on our complex canopy design.
| | 00:03 | We have a few more finishing
touches that I'd like to look at.
| | 00:06 | First is we're going to add a Family
types Parameter to control the bracket
| | 00:10 | | | 00:10 | that we're using and
allow us to swap in and out a simple and a
| | 00:14 | more complex bracket.
| | 00:15 | And we're also going to add a flip
control so that we have a little bit more
| | 00:19 | flexibility when we're placing the
Family and we can actually flip it
| | 00:22 | relative to the wall, kind of like
where you would see in doors and windows
| | 00:25 | when you're placing those.
| | 00:27 | So let's start with the Family types Parameter.
| | 00:30 | Here I have Canopy Step4, if you're following
along, or you can continue in your own file.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to select the bracket
here and I'm going to edit the group
| | 00:38 | that it's contained in.
| | 00:40 | Now you may recall that when you create
an Array that the Array becomes a member
| | 00:45 | of a group and the group is how Revit
is able to associate it parametrically.
| | 00:50 | So groups, when you highlight them, have
this little dashed box around there, so
| | 00:55 | we can just go ahead and select it
and that allows us to select the group.
| | 00:59 | And then up here on the Ribbon we're
going to see the Edit Group button.
| | 01:02 | So I'm going to click on that and
that puts me in Group Edit mode.
| | 01:05 | Now when you're in Group Edit mode
Revit kind of tints the background with like
| | 01:10 | a yellow color and of course it
shows this big Edit Group toolbar;
| | 01:14 | so those are the two ways you can
kind of tell you're in this mode.
| | 01:16 | Now here is our complex bracket design
over here, the one we prefer, but we've
| | 01:21 | unfortunately become a victim of value
engineering, and so we have to provide an
| | 01:25 | option that's much simpler.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to select this and I
really don't want to just change the bracket
| | 01:31 | completely, like I could just choose it
off the list here and be done with it,
| | 01:35 | but I'm hoping I can convince the
boss to stay with the complex one.
| | 01:38 | So rather than just change it outright
I'm going to make it a Parameter, so that
| | 01:43 | we can swap it in and out on the fly.
| | 01:44 | Now you may recall at the start of
this tutorial that we loaded in two
| | 01:50 | versions of the bracket;
| | 01:51 | we had Bracket and Bracket-
Simple as Families in this file.
| | 01:55 | So I've got this one selected over
here and I'm just going to go up here to
| | 01:59 | Label, choose Add Parameter and when I
do it this way Revit will figure out what
| | 02:04 | type of object that is, it's a
Family type and it's Specialty Equipment.
| | 02:08 | If you did it through the Family Types
dialog you'd have to choose the category
| | 02:11 | off the list, and I'm going to
choose Bracket Type for the Name.
| | 02:19 | Decide what Group I want to put it
under and it will be a Type-based
| | 02:23 | Parameter and I'll click OK.
| | 02:25 | Now unfortunately when I do this
Revit is going to generate an error, and
| | 02:30 | unfortunately these are the kind of
errors you don't really like to see, because
| | 02:34 | they cannot be ignored.
| | 02:35 | So some of these errors are relatively
benign and you can ignore them, or they
| | 02:40 | give you a few possible remedies.
| | 02:41 | This particular one you have to
deal with it before you can continue.
| | 02:45 | Now neither option that they are
offering is really terribly great.
| | 02:48 | You can either cancel, which basically
stops the whole command in its tracks and
| | 02:52 | we can't continue, or we can remove constraints.
| | 02:56 | Now the constraints in particular is you'll
notice that it's highlighting our two bookends.
| | 03:01 | So somehow Revit is not happy with
the constraints that we applied to the
| | 03:05 | bookends, the locking of our
Family to the Reference Plane.
| | 03:10 | And you know sometimes if you click
Expand it tells you a little bit more
| | 03:14 | information and all it's really doing
is confirming that the two Reference
| | 03:18 | Planes are involved in the two
specialty equipments and some dimensions that I
| | 03:22 | can't really see in this view.
| | 03:24 | So unfortunately as I said, Remove
Constraints is really the only way that we
| | 03:28 | can continue, but what of course that's
going to end up doing is, when I finish
| | 03:33 | the Group, if I flex this Family
and I choose one of my other sizes,
| | 03:39 | unfortunately all of my brackets
are going to be left behind here.
| | 03:43 | Notice how they all are still flexing,
you still have the right quantity, but
| | 03:48 | they've all gotten kind of left behind.
| | 03:51 | So here is the way that
I'm going to deal with this.
| | 03:53 | I'm going to go back to the 20 Long, that
kind of gets everything back where it was.
| | 03:59 | I'm going to select the first bookend
at the end here and I'm just going to
| | 04:05 | move it off to the side.
| | 04:08 | Then I'm going to select the
next one and do the same thing.
| | 04:12 | Basically go back to where we started
from before these things were constrained.
| | 04:19 | And then I'm going to simply realign them.
| | 04:21 | So I'm going to use my Align tool, pick
my Reference Plane, find my centerline,
| | 04:26 | lock that, Reference Plane,
pick my centerline and lock that.
| | 04:33 | Now that should do the trick.
| | 04:35 | Sometimes you just need to reset
things in order for Revit to be happy.
| | 04:39 | Let's check it out;
| | 04:40 | 30 Long, Apply, seems to be working.
| | 04:44 | Let's try the 10 Long,
Apply, seems to be working.
| | 04:49 | So in this case, we fortunately just needed
a reset and everything is now back to normal.
| | 04:56 | Unfortunately, sometimes
you won't be quite so lucky.
| | 04:58 | So you'll get those error messages
sometimes and that's half the battle is
| | 05:03 | learning how to deal with them and
walking through the steps to troubleshoot
| | 05:06 | and try and figure out what it's going to
take to get the Family to start behaving again.
| | 05:10 | Now I want to add one last finishing
touch to this before we complete it and
| | 05:15 | that is a Flip Control.
| | 05:16 | This is sort of an optional
feature, but it's a nice feature.
| | 05:19 | If you remember that when you add
doors and windows they have those little
| | 05:22 | double arrow flip controls.
| | 05:24 | It makes it really easy to
reverse the direction of the door.
| | 05:27 | We can do the same kind of thing with
this canopy Family here so that we can
| | 05:30 | easily flip it from one
side of the wall to the other.
| | 05:33 | So the Control is right here on
the Home tab and you actually have
| | 05:37 | several different versions;
| | 05:38 | you can do Vertical or Horizontal ones.
| | 05:41 | And the Single control actually
rotates and the Double control does more of a
| | 05:47 | flip, does more of a mirror.
| | 05:48 | So it's the Double Vertical that we want.
| | 05:50 | And you don't get really any kind of
indication from the mouse other than this
| | 05:54 | little tooltip that says
Click to place the control.
| | 05:56 | So I would prefer a cursor change of
some kind, but just click and that will
| | 06:01 | actually place the double arrow control.
| | 06:03 | And be careful not to click a
second time, because it will actually
| | 06:07 | create another control.
| | 06:09 | Instead, just cancel out of the command
or click the Modify tool to complete it.
| | 06:13 | And so the final step is, just save the
Family, and then we'll be ready to load
| | 06:17 | it into a project to test it out
and we'll do that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Loading a model family| 00:00 | So our complex canopy design is nearly complete;
| | 00:03 | we have one final test to go.
| | 00:04 | We need to load it into our project and
really make sure everything is working.
| | 00:08 | We could consider this the
final flex of our Family.
| | 00:12 | We have several things to test.
| | 00:13 | We want to test the overall sizes, we
want to make sure the Family types are
| | 00:16 | working, and we want to
test our new flip control.
| | 00:19 | If you discover any problems when you
load into project then you just have to
| | 00:23 | come back to the Family Editor, make
adjustments and then reload it and so goes the process.
| | 00:27 | So let's go ahead and give it a try.
| | 00:29 | I do have the Sandbox loaded in the
background and I'm in a file right now
| | 00:34 | called Canopy Step5 if you're following
along, or you can feel free to use your
| | 00:39 | own version of the file as well.
| | 00:41 | When you're loading your project if you
don't have a project loaded, Revit will
| | 00:45 | alert you, so make sure you have the sandbox
or some other project loaded in the background.
| | 00:49 | And when it switches over to that
project you'll see the little circle with
| | 00:53 | the line through it.
| | 00:54 | And this is because this is a wall-
based Family, so like doors and windows, you
| | 00:58 | have to actually highlight a wall in
order to place this Family, and I'll kind
| | 01:03 | of try and position it around the door
and go ahead and click to place it in.
| | 01:07 | Now I could continue placing more
if I wanted to, but I'll go ahead and
| | 01:10 | cancel out of there.
| | 01:11 | So let's take a look at this and
see how things are behaving here.
| | 01:15 | When I click on it the first thing we'll
notice is there is my little Flip Control.
| | 01:19 | Again, this is very similar to the flip
controls that you would see on doors and windows;
| | 01:23 | so let's give that a try.
| | 01:24 | I'll just go ahead and click on it
and you'll see the canopy flips to the
| | 01:28 | other side of the wall.
| | 01:29 | Now I probably don't want the canopy
inside the building so we'll go ahead and
| | 01:32 | flip it back, but that is functioning correctly.
| | 01:36 | Let's go to Family types here
and try some of the other types.
| | 01:40 | There is our 30 Long, seems to be working okay.
| | 01:42 | Let's try the 20 Long, so far so good.
| | 01:46 | And here is our 10 Long.
| | 01:47 | Let's go back to maybe a 30 Long which is
seems to be a pretty good size over here.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to come up here to my
Default 3D View icon, click on that and let's
| | 01:59 | hold the Shift key, spin it around with
the wheel, zoom in back here, and what
| | 02:05 | we start to see is that it's
got a slight problem there.
| | 02:10 | It looks kind of like the brackets are
sort of buried in the wall a little bit.
| | 02:13 | So we could kind of see that in Floor
Plane as well, but it's a little more
| | 02:16 | evident here, so that's why
I wanted to look at it in 3D.
| | 02:18 | So we'll adjust that in a moment,
but let's just see if the Family Type
| | 02:24 | Parameter is working.
| | 02:25 | Now to do that remember that that is a
Type-based Parameter, so if I look here
| | 02:30 | on the Properties you won't
see that Parameter anywhere.
| | 02:33 | But if we select the item, like I've
done here, and then click Edit Type on the
| | 02:39 | Properties palette, you're going to see
all of the Parameters that we've added.
| | 02:42 | Now Canopy Length is grayed out,
Number of Brackets is grayed out, that's
| | 02:46 | because both of those are tied to formulas.
| | 02:49 | So the only way we could actually
change those settings would be to dial-in a
| | 02:53 | new Number of Awnings.
| | 02:54 | So that's actually kind of a nice user
experience, because the end-user only has
| | 02:58 | to decide how many awnings they want
and they dial-in a number, for instance 5,
| | 03:03 | click Apply, and tough to see from
this view with this window open, but it
| | 03:09 | changed the quantity there;
| | 03:10 | I think there used to be one more over here.
| | 03:11 | Of course, I'd want to rename 30
Long if I was going to keep it this way.
| | 03:15 | So I'm going to change it back to 6 and Apply;
| | 03:18 | you'll see it adjust there.
| | 03:20 | Now here is the Bracket,
so let's try that one out.
| | 03:24 | Now unfortunately here is the
downside of Family type Parameters,
| | 03:27 | we've discussed this in the
previous movie, is this is looking for
| | 03:30 | Specialty Equipment.
| | 03:32 | This project happens to have
a lot of Specialty Equipment.
| | 03:34 | So if somebody is not careful they
could add a bunch of Kitchenettes along this
| | 03:37 | awning instead of Brackets or Bracket-Simples.
| | 03:41 | So let's do Bracket-Simple, let's click
Apply, and you could see that is working.
| | 03:46 | So let's go back to the main Bracket,
the nice detailed one. We'll click Apply.
| | 03:50 | And so overall everything is functioning
the way we expect, we just have to make
| | 03:54 | that one simple adjustment there.
| | 03:56 | So let's switch back to the Canopy and I'm
going to go to Floor Plan level for this.
| | 04:03 | This is actually a pretty easy thing to fix.
| | 04:05 | When we brought in the original components,
we just placed them relative to the wall.
| | 04:10 | We didn't actually lock
them to the face of the wall;
| | 04:13 | we just got them nearby.
| | 04:15 | What I want to do is use my Align
tool here and I'm going to change the
| | 04:19 | Preference to Wall faces, pick up the
face of the wall and then the edge of the
| | 04:25 | bracket and I'll lock that.
| | 04:27 | I'm going to just repeat that
for the bookends on both sides.
| | 04:32 | So I don't need to do every component, I
just need to do the start and end of the Array.
| | 04:35 | So I'm going to do here, the two
bookends for the brackets, and here the two
| | 04:42 | bookends for the awnings.
| | 04:45 | I'll Load that into Project, Overwrite
the existing version and you should see
| | 04:51 | it shift right there out
to the face of the wall.
| | 04:55 | And if we go back to our 3D View
you'll see that it now looks much nicer
| | 04:59 | except for the part that it's
covering over the window, but we'll let the
| | 05:01 | designers worry about that.
| | 05:03 | Alright so, let's zoom all
the way out here. There it is.
| | 05:06 | There is our completed complex
awning design. Congratulations!
| | 05:10 | You've completed a complex parametric Family.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Creating a Parametric Key PlanTracing a view| 00:00 | In the last chapter, we created
a complex model Family design.
| | 00:03 | In this chapter we're going to
look at a complex annotation Family.
| | 00:07 | I'm often asked how to
create a key plan in a project?
| | 00:09 | The first technique that folks usually
try is to create a new view at a very
| | 00:13 | small scale and then add
that view to the sheets.
| | 00:16 | The trouble with that approach is you
can only add a view to one sheet at a time.
| | 00:20 | So if your project has many views, and
many plan sheets, you're going to end up
| | 00:24 | having to duplicate that key plan
several times and that becomes pretty
| | 00:28 | unwieldy as a solution.
| | 00:30 | The solution I prefer is an
entirely different approach.
| | 00:33 | So in this movie, this complex
annotation Family that we're going to create is
| | 00:37 | actually going to be a key plan symbol.
| | 00:40 | Now, to work from here, I've just sort of
created a really simple project file here.
| | 00:46 | So we're looking at a sheet 101 and let's
just take a look here what else we've got.
| | 00:52 | We've got Sheets 101 through 105, and
these represent the sections of the Floor Plan.
| | 01:00 | So over here on the project Browser,
this A101 that we're looking at is looking
| | 01:04 | at Zone A. If I just sort of back
this out a little bit and uncrop it for a
| | 01:09 | moment, you can kind of see the
overall footprint, so all I did was put the
| | 01:13 | outline of a building here, but you
can see where the match lines are.
| | 01:18 | There is several match lines and
we end up with 5 zones in this Floor
| | 01:23 | Plan, because at the scale, at 1/8 inch scale,
they would not fit on one sheet obviously.
| | 01:29 | So each of those has been set up in
the various Floor Plans here and what we
| | 01:34 | need is a little key plan
here to say which zone we're in.
| | 01:37 | So to get myself started, I have
created a temporary key plan view here that I
| | 01:42 | called Key Plan Temp and
this is set at 1 to 200 scale.
| | 01:47 | Now, if I went to the Floor Plan and
actually dragged this view on here, this
| | 01:52 | would be the approach that a lot of
folks initially want to try here, you'll see
| | 01:57 | that it's about the right size for a
key plan, but again the trouble is I can't
| | 02:02 | add that to more than one view.
| | 02:03 | So I would have to duplicate it,
duplicate it and like we said that gets a
| | 02:07 | little bit tiresome.
| | 02:08 | What we're going to do instead is I'm
going to trace over this result, but we're
| | 02:14 | going to make sure that we
do it right here in the sheet.
| | 02:17 | This is important, because Revit
will not let you copy geometry between a
| | 02:21 | project and a Family as a rule, but
if you trace it in the sheet, you can
| | 02:26 | overcome this, and copy and paste
from the sheet to the annotation Family.
| | 02:31 | If you try to do it directly in
the view, it's not going to work.
| | 02:33 | So that's why we're going to
make sure that we're doing it here.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to go to
Annotate and click on Detail Line.
| | 02:41 | It's a little tough to get it;
| | 02:43 | it won't snap, but you can get it close
and again it's a key plan, so you don't
| | 02:48 | have to be perfect here.
| | 02:50 | You just have to be close enough, so
that it actually represents the true
| | 02:54 | shape of the building.
| | 02:55 | Now, this might bother some folks and
if that's the case, then you might want
| | 03:00 | to try another technique, but unfortunately,
there is no way that I can snap this directly.
| | 03:06 | So, the only one that I was
off a little bit is right here.
| | 03:10 | So I'm just going to nudge that over a
little bit with the Arrow key, and this
| | 03:14 | one is perhaps slightly off.
| | 03:17 | I'm going to have to zoom in a
little to get that to nudge. There we go!
| | 03:22 | That will do the trick.
| | 03:24 | Then I want to also draw some
Detail Lines for the match lines.
| | 03:29 | So we'll put one here, out here, and it
doesn't really matter how long these are.
| | 03:36 | So if I pull them out here, it's a
little easier to keep them from trying to
| | 03:40 | snap to the line work that I've already drawn.
| | 03:44 | Sometimes you have to zoom in to do that.
| | 03:53 | So once I have those lines drawn, I
want to surround all that stuff, and
| | 04:00 | you want to be careful, you saw that I was
trying to find a spot where I could click.
| | 04:03 | If you click here and you drag,
it's going to move your Viewport.
| | 04:06 | So if you drag from right to left,
it's going to create a crossing window and
| | 04:10 | you're going to get the Viewport.
| | 04:11 | So I want to do a selection this way,
so that I only get the detail lines.
| | 04:16 | I'm going to copy those to my clipboard.
| | 04:19 | So the next thing I'm going to do
is go to New Family, actually I'll do
| | 04:23 | new Annotation Symbol.
| | 04:25 | You could do New Family and that would
take you to the Generic Families Folder,
| | 04:29 | and then you could go
into the Annotations Folder.
| | 04:31 | If you do New Annotation Symbol, it
takes you right into the Annotations folder.
| | 04:35 | So you can get there either way.
| | 04:38 | I want to create this as a Generic Annotation.
| | 04:40 | I'm going to click Open and this just
gives me a blank page here, and you get
| | 04:46 | the standard note that's telling you a
little bit about this Family, and I'm
| | 04:49 | going to do Ctrl+V and just
sort of paste this thing in.
| | 04:54 | Now again, if you had created that
geometry directly in the view, Revit would've
| | 04:59 | generated an error message saying you
can't paste between project and Family.
| | 05:03 | So that's why we did it that way.
| | 05:04 | That's why we drew the
stuff in the Sheet View first.
| | 05:08 | Where you want the insertion
point here is really up to you.
| | 05:11 | If you want it in the middle of the
building, then I can take this stuff and I
| | 05:14 | can kind of center it in the middle of
the building if I want, maybe down at
| | 05:18 | the end of the building, it really depends on
what you think is more convenient to insert this by.
| | 05:23 | So if I want to do it that way, that's fine too.
| | 05:26 | It really doesn't matter so much;
| | 05:28 | this is a symbol now that we're creating.
| | 05:30 | So the precision level of a symbol isn't quite
as high as the precision level of model geometry.
| | 05:34 | Let me go ahead and delete this note,
and that gives us our basic building
| | 05:39 | shape to start from.
| | 05:41 | So we'll leave it there for now and in
the next movie, we will begin creating
| | 05:45 | our key plan Family from this basic geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding zones| 00:00 | Continuing with our Parametric key plan
Family, we've traced over the floor plan
| | 00:04 | from the project file to get the basic
geometry in the previous movie, and now
| | 00:09 | what we want to do is take this basic
geometry and create a series of filled
| | 00:13 | regions from that, that will
represent the shaded areas of the key plan.
| | 00:17 | So I'm in a file here called Key Plan
Step2 and if you're following along, you
| | 00:21 | can open that one up, or you can continue
in your own version from the previous lesson.
| | 00:27 | The next step that we need to do here
is to create some filled regions in the
| | 00:32 | five areas of the building.
| | 00:34 | So we're going to use Filled Region for
this, and let's start with the simple ones.
| | 00:39 | We can do a basic rectangle right here.
| | 00:42 | There is no need to lock all of these,
because some of this geometry that is
| | 00:45 | underlying is temporary anyway.
| | 00:47 | So we'll just leave it unlocked.
| | 00:50 | Go ahead and click Finish, and the
default Filled region style in the Family
| | 00:55 | Editor here is Solid Black.
| | 00:56 | If you're happy with that, then we're
basically done, otherwise, you could
| | 01:00 | duplicate that type and do a
crosshatch pattern, or something if you prefer.
| | 01:04 | The other thing that you might want to
consider is, as I zoom in here, let's try
| | 01:09 | and get the filled region here,
depending on the line style you chose for the
| | 01:13 | outline in the filled region, and that
would be back in the Sketch, you may or
| | 01:19 | may not like the rounding of the corners there.
| | 01:21 | Now, the Line Style just gives us
Generic Annotations as the only choice.
| | 01:25 | That's again, because we're in a
default generic annotation Family template.
| | 01:30 | So, if you want to adjust those line
weights, you'll have to go to Object
| | 01:33 | Styles, create a new line style, and
fiddle with that, or you can actually set
| | 01:38 | the edges of the filled region to
invisible lines and then come back and just
| | 01:42 | outline the overall shape.
| | 01:44 | That's actually what I'm going to do, is
I'm going to make those invisible lines
| | 01:48 | and then later I'm going to make this
line work here, a nice bold line type, But
| | 01:53 | you can see that that gives me a
cleaner, harder edge corner there.
| | 01:56 | Some of this is graphics standard,
so if you prefer to do yours a little
| | 01:59 | differently, feel free.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to go back to Home
and create another Filled Region.
| | 02:05 | You can trace over this, you can use
pick lines, any technique that you want to
| | 02:09 | do, but I'll just go ahead and start
off with Invisible lines this time.
| | 02:14 | It's just as easy to trace this
like so and Finish up like that.
| | 02:21 | Now, as you move along it's all going
to turn black, but each of those is a
| | 02:25 | separate region, so it's not an issue.
| | 02:28 | Let's go ahead and just do the next three
and there is our final filled region there.
| | 02:33 | So if I zoom back out, the
whole thing is black; that's fine.
| | 02:38 | What we're going to do is get
rid of these lines right here.
| | 02:42 | We no longer need those.
| | 02:44 | This one, I'll press the Tab
key to get all three little parts.
| | 02:49 | So we now have five separate filled
region shapes in here and we have an outline
| | 02:55 | that goes around the whole thing.
| | 02:58 | So that outline, I want to actually be a
little bit bolder line type, but again,
| | 03:04 | I currently only have Generic
Annotation as a Subcategory.
| | 03:08 | I don't have another
Subcategory to change there.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to go to the Manage
tab > Object Styles, and for Generic
| | 03:16 | Annotations, I'm going to add a
subcategory called Medium Lines.
| | 03:21 | Now, I'm just using the same name that
Revit would use in most of the other templates.
| | 03:26 | Medium Lines is typically about a pen
weight 3, but it's up to you if you want
| | 03:30 | to use a different pen weight of course,
and you could use a different line,
| | 03:34 | color, or pattern, it's entirely up to you.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to select, hit the Tab
key again, all of those lines, and now
| | 03:41 | Medium Lines will be there in the list and
I've just given that a little bit more weight.
| | 03:46 | So the next step that we need to do is
we want each of these filled regions to
| | 03:52 | have visibility control.
| | 03:54 | Now just like in a Model Family, we
were able to control the visibility of an
| | 03:59 | object using Parameters here on the
Properties palette, we can do the same thing
| | 04:03 | here in an Annotation Family.
| | 04:05 | So over here for the Filled region, the
Graphics area has the Visible check box
| | 04:10 | and right next to it has the
small little Parameter button.
| | 04:14 | So I can simply click on that.
| | 04:17 | That brings up the Associate Family
Parameter box and the Parameter Type is
| | 04:20 | going to be a Yes/No parameter.
| | 04:21 | It's going to be a check box.
| | 04:23 | If it's checked, it's yes;
| | 04:24 | if it's unchecked, it's no.
| | 04:26 | I'm going to add Parameter.
| | 04:27 | Now the top region is actually our fifth region;
| | 04:30 | so that is Zone E. So we're going to
name that Zone E. You can put it under
| | 04:35 | any group you want.
| | 04:36 | I'm going to put it under
Graphics I suppose and click OK.
| | 04:41 | Now while I'm here, I'm just going to go
ahead and add the additional parameters
| | 04:45 | I need, and I need five of these.
| | 04:50 | Once you've created the last one, you
just want to make sure that Zone E is
| | 04:54 | selected before you click OK.
| | 04:55 | We've created all five in this dialog,
but we want Zone E to be associated
| | 05:00 | with this filled region.
| | 05:03 | Then we simply want to select the others,
and associate them with an appropriate zone.
| | 05:08 | So that one is D, this one is C, B, and
A. So that gets all our regions set up.
| | 05:21 | It associates a Parameter with all of them.
| | 05:23 | In the next movie what we'll do is
begin creating Family types and formulas to
| | 05:29 | actually control which zone is
turned on under which circumstance.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding conditional formulas| 00:00 | In the previous movie, we set up our
filled regions, and assigned them to
| | 00:04 | Yes/No Family Parameters to control
their visibility, and in this movie, we're
| | 00:08 | going to go ahead and link up those
parameters with a little bit of smarts in
| | 00:12 | the Family Types dialog, so that we
can turn on and off the various zones as
| | 00:17 | needed in the project.
| | 00:18 | I'm in a file called Key Plan Step3 if
you're following along, and you can of
| | 00:24 | course continue in your own file if you prefer.
| | 00:26 | I'm just going to slide it over a
little bit here, so that when I open up the
| | 00:31 | Family Types dialog, I give myself some room,
so we can see what's going on in the background.
| | 00:36 | You can see here in the Graphics group,
I have the five visibility parameters
| | 00:41 | that we set up in the previous movie, and there
are really two approaches we can take to this;
| | 00:46 | we could simply create Family types,
call it Zone A and uncheck all the
| | 00:54 | others and click Apply, and in doing
that, that's the Zone A and then repeat,
| | 00:59 | Zone B, Zone D, and so on.
| | 01:00 | And that certainly is effective and we
could finish up in just a few minutes and
| | 01:05 | it would for the most part work just fine.
| | 01:07 | I can't help myself.
| | 01:08 | I sometimes like to add a little
bit more smarts to these things.
| | 01:11 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to use some formulas here to
| | 01:15 | control these things.
| | 01:16 | So again, if you prefer to just do it
with Family Types, feel free, you'll be
| | 01:19 | done before me, but mine will be cooler.
| | 01:22 | Let's go ahead and add a parameter, and the
parameter Type that I'm going to add is an Integer.
| | 01:28 | I'll put that also under Graphics just
to keep it all in the same place, and I'm
| | 01:32 | going to call this Key
Plan Region and I'll click OK.
| | 01:39 | That gives me a number here, little 0
and a little spinner that I can just
| | 01:45 | toggle through various numbers.
| | 01:48 | Now what I want to do is unfortunately,
they don't have a character parameter
| | 01:53 | type, so I had to go with integer here and use
a number, but that's not the end of the world.
| | 01:57 | Now what I'm going to do is over here
in the Zone A Formula field, I'm going to
| | 02:02 | write Key Plan Region=1.
| | 02:08 | When I enter that, you'll notice that it
unchecks the box, and it grays out Zone
| | 02:13 | A. Now, what did we just do here?
| | 02:15 | Well, this is a special
case of the if statement.
| | 02:19 | When you do an if statement to
control a check box, because the check box
| | 02:23 | can only have two possibilities,
checked or unchecked, you basically
| | 02:27 | describe the true condition.
| | 02:29 | So we say Key Plan Region=1, what
we're saying is, if that occurs, then the
| | 02:35 | answer is yes, so we want the box checked.
| | 02:39 | So let's see how that works.
| | 02:40 | Let's change this to 1, and click Apply
and you'll notice that checks the box.
| | 02:45 | If this value is anything else;
| | 02:46 | 0, 2, 3, 4, it's not checked,
because that condition is false.
| | 02:54 | So when it evaluates this condition, if
it turns out to be true, it checks the
| | 02:58 | box, if it turns out to be
false, it doesn't check the box.
| | 03:02 | If you're doing a conditional like
this for any other kind of parameter
| | 03:05 | that's not a check box, that's not a
Yes/No, then you've got to write if,
| | 03:09 | open parentheses, write your
condition, and then the condition if true,
| | 03:13 | comma, the condition if true, comma,
the condition if false, you've got to do
| | 03:16 | the whole statement.
| | 03:17 | But you can shorthand it to just the true
condition when you have these check boxes.
| | 03:22 | So what I'm going to do here is copy this
and paste it and just change the number.
| | 03:27 | I'm doing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V here, like so.
| | 03:35 | So now, when I dial in a Key Plan Region,
you'll see it changes the value, and
| | 03:43 | so that pretty much gives me formulaic
control over my key plan regions instead
| | 03:50 | of doing it manually with a bunch of
text boxes, and really who wants to do
| | 03:54 | things manually when you can
have a cool formula do it for you.
| | 03:57 | I may still want to create the types
to go along with this to have a more
| | 04:02 | complete solution, and that's because I
created these parameters as type-based
| | 04:06 | parameters, I could also modify
them and make them instance-based.
| | 04:09 | So if you decide that you actually
don't want the types at all, and you just
| | 04:14 | want to be able to dial in the
instance parameter, you can do that.
| | 04:17 | The only problem is, it will
complain that all of the other ones are
| | 04:21 | type-based parameters.
| | 04:22 | So I wanted to show you that;
| | 04:24 | this is where the planning comes in.
| | 04:26 | If you want to do an instance, you
need to make sure that you actually change
| | 04:31 | all of these to instance.
| | 04:33 | So you can do it both ways.
| | 04:36 | I'm going to leave it as a type-
based parameter right now, because that's
| | 04:39 | the way I set it up.
| | 04:40 | But if I wanted to, I could modify these,
change them all to Instance and then
| | 04:45 | control the whole thing
without any types at all.
| | 04:48 | So now I have all of my zone types, and
they are being controlled by formula, so
| | 04:53 | I have the best of both worlds,
and I'm going to OK out of here.
| | 04:57 | I'll save my Key Plan Family and in
the next movie, we'll load it into our
| | 05:02 | project and test it out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Flexing the key plan| 00:00 | So our Key Plan Family is complete,
we've added all the geometry we need,
| | 00:05 | we've assigned visibility parameters
to the geometry and set up types and
| | 00:09 | formulas to drive everything.
| | 00:11 | All that remains is the testing,
the flexing of this Family.
| | 00:15 | So to do that, we're going to
load it back into our project.
| | 00:18 | Now I still have my Key Plan
project open in the background;
| | 00:21 | if you've closed yours you can reopen it
now, and I'm looking at Key Plan Step4 here.
| | 00:28 | Now when I load it back into the
project you'll see it comes in by that
| | 00:31 | insertion point that I specified.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to place it right
there next to the other guy.
| | 00:36 | Let's zoom in, I'll do a zoom region, ZR,
and I'm just going to remove this view
| | 00:46 | and delete all of this temporary
geometry that we created in the first movie,
| | 00:53 | and I'm just going to take my Key Plan
now and slide it over here a little bit.
| | 00:57 | You'll notice that Zone 1 is lit up
already, and that's because this guy came
| | 01:03 | in, Zone A by default, if I change it
to Zone B it will switch, Zone C, Zone D,
| | 01:12 | and Zone E, and everything is working.
| | 01:15 | So we're all set, and that's
our complex annotation Family.
| | 01:20 | Feel free to add it to the other
sheets if you want and experiment with
| | 01:24 | it further.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. Controlling Rotation Work Planes and Shared ParametersUnderstanding rotation in families| 00:00 | The need to rotate items is fairly common.
| | 00:03 | However, controlling rotation
parametrically in a Family can sometimes be
| | 00:06 | a little bit tricky.
| | 00:07 | In this movie we will explore the
preferred way to control rotation in a Family
| | 00:11 | and look at a new tool to
facilitate doing that, the Reference Line.
| | 00:16 | We're going to build a new door Family
with a parametrically-controlled door swing.
| | 00:21 | So to get started, let's go over here
to the Families area of the recent file
| | 00:26 | screen and click New.
| | 00:28 | I want to select the Door template.
| | 00:31 | Hey, there is a Door - Curtain Wall;
| | 00:33 | that's not the one we want in this case.
| | 00:34 | We want to just use the regular Door
template which will actually give us a
| | 00:39 | wall-hosted Door Family.
| | 00:41 | You can see here, here is a
wall for us to get started with.
| | 00:44 | And there is an opening
already cut out of the wall.
| | 00:47 | There's actually an opening object
right here, a couple of basic Reference
| | 00:50 | Planes controlling the width of the
opening and so on, and a label for
| | 00:54 | Interior and Exterior.
| | 00:56 | And interestingly enough, they actually
include some geometry in the Door Family template;
| | 01:02 | this Frame/Mullion Extrusion.
| | 01:04 | It's actually an extrusion that goes
up and over the top of the door and down
| | 01:06 | again, kind of representing
the trim or a frame there.
| | 01:10 | And you could see it's grayed out,
so it's actually turned off in the
| | 01:13 | course level of detail.
| | 01:14 | Why they've included the door trim and
not an actual door, I'm not really sure,
| | 01:18 | but that's part of the
standard default template.
| | 01:21 | Now what we're going to do is start
laying out where we want our door to occur.
| | 01:25 | We're going to do that by laying
out a Reference Line which is going to
| | 01:28 | ultimately control the rotation.
| | 01:29 | Now what's a Reference Line?
| | 01:31 | A Reference Line is here on the Datum
panel and similar to a Reference Plane,
| | 01:35 | but it's a little bit different.
| | 01:37 | It's actually an object with finite
endpoints and integral work planes.
| | 01:42 | So let's go ahead and take a look.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to click on Reference Line
here and I'm just going to start right
| | 01:48 | about here, and you can draw this
thing at any angle you like, but I usually
| | 01:52 | like to start off at about a 45 degrees angle.
| | 01:55 | So I'll just kind of draw that out, like so.
| | 01:59 | And what you'll notice is we
get this green line and that's
| | 02:03 | pretty straightforward.
| | 02:04 | But when you click or when you
highlight it rather, it actually highlights the
| | 02:10 | green line that we drew and there's sort
of this dashed box that appears around it.
| | 02:14 | That dashed box is actually a work
plane that's built right into the Reference
| | 02:19 | Line object, so that's a feature that it has.
| | 02:22 | We can see it even better in the 3D
View, and I'll do a zoom region to get in
| | 02:27 | a little bit closer.
| | 02:28 | There is our Reference Line sitting
on the floor, and when I highlight it,
| | 02:32 | you'll see that not only does it have
one of those dashed boxes in plan, but it
| | 02:36 | actually has one running
vertical and one at each end as well.
| | 02:39 | So there is actually four integral work
planes built into this object and we're
| | 02:44 | going to look at those
in one of the next movies.
| | 02:47 | But for this movie, we're actually
going to focus on the endpoints and locking
| | 02:51 | down the Reference Line and getting it
positioned where we need it to so that it
| | 02:55 | can control our rotation.
| | 02:56 | So this is sort of just a
little preview of what's to come.
| | 02:59 | Let's go ahead and go back to the Floor Plan
view then and get ourselves set up for that.
| | 03:04 | So the first thing I want to do is
get the length of this Reference Line
| | 03:09 | to something rational.
| | 03:11 | So most doors are about 3 feet wide, so
let's go ahead and set that Length at 3 feet.
| | 03:17 | Then I want to decide where I
want my hinge to be in my Family.
| | 03:23 | Now you could really put it here or here
or here or here, it's really up to you.
| | 03:27 | I'm going to use the right topside
right here as the hinge point for the door.
| | 03:32 | So I want to go to Move, start at the
Endpoint right here, and I want to move
| | 03:37 | this Reference Line into position so
that it is snapped directly to that corner.
| | 03:45 | And if I zoom in really nice and close
here, you can see that I'm exactly at
| | 03:50 | that intersection between
those two Reference Planes.
| | 03:54 | So I've got a 3-foot long reference
line and it's attached at that point.
| | 03:59 | What I want to do next is I want to
make sure that I lock that hinge point in.
| | 04:03 | I don't want it to go anywhere on me.
| | 04:05 | So I'm going to use my Align tool, I'm
going to pick this Reference Plane, and
| | 04:10 | then I'm going to Tab in here
until it highlights the point.
| | 04:15 | Now each time you Tab, it's going to
look for the edges and other things, but
| | 04:19 | when you keep Tabbing, eventually it
will show a little blue dot, and that's
| | 04:22 | the point right there;
| | 04:23 | that's the endpoint and we're
going to select that and then lock it.
| | 04:27 | And we're going to do it in the other direction.
| | 04:29 | Here's the Reference Plane, I'm going to Tab
in to the point, click it, and then lock it.
| | 04:38 | So let's test that out.
| | 04:40 | If I go to Family Types, door
templates already have some parameters in them.
| | 04:45 | So you could see there's already a
Width parameter here and there's already a
| | 04:49 | Height parameter here.
| | 04:50 | Well, we can't see the height in this
view, so we're not going to flex that one,
| | 04:54 | but let's go ahead and flex the width.
| | 04:55 | Let's make this door opening a little bit
wider than it currently is, click Apply.
| | 05:00 | And you'll see the Reference line move
with the opening of the door and stay
| | 05:06 | attached at that corner.
| | 05:07 | Let me go ahead and change this back to 3 feet.
| | 05:11 | And the other way that we want to
flex it is in the other direction.
| | 05:15 | Flexing in the other direction for a
wall-hosted Family is a little trickier,
| | 05:20 | because there isn't a parameter in
the Family types that you can modify.
| | 05:24 | What you do instead is you select the
temporary wall that's sitting there in the project.
| | 05:30 | You go to Edit Type for that wall, you
edit its structure and you just change
| | 05:35 | the Thickness to something else.
| | 05:37 | So let's make the Thickness of this
wall 1 foot, click OK, and as that shifts,
| | 05:43 | you should see that the reference line
moves and maintains that hinge point.
| | 05:47 | So we've flexed it in both the X
and the Y directions if you will.
| | 05:50 | Let me undo that to get it
back to the default Thickness.
| | 05:55 | So we've got that hinge point locked
down, okay, and so that's important.
| | 06:00 | So let's apply the rotation now to it next.
| | 06:03 | I'm going to come up here to the
Dimension dropdown and I'm going to choose
| | 06:07 | an Angular Dimension.
| | 06:10 | I want to set the Angular Dimension
relative to this Reference Plane, the same
| | 06:14 | one that I locked the hinge
point to, and to the Reference Line.
| | 06:20 | So let's pull the dimension out here.
| | 06:21 | Now the dimension is
currently reading 43 degrees;
| | 06:24 | I thought I had drawn this at 45 before,
which is what I typically like to do;
| | 06:28 | that's my preference, but it's not
a big deal because we're going to
| | 06:31 | actually apply a dimension parameter
to this and flex it so we could make it
| | 06:34 | 45 when we're ready.
| | 06:36 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this dimension and just like linear
| | 06:41 | dimensions, the way that we add a parameter
to an Angular Dimension is to simply label it.
| | 06:46 | So I'll just come up here, go to
Label, and choose Add parameter.
| | 06:51 | Now you'll notice that there
weren't any choices on the label list.
| | 06:54 | That's because this is the first Angle-type
parameter that we've created in this file.
| | 06:59 | All the other parameters in
this file are Length parameters.
| | 07:03 | So I'm going to call this Door Swing Angle.
| | 07:09 | Now let's just shorten that to Swing Angle.
| | 07:14 | It's an angular parameter and it's
going to be grouped under dimensions and
| | 07:17 | we'll leave it Type-based
for now and we'll click OK.
| | 07:19 | So now we've got a Swing Angle
parameter there and let's go ahead and flex it
| | 07:24 | and make sure it's working.
| | 07:25 | I'm going to move this
out of the way a little bit.
| | 07:29 | So let's try 75 degrees,
click Apply, see it working.
| | 07:35 | Let's try 20 degrees, click Apply.
| | 07:39 | Let's go back to our 45, which
was what we had wanted all along.
| | 07:43 | That looks pretty good.
| | 07:44 | Now let's just test it in the other direction.
| | 07:46 | Let's make sure that if we
move the width, it stays 45.
| | 07:50 | Notice that the width is
smaller and it stayed 45.
| | 07:54 | Try another number in here.
| | 07:57 | So you want to thoroughly test it in
all directions before you commit, but it
| | 08:02 | looks pretty good to me.
| | 08:03 | I'm going to reset everything back to
the defaults that I want, and click OK.
| | 08:08 | And so that is the best way, the best practice
way to set up angular rotation in your Family:
| | 08:16 | put a reference line in, you lock down
one of the points of the reference line
| | 08:19 | so that it becomes your hinge, and then
you add your angular dimension to it and
| | 08:24 | flex the heck out of it
to make sure it's working.
| | 08:26 | In the next movie, we'll go ahead and
start adding some geometry to this thing
| | 08:29 | so that we can start building a door out of it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Building geometry on a reference line| 00:00 | Continuing on our Door Family with a
parametrically-controlled door swing,
| | 00:04 | we're going to look at two ways that
we can start creating the door panel
| | 00:09 | geometry in this Family.
| | 00:12 | This movie will be the first of two.
| | 00:14 | So we are actually going to use the
work plane that's built into the Reference
| | 00:18 | Line to draw our door geometry.
| | 00:21 | In the next movie, we will look at
loading in nested Families to use as
| | 00:25 | panel geometry instead.
| | 00:27 | The challenge we are going to have
with using this Reference Line as a work
| | 00:31 | plane is that it's at an angle right now.
| | 00:33 | So, there are really two
ways we could approach that.
| | 00:36 | We could simply flex the angle to an
angle that's more conducive to working,
| | 00:42 | such as 90 degrees and that would make
it easy for us to look at the view this
| | 00:51 | way and to work directly on that Reference Line.
| | 00:55 | Or sometimes what I will do is I will
actually draw a section at 45 degrees, so
| | 01:04 | that we're looking directly at
it at the angle that it's at.
| | 01:08 | Now, this is a six of one and a half
dozen of the other kind of situation.
| | 01:12 | Neither of these approaches
is considered right or wrong.
| | 01:15 | It's really a matter of personal preference.
| | 01:18 | Sometimes, I like to do 45-degree just
because it kind of reminds me that I'm
| | 01:23 | working on that plane.
| | 01:24 | If I go to a 90-degree orientation then
I might get confused and I might end up
| | 01:29 | working on this Reference Plane instead.
| | 01:32 | So, that's the only reason that I
sometimes like to do it this way.
| | 01:36 | Now when I draw this section here I can
just double-click it to look right at it
| | 01:41 | and the wall and the door geometry
will look a little strange because you are
| | 01:46 | actually cutting it at an angle.
| | 01:48 | But what we're really interested
in is this guy right down here.
| | 01:53 | So you'll notice that our Reference
Line is sitting there and as we saw in the
| | 01:57 | previous movie there is that dashed box
that surrounds it and those are integral
| | 02:01 | work planes built right into the Reference Line.
| | 02:05 | What I want to do here is I want to set
that Reference Line as the active work plane.
| | 02:11 | So I'm going to go to the Home tab and
over here on the Work Plane panel, I'm
| | 02:15 | going to click the Set button.
| | 02:18 | This will give me the normal Work
Plane dialog where we could either choose a
| | 02:22 | named work plane or in this case we
wanted to Pick a plane, click OK, and if you
| | 02:28 | move your mouse in the general
vicinity of the Reference Line, let's go ahead
| | 02:33 | and zoom-in on that so we
can see a little better.
| | 02:36 | You can see it highlighting it but it
would actually be highlighting the plane
| | 02:40 | that's parallel with the ground.
| | 02:42 | So that's not the one I want.
| | 02:43 | So, I'm going to press the Tab key,
and then it will cycle to the one that's
| | 02:47 | facing us vertically.
| | 02:49 | That's the plane that I want to make
active and I'll click on it and that makes
| | 02:53 | it the active work plane.
| | 02:54 | Now, if you want to be sure you can
click the Show Work Plane button and it
| | 02:58 | will shade that in a blue tint and that kind of
lets you know that that's the active work plane.
| | 03:04 | So with that plane active, it becomes
real easy for us to draw an extrusion now
| | 03:09 | that represents the door.
| | 03:11 | I'm just going to do a simple box.
| | 03:14 | I'll start somewhere over here
and I'll snap somewhere over here.
| | 03:19 | And I'm kind of making the
width a little bit random right now.
| | 03:22 | I'm going to lock the top, lock the
bottom, and then I am going to use my Align
| | 03:28 | command to find the endpoint of the
Reference Line, see if I can tab in there.
| | 03:35 | I'm not sure, it might already have it.
| | 03:38 | I want to be sure here, so I'm going
to move this line over pretty far away
| | 03:43 | and then Tab in here.
| | 03:45 | There is the Reference Level,
there is the Sketch Line.
| | 03:49 | There it is right there;
| | 03:50 | that's what I'm looking for right there.
| | 03:52 | You see how it says Reference Lines, it
repeats it several times the Reference
| | 03:56 | Lines, but there's little blue
dot, it's a little hard to see.
| | 03:58 | That's the point that I want to use for
alignment and then align this edge to it
| | 04:04 | and I'm going to lock that.
| | 04:05 | I want to do the same thing on the other end.
| | 04:07 | Now, sometimes again this is a
little tricky, but that's Frame/Mullion.
| | 04:10 | There is a lot of geometry in the way here.
| | 04:14 | So, let me get out of here.
| | 04:15 | I will show you a little trick that I do.
| | 04:16 | I'll go in here and I'll select all
of this geometry that's in my way.
| | 04:24 | Come down here to the little sunglass
icon Temporary Hide/Isolate and I'm going
| | 04:29 | to hide all those elements.
| | 04:32 | Then I'll select my, what is this one here?
| | 04:35 | That's the Opening Cut;
| | 04:36 | let's hide that too.
| | 04:37 | Then I'm going to select my 3D geometry,
my Extrusion, go back to Edit Extrusion
| | 04:44 | and it should be a little easier now
to Tab in here and find the end of it,
| | 04:50 | there it is right there: Reference Lines.
| | 04:52 | I don't know if you can see that little
blue dot, and like so and I'll lock that.
| | 04:59 | Now if I were to measure this, you'll
see that it's exactly 3 feet long and the
| | 05:05 | reason for that is we told this
Reference Line to be 3 feet long.
| | 05:11 | So let's finish this and
let's go back to the Plan view.
| | 05:15 | And a couple of things, first of all,
the door slab is like a bank vault,
| | 05:20 | it's awfully thick.
| | 05:21 | So we'll address that in just a moment
but let's take care of the width first.
| | 05:26 | The door template that this
Family starts on is a little bizarre.
| | 05:29 | Revit has put the equal (EQ) equal (
EQ) here in Plan view but the actual
| | 05:35 | parameter that's controlling the
width here, you don't see unless you go to
| | 05:39 | either the Exterior, or Interior
Elevation view but you can see it right
| | 05:44 | there, the Width label.
| | 05:45 | I'm not sure why they did it that way.
| | 05:47 | Personally I would have put both
this equal (EQ) equal (EQ) and the Width
| | 05:51 | label in the same view.
| | 05:53 | I don't care if you put them in the
Plan view or if you put them in the
| | 05:55 | Elevation view but putting one in one
view and the other in the other view
| | 05:59 | seems a little odd to me.
| | 06:00 | What we're going to do is the
same trick I just did a moment ago.
| | 06:03 | I'm going to hide this geometry just
for the moment, so I can get a clear look
| | 06:08 | at this Reference Line.
| | 06:11 | Go to my Dimensions,
create an Aligned Dimension.
| | 06:16 | I'm going to use the same Tab trick
that I used a moment ago to Tab in and find
| | 06:22 | that little point and
then do it again over here.
| | 06:25 | A little trickier on this end but
if you keep Tabbing, there it is.
| | 06:31 | Get that little point and I can pull
out my 3 foot dimension and now I'm going
| | 06:37 | to label this dimension with the
same parameter that's being used for the
| | 06:42 | opening, the Width parameter.
| | 06:44 | So now that I've done that
let's go ahead and flex it.
| | 06:48 | Let me reset the Temporary Hide/Isolate
to turn this Extrusion back on again and
| | 06:54 | let's go ahead and flex. Alright!
| | 07:00 | So let's try a 4 foot Width, click
Apply and you'll see the length of the
| | 07:07 | Reference Line grows and because we
locked the extrusion sketch to the Reference
| | 07:11 | Line, it grows with it.
| | 07:13 | If we change the rotation angle,
you're going to see the extrusion rotate
| | 07:20 | with the Reference Line, that's
because the extrusion is drawn on the work
| | 07:25 | plane of the Reference Line.
| | 07:27 | If we didn't draw it on the work plane
of the Reference Line, it would be very
| | 07:30 | difficult to get that to happen.
| | 07:32 | So that was the advantage of
drawing on that work plane.
| | 07:36 | Let me reset back to 45 and 3 feet.
| | 07:41 | And then as far as the thickness goes,
there is a parameter down here for Thickness.
| | 07:48 | Let's put in 2 inches for
that right now, click OK.
| | 07:52 | I'm going to select this Extrusion
and show you a little trick here.
| | 07:58 | We can actually take the Extrusion
Start or the Extrusion End and actually link
| | 08:05 | those up with parameters.
| | 08:06 | So I'm going to let the Extrusion
Start stay at 0, in the Extrusion End I'm
| | 08:12 | going to click the little button here
and I'm going to link that up with my
| | 08:17 | Thickness parameter, click OK, and now
the thickness of that panel just drops
| | 08:22 | down to 2 inches, and again I
should flex it one more time.
| | 08:26 | Let's try 4 feet, let's try 25 degrees,
let's try 4 inches thick and click Apply
| | 08:35 | and everything seems to be working.
| | 08:37 | And I will reset it all back to the way it was.
| | 08:46 | So, if you prefer, you can just simply
set the work plane of the Reference Line
| | 08:52 | active, draw directly on that work plane.
| | 08:55 | As the Reference Line moves when you
rotated it, it will take the extrusion
| | 09:00 | geometry with it and you can also
assign other parameters to the Reference Line
| | 09:04 | like we did here with the Width
parameter so that the entire extrusion is being
| | 09:08 | controlled parametrically by
the other settings in the file.
| | 09:12 | In the next movie, we're going to
look at an alternative approach to doing
| | 09:16 | this, but ultimately the one that you
settle on is really a matter of personal
| | 09:19 | preference.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Hosting a nested family on a reference line| 00:00 | So in the previous movie we took the
Work Plane built-in to our Reference Line,
| | 00:04 | made it active, and drew the
extrusion directly on that Work Plane.
| | 00:09 | I'm in RFE Door Step 3 file right now,
and you can open that file if you have
| | 00:15 | access to the Exercise Files and follow
along, or you can continue in your own
| | 00:19 | version if you prefer.
| | 00:20 | The alternative approach that we can
use to building the Extrusion directly on
| | 00:25 | the Work Plane is we can
nest in a nested Family.
| | 00:29 | So to start off with, I'll delete
the Extrusion and I still want to keep
| | 00:34 | my Reference Line, that's going to
remain important to control my rotation
| | 00:38 | and other parameters.
| | 00:39 | So we'll keep that Reference Line.
| | 00:41 | But instead of drawing the Extrusion
directly on the Reference Line, we'll bring
| | 00:46 | in a Family to use there instead.
| | 00:49 | Now the first thing I want to do is set
a different work plane active this time.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to go to the Set Work
Plane button and it's currently using the
| | 00:59 | Reference Level as my Work Plane.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to do Pick a plane, and
highlight the plane that's parallel on the
| | 01:06 | Reference Line, and click on it and
that will make that the active work plane.
| | 01:11 | Now if you want you can click Show and
see it, but that's a little distracting.
| | 01:15 | So I'll turn it off again, but that just
confirms that we've gotten that one set.
| | 01:20 | Now the next thing I want to do is open
up the Family that we're going to load in.
| | 01:24 | Now this Family is called Door panel-Flush
and it is a Generic model face-based Family.
| | 01:35 | So when you open a face-based Family
there is a surface sitting here, it's
| | 01:39 | just a generic Extrusion and you use that as
the reference to draw your Family geometry.
| | 01:45 | Now if you look at the Floor Plan
you've got the typical Reference Planes in
| | 01:49 | both directions marking the insertion point.
| | 01:52 | So it's just a basic Family from that respect.
| | 01:55 | The template that was used here was New >
Family and it was a Generic model face-based.
| | 02:03 | Now face-based can be a little nicer
sometimes than either ceiling a floor or
| | 02:07 | wall-based because a face-based
Family is simply looking for a surface.
| | 02:12 | That surface can be horizontal, it can
be vertical, it could even be a slope
| | 02:16 | surface on a roof, for example.
| | 02:18 | So when you build your geometry if you
want this geometry to be perpendicular to
| | 02:23 | any surface, using a face-
based template is a good way to go.
| | 02:27 | Now otherwise all that's in
here it's just a simple extrusion.
| | 02:32 | That extrusion uses the same trick that
we did in the previous movie, we're at
| | 02:36 | the 2 inch thickness parameter being
assigned to control the thickness, and then
| | 02:41 | otherwise it's got a width and height parameter.
| | 02:43 | Otherwise, it's pretty straightforward Family.
| | 02:45 | Let's go ahead and click the Load into Project,
and that'll take us back to our door Family.
| | 02:51 | Initially, we get the Can't Insert
symbol, the circle with a line through it.
| | 02:57 | That's because if you look here on
the Ribbon, the default behavior is to
| | 03:01 | place on a vertical face.
| | 03:03 | Now what this means is if you were to
highlight any vertical face on the screen
| | 03:07 | like the face of the wall or even the
face of our Reference Line, it would try
| | 03:12 | to place that panel on that surface.
| | 03:15 | Well, we don't want the panel
laying down flat on the floor;
| | 03:19 | we want it standing upright.
| | 03:20 | So what we're going to do instead is
choose the Place on Work Plane option, and
| | 03:26 | then that will see my active work plane
which is currently the Reference Line.
| | 03:31 | You can see that confirmed right here
on the options bar, Placement Plane,
| | 03:35 | Reference Lines, and then what I want
to do is, let's zoom in a little bit.
| | 03:40 | I need to match the orientation of
this door panel I'm bringing in to the
| | 03:45 | existing Reference Line.
| | 03:47 | If I simply highlight the Reference
Line and tap my spacebar, it will rotate to
| | 03:53 | match the orientation of the Reference Line.
| | 03:55 | I'm going to tap it again and it will
rotate another 90 degrees, and now it's
| | 04:00 | exactly oriented the way I want, and
then I can just simply moved down here, and
| | 04:04 | snap to the endpoint, like so.
| | 04:09 | Now if you need to, you might have to lock that.
| | 04:12 | Let's go ahead and flex it and see
whether or not locking is necessary.
| | 04:15 | So let me zoom this out, or I'll just
paint it actually over here, and let's try
| | 04:22 | another rotation and another
width and let's click Apply.
| | 04:28 | And you can see that it doesn't
appear that we need to lock it.
| | 04:31 | It's staying attached to that
endpoint that we chose, rotating with the
| | 04:37 | Reference Line, and moving
as the hinge point moves.
| | 04:39 | Let's go ahead and set these back to
our default orientations and click OK.
| | 04:48 | So the one thing you may have
noticed is that the size of the panel was
| | 04:53 | unaffected by the change in width.
| | 04:56 | That's also something that we can
modify using this technique and that will be
| | 05:00 | the subject of the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Driving parameters for nested families| 00:00 | Continuing with our parametrically-
controlled door Family, in the previous movie
| | 00:05 | we left off by adding a door panel
using a nested Family, and when we flexed it
| | 00:11 | was rotating and moving correctly [00:00:
153.82] but the size of the nested door
| | 00:15 | panel was not changing.
| | 00:16 | So in this movie we're going to look at
using parameters in the host Family to
| | 00:21 | drive the values of
parameters in the nested Family.
| | 00:25 | This can be a really powerful feature
that will enhance your nesting of Families.
| | 00:30 | Without this, it becomes a very manual
kind of process, but with this feature
| | 00:34 | you can have a great deal of control over
the nested Families, so let's take a look.
| | 00:39 | I'm in a file here called RFE Door Step 4,
you can open that file or continue in
| | 00:44 | your own version if you prefer, and
we have our nested Generic model Family
| | 00:50 | right here Door panel, and when I
click on it you will see some parameters
| | 00:56 | listed over here on the Properties
palette, and you will also see Edit Type as
| | 01:02 | you might expect and other properties here.
| | 01:05 | When you're in the Family Editor and
you go to either the Property dialog or
| | 01:10 | the Edit Type dialog that we're in right
now, there will be a third column over here.
| | 01:15 | And several of the parameters
have these little tiny buttons.
| | 01:19 | Any parameter that has a little tiny
button over here in the far right column
| | 01:24 | you can link that parameter up
with a parameter in the host file.
| | 01:28 | So you can use a parameter in the host file to
drive the underlying value in the nested Family.
| | 01:34 | So for example, Width is one of those
parameters that we probably want to drive here.
| | 01:39 | So I can click this little button, and
I can link up the Width parameter in my
| | 01:45 | host door Family to make it drive and
control the Width parameter that's built
| | 01:51 | into the nested Family.
| | 01:52 | I can do the same for
Thickness and the same for Height.
| | 02:00 | There may be other parameters that we
would want to do that to, but let's start
| | 02:03 | with those three, let's click OK, and
zoom out just a touch, and let's flex.
| | 02:09 | I'll come over here, let's try a new
value for at least the two that we can see,
| | 02:17 | which is Width and Thickness.
| | 02:19 | Let's apply those and you'll see that
as the size of the opening grows, now the
| | 02:25 | nested Family actually grows as well.
| | 02:27 | If you change the rotation it
might be even easier to see;
| | 02:31 | there it is right there.
| | 02:33 | And I can reset these back.
| | 02:34 | Let's apply that and let's just make
sure that the height is working as well.
| | 02:47 | Let's actually do that in 3D View,
it might be a better view for that.
| | 02:50 | Move this over here, Family Types, try
8 feet, click Apply, and you'll see that
| | 02:59 | the door panel is changing height as well.
| | 03:00 | So this feature allows us to link up
any parameters in the host Family with the
| | 03:06 | underlying parameters in the nested
Family and becomes a very powerful way to
| | 03:10 | manage our content so that the host
Family can fully control any of the nested
| | 03:16 | parts and components.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shared parameters| 00:00 | Continuing on with the Door Family
that we've been developing over the
| | 00:03 | last several movies,
| | 00:04 | in this movie we're going to add
some shared parameters to this file.
| | 00:08 | Now if you recall in an earlier chapter,
the chapter on Annotation Families,
| | 00:13 | we did discuss the concept of shared parameters.
| | 00:16 | So I encourage you to go back
and review that movie if need be.
| | 00:20 | Shared Parameters are a useful and
powerful way for you to manage parameters
| | 00:25 | externally to both the project
and Family files in your firm.
| | 00:30 | We create a single Shared Parameter
file,shared across the entire company,
| | 00:34 | and then we can use it in
multiple Families and/or projects.
| | 00:38 | The reason we want to do this is one of
the main features of Shared Parameters
| | 00:42 | is that they can be scheduled
and they can be included in tags.
| | 00:46 | All of the parameters we've created
directly in the Family Editor can not be
| | 00:51 | included in schedules and tags.
| | 00:53 | So that becomes a major consideration if
the parameters you're creating you also want
| | 00:59 | to have in your reports and
in your schedules, and so on.
| | 01:02 | So make sure that you've factored
that in when you're doing the design and
| | 01:07 | planning of your Family content.
| | 01:09 | I have here onscreen RFE Door Step 5 Family.
| | 01:14 | It's provided with the Exercise Files.
| | 01:16 | If you're continuing along
with your own version instead,
| | 01:20 | you want to make sure that you
include one other nested Family
| | 01:25 | and that is the Door panel Light
which is also provided in the same folder.
| | 01:29 | So you can simply go to the Insert tab and
choose Load Family and load that Family in,
| | 01:33 | and then your file should look like mine
does and we're going to use that second
| | 01:38 | nested Family shortly.
| | 01:39 | Now we can use Shared
Parameters for almost anything,
| | 01:42 | but again the main goal would be for
the things that we want to schedule.
| | 01:46 | So what I recommend you do is just look at
your existing door schedule for your company
| | 01:51 | and go through each column and decide
which columns are already provided for
| | 01:54 | in the out-of-the-box Revit
content and which are not,
| | 01:57 | and the ones that aren't, you'd probably
want to create those with Shared Parameters.
| | 02:01 | So let's click on the Manage tab.
| | 02:03 | Go to the Shared Parameters button and the
Edit Shared Parameters dialog will launch.
| | 02:10 | Now if you've been following along
in the course since the beginning,
| | 02:13 | then you should already have the LDC
Shared Parameters file loaded right here.
| | 02:19 | If you haven't, then you want to
click Browse and it's located in
| | 02:24 | Exercise Files > Finished Files and
Chapter02 and the current state that it's in
| | 02:29 | is where we left it at that Annotation chapter.
| | 02:32 | So we're going to make sure
that that's what we have open,
| | 02:35 | and what you'll notice here is the
current parameter group that loads is Rooms
| | 02:39 | and in fact that's the only
parameter group in the file because
| | 02:42 | that's what we created back
in the Annotation chapter.
| | 02:45 | What we're going to do now is add
another group and additional parameters to it,
| | 02:49 | and I really want to stress this
part, even though Rooms is in here,
| | 02:53 | sometimes people think, well I should
have one Shared Parameter file for Rooms and
| | 02:56 | another one for Doors, that's not the case.
| | 02:59 | I want to completely reiterate that you
should have only one Shared Parameter file.
| | 03:03 | It should be shared across the entire
office, so check with your CAD manager.
| | 03:07 | Check with your BIM Manager.
| | 03:08 | Make sure that you're
pointing to the correct one.
| | 03:10 | There are tools out there that
help you merge them back together
| | 03:13 | if you accidentally end up with more than one,
but you really want to try and avoid that.
| | 03:16 | So one Shared Parameter file, that's the rule.
| | 03:19 | Okay, so let's click on New Group
here and I'll call this, Doors, click OK.
| | 03:27 | Then I'm going to add a
couple new parameters to that.
| | 03:30 | Now I'm going to keep it pretty
simple for this exercise, just to kind of
| | 03:32 | get the point across.
| | 03:34 | The first one I want to
create I'm going to call Exist and
| | 03:37 | this is going to be a yes/no parameter.
| | 03:40 | Now that's going to create a check box
for me that I can assign to my Family and
| | 03:45 | when I check the box I'm saying
that this is an existing door,
| | 03:48 | and when I uncheck the box, it's not an
existing door so that would be first one.
| | 03:52 | Let's add another new parameter and
this one is going to be called panel Type,
| | 03:59 | and this one's going to
be a Family Type parameter.
| | 04:02 | Now you may recall from the previous
few movies that our panel Type nested
| | 04:08 | Family is a generic model.
| | 04:10 | So I need to make sure that I'm
choosing Generic model here and panel Type
| | 04:15 | and I'll click OK and I could add as many
more parameters as I need in my schedule,
| | 04:20 | but I'm going to stop
with just those two for now.
| | 04:22 | Let's click OK and now let's go ahead
and start adding those to this Family.
| | 04:28 | So the panel Type is pretty easy to add;
| | 04:30 | I just simply click on the nested Family
| | 04:33 | that's already here in my file
and label it like we've done before,
| | 04:37 | and instead of going right to creating
the parameter, you look up here at the top
| | 04:44 | and you can either create this as a
Family Parameter, which is what we've
| | 04:48 | been doing for the last several
chapters, or a Shared Parameter.
| | 04:52 | So I'm going to choose Shared Parameter
here and that kind of grays everything else
| | 04:56 | out down here because all of this will
now be determined by the Shared Parameter.
| | 05:01 | So I'm going to click select it.
| | 05:03 | It already goes to my Doors group.
| | 05:05 | I'll choose panel Type and I'll click
OK and notice that all this fills in
| | 05:09 | based on the way we previously
defined the Shared Parameter.
| | 05:13 | Now as far as group under, you
can put it anywhere you want.
| | 05:15 | I'm going to put this under Graphics and I
just want to stress here the two little notes.
| | 05:20 | The main reason that we're doing this is
because a Family Parameter cannot appear
| | 05:25 | in schedules and tags, a Shared
Parameter can appear in schedules and tags,
| | 05:30 | it can also appear in
these other things as well.
| | 05:32 | So that's important.
| | 05:33 | That's why we're doing it this way.
| | 05:34 | Click OK and then to use the other Shared
Parameter, we need to go to Family Types,
| | 05:40 | and we're just simply
going to click Add over here.
| | 05:43 | I'm going to add it as a Shared
Parameter, click Select, add the
| | 05:48 | existing parameter,
| | 05:49 | click OK and I'm going to group this
under Phasing because it's either existing
| | 05:55 | or not existing so Phasing
seems like a good spot for that.
| | 05:58 | I'm going to change this to an Instance
Parameter because I don't need a whole
| | 06:03 | new type to determine whether
or not it's existing or not.
| | 06:06 | I just need to be able to check each
individual door, so I'm going to do that one as
| | 06:10 | an Instance Parameter, I'm going to click
OK and it appears in its own new group here.
| | 06:15 | It'll have the word Default in the
name because the default is for the check
| | 06:19 | box to be selected,
| | 06:21 | but each object can have its own setting.
| | 06:23 | So that's why they put the word
default, that's how to let you know it's
| | 06:25 | an Instance Parameter.
| | 06:26 | Alright, let's do one more
little clever thing here.
| | 06:29 | The Swing Angle is a parameter that we
added at the beginning of this chapter.
| | 06:33 | Typically, the graphic convention in most
architectural firms is for existing doors
| | 06:38 | to be shown with a 45-degree swing and new
doors to be shown with a 90-degree swing.
| | 06:43 | So what if I clue Revit in to that
by writing a little formula here.
| | 06:49 | So I'm going to write if (Exist, 45 degrees,
90 degrees) Now what does that mean exactly?
| | 06:56 | Well, I'm saying if it Exist =
true, so when you put a check box,
| | 07:03 | when you put a yes/no parameter in your
formulas, you're assuming the true condition.
| | 07:08 | So just by saying if Exist, it's like saying
if exist is yes, okay, if exist is checked,
| | 07:15 | then, the condition if true,
the condition if false.
| | 07:19 | So if existing is checked, it'll use 45
and if it's not checked, it'll use 90.
| | 07:25 | Let's test it out You can
see it's already 45 there;
| | 07:28 | if I uncheck, it goes 90,
| | 07:31 | and I recheck it goes back to 45.
| | 07:33 | So now with a simple check box I
can change the swing angle to these
| | 07:37 | predefined designations,
| | 07:39 | If you want a third or
fourth or other angle in there,
| | 07:42 | you've just got to expand on your if
statement to include other conditions.
| | 07:46 | So everything appears to be working
correctly here, but if I click on Apply,
| | 07:50 | I'm going to get a warning from Revit.
| | 07:52 | In general Revit does not like
Instance Parameters and Type Parameters to
| | 07:57 | be mixed in formulas.
| | 07:58 | So it's kind of throwing me a little
warning here and saying we don't like this.
| | 08:02 | Alright, let's cancel that and I should
be able to remedy this pretty easily by
| | 08:07 | selecting the Swing Angle Parameter,
going to Modify and just changing it to
| | 08:12 | an Instance Parameter.
| | 08:14 | So when I do that, it gains the word
default, when I click Apply that should
| | 08:19 | take care of the error.
| | 08:20 | So now that both this one and this
one are Instance Parameters, it doesn't
| | 08:25 | have any complaint.
| | 08:27 | So let's go up here and just take a
look at the other parameter we created.
| | 08:31 | We also created panel Type and
there are currently two choices:
| | 08:34 | Flush and a Door with a Light,
| | 08:36 | and if I choose that and click Apply you
can see the Door now has a vision panel,
| | 08:40 | a vision light, and if I go
back to Flush it does that.
| | 08:43 | S So let's okay that and Save, and
then we'll load it into a project.
| | 08:51 | Now in the background here I have a
file called Door Sandbox, which is provided
| | 08:57 | along with the Exercise Files.
| | 08:58 | I decided to go to a simpler sandbox for
this example to kind of get rid of some
| | 09:02 | of the clutter here.
| | 09:03 | So I'm just going to place
this door, right here on screen;
| | 09:07 | it gives me a door tag
| | 09:09 | and I'll just kind of move that out of the way.
| | 09:12 | Now I'm going to clean up a little bit
here, so let me close the Family file
| | 09:18 | and you can see that I actually have three
other windows open here in the background.
| | 09:22 | So I have the Floor Plan, I have this
Door Schedule called Simple Door Schedule,
| | 09:27 | and I have a 3D View over here.
| | 09:29 | So what I want to do now is just
basically test out the two parameters that
| | 09:33 | we've just created and I want to do that
by first adding those Shared Parameters
| | 09:38 | to this Door Schedule, that was
after all one of the primary reasons why
| | 09:41 | we chose to do this.
| | 09:42 | So let me select this schedule,
scroll down over here, locate Fields and
| | 09:50 | if you scroll through the list, you'll see
the new existing field and I can add that
| | 09:56 | and you'll see the new panel Type field
and I can add that. So let's click OK.
| | 10:03 | Both of those get added.
| | 10:04 | I can adjust the column widths a little if
I need to so I can read it a little better.
| | 10:09 | Let's just make this one a little
smaller, and make that one a little larger.
| | 10:15 | Okay, so this is telling me the
panel Type and this is telling me whether
| | 10:18 | it's existing or not.
| | 10:19 | Let me select this door, copy it maybe
once or twice and I'll do that because
| | 10:29 | we said that the existing
parameter was now an Instance Parameter.
| | 10:33 | So if I uncheck existing for this one,
you'll see that this door goes to 90 degree swing,
| | 10:39 | and the other two stay 45, while
over here if I open up the list
| | 10:44 | and I change the type of panel, I'm
going to get a warning from Revit that says
| | 10:49 | this is going to apply to
all elements of this type.
| | 10:52 | So when I click OK, you're going to see
a vision light add to all of the doors.
| | 10:57 | So if that's not what you want, what
I could do is use my Ctrl key here and
| | 11:02 | select a couple of these and just
simply change them to one of the other types
| | 11:06 | that I've previously added to
this file, so how about a 30 x 84,
| | 11:11 | they get a little smaller and you
see they go back to being Flush panels
| | 11:15 | because this is a type-based setting.
| | 11:18 | Another way to see that is if we
select down here and we go to Edit Type,
| | 11:21 | you'll see that each type will have its
own setting for what kind of panel it uses.
| | 11:26 | So by setting up our
parameters using Shared Parameters,
| | 11:30 | we get all the same benefits that
we get from creating the parameters
| | 11:33 | in the way that we've been doing in
other movies, however in addition,
| | 11:37 | we also gain the benefit of being
to include those parameter values in
| | 11:41 | schedules and in tags.
| | 11:43 | Now we saw examples of adding Shared
Parameters in tags back in the Annotation chapter
| | 11:48 | and now we're seeing some examples
of adding it here to model Families,
| | 11:53 | but that's the main
advantage of using Shared Parameters.
| | 11:56 | You can schedule them and you
contact them and as a secondary benefit
| | 12:00 | you get a lot more consistency between
your parameters from one file to the next,
| | 12:06 | from one job to the next,
from one project to the next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
11. The Tower and the ArchIntroduction to the arch family| 00:00 | We've done a lot of straight-line
geometry so far in this course and haven't
| | 00:05 | really looked too much at other shapes.
| | 00:07 | Similar to angles which could be a
little bit challenging, another really
| | 00:11 | challenging form for us is curves.
| | 00:14 | If you're creating a static curve,
it's pretty easy to do, but if you're
| | 00:18 | creating a curve that you actually
want to flex with your Family, it can
| | 00:22 | actually turn out to be quite a challenge.
| | 00:24 | So to illustrate that I've come up with
a little exercise that I'd like to run
| | 00:29 | through with you and that is
creating a parametrically-driven brick arch.
| | 00:34 | Now it seems like a pretty basic thing,
anywhere you look, there are brick
| | 00:37 | buildings and many of them have brick arches.
| | 00:40 | But surprisingly there isn't a
real obvious way to do this in Revit.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to start off by telling you
the techniques that you could use and some
| | 00:48 | of the common techniques that I've
seen, and then we'll jump in and start
| | 00:51 | building the family that I've devised here.
| | 00:54 | I guess we'll call it my
favorite option at the moment.
| | 00:57 | Bear in mind this is still a work in progress.
| | 00:59 | Ask me again in a few months
and maybe I'll have a better idea.
| | 01:03 | So a couple of ways that people
approach it, sometimes they'll just go into the
| | 01:07 | Family Editor and they'll just do a
simple Extrusion in the shape of a curve.
| | 01:11 | The problem with that is, and I
actually have an example here on this file, you
| | 01:19 | tend to get something that looks like that.
| | 01:22 | So while you can get the curve
just fine, you're not going to get a
| | 01:26 | material that's going to match that, because
there are no radial patterns in the software.
| | 01:32 | So that bothered me enough that I
started looking for other opportunities.
| | 01:38 | So the one that I've settled on, the
one that I liked the best, is this curved
| | 01:42 | arch Family here and it's
actually using the Massing Environment.
| | 01:46 | Now we've done the entire training
series in the traditional Family Editor.
| | 01:50 | We haven't looked at the
Massing Environment at all.
| | 01:52 | But the Massing Environment is
something that was introduced in Revit a couple
| | 01:56 | of years ago, in Revit 2010 and it's a
slightly different environment to the
| | 02:02 | normal Family Editor.
| | 02:03 | It's still a Family Editor;
| | 02:05 | you're creating RFA files, but you now
have much more free-form geometry, you
| | 02:10 | have different interface.
| | 02:12 | It's a little bit of a
steeper learning curve to get into.
| | 02:15 | Fortunately, the massing part of it, I'm
going to keep pretty light for this example.
| | 02:19 | Actually where the meat of this example
is going to come from is in the formulas
| | 02:23 | and in the trigonometry
that's going to be applied.
| | 02:25 | But we are going to be using the Massing
Environment to get the individual bricks.
| | 02:30 | It turned out that that was the
approach that I liked best and the Massing
| | 02:33 | Environment gave me a real easy way to do that.
| | 02:36 | So with that as an introduction,
let's go ahead and get started with this
| | 02:39 | complex brick arch Family.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up reference planes and constraints| 00:00 | With our goal established and the
introductions out of the way, let's go ahead
| | 00:03 | and get started creating our
parametrically-driven brick arch Family.
| | 00:08 | So we're going to start off like we do
with most of our Families and click the
| | 00:11 | New button over here on the Recent
Files screen to create a new Family and
| | 00:17 | because we're going to be using the
Massing Environment to create this arch, we
| | 00:21 | need to start with the
Generic Model Adaptive template.
| | 00:25 | Now there are a couple other massing
templates and you can tell them right away
| | 00:29 | because when you look at the background
over here in the Preview anything that
| | 00:33 | uses the Massing Environment
typically has this gradient gray background.
| | 00:38 | So you'll see that if I switch to other
Generic Model Families, there is another
| | 00:42 | one, Generic Model Pattern Based is also
using the Massing Environment, and then
| | 00:47 | all the others are not.
| | 00:49 | So we're going to start
with Generic model Adaptive.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to click Open and
that gives us this gray background.
| | 00:56 | Now let me give you the $.50 tour of
the Massing Environment, but really our
| | 01:00 | main focus is going to be the Family
building exercise, so we're not really
| | 01:06 | terribly concerned with all the ins and
outs of the Massing Environment for this movie.
| | 01:10 | Let me actually just cut to the
finish line and show you why we're in the
| | 01:14 | Massing Environment.
| | 01:15 | I'm going to go up here to the Home tab
and click on this Rectangle button, I'm
| | 01:20 | going to draw a rectangle on screen,
click Modify, select the rectangle.
| | 01:26 | Notice that it defaults to Chain
Selection and selects the entire thing and
| | 01:31 | unlike the standard Family Editor that
has Extrusion and Revolve and Blend, the
| | 01:36 | Massing Family Editor just as this
single Create Form button and it looks at the
| | 01:41 | shape you've selected and
decides what kind of form to give you.
| | 01:44 | So in this case it did a simple Extrusion.
| | 01:47 | Now to kind of spoil the ending here
I'm going to select a surface of that
| | 01:52 | shape, okay, so this is something that
we can do in the Massing Environment that
| | 01:56 | we can't do in the regular Family Editor,
select the individual surface and I'm
| | 02:00 | going to use this feature here called
Divided Surface and if I zoom in a little
| | 02:04 | bit, you'll see that that applied a
grid pattern to that surface, it actually
| | 02:09 | divided the surface up into segments
and you've got numbers for those segments
| | 02:14 | here and here and you can
parametrically control those numbers.
| | 02:18 | So that is the reason that we're using
the Massing Environment for our brick
| | 02:23 | arch because ultimately I'll be able
to take the curved surface, apply this
| | 02:28 | Divided Surface feature to it and
that's going to give me the divisions for
| | 02:31 | my individual bricks.
| | 02:33 | So with that let's go ahead and delete
this and then switch out of this view.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to go to the Front Elevation
and the Front Elevation looks a lot more
| | 02:44 | familiar, like we usually expect the
Family environment to look, and in this
| | 02:49 | Elevation we're going to lay down a
series of Reference Planes that are going to
| | 02:53 | be useful for us in constructing this Family.
| | 02:55 | So that'll be our first step.
| | 02:57 | Now you may have noticed that the
Ribbon tabs look a little different here in
| | 03:02 | the Massing Environment.
| | 03:03 | So you do have to kind of reacquaint
yourself with where all the tools are.
| | 03:07 | Now over here on the Draw
panel you have a Model button.
| | 03:11 | a Reference button and a Plane button.
| | 03:14 | This is your Reference Plane button.
| | 03:16 | So that's the same Reference Plane that
we've been using in our regular modeling
| | 03:20 | environment, so I'm going
to go ahead and chose that.
| | 03:23 | Next, I'll go and draw where I want my
first Reference Plane to be, click in the
| | 03:28 | dimension, type in a value, so I'll
make that one 4 feet, go over here to about
| | 03:34 | 4', line it up with the
first, make the second one.
| | 03:37 | So I've got two that are 8' apart that
will define the width, I'm going to do
| | 03:41 | one running horizontally this
way and set the Height to about 6'.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to do another one down here,
maybe make that one about 4' away and
| | 03:54 | zoom in a little bit and sneak in
another right below here and change that
| | 04:02 | dimension to 6 inches.
| | 04:04 | I can go ahead and cancel out of here
and I'm going to start labeling some of
| | 04:09 | these so that we can have a better sense
of what the purpose of each of these is for.
| | 04:14 | So I'm going to select the one on the
left here and this one is the Left Edge,
| | 04:22 | select the one on the right
and that is the Right Edge.
| | 04:27 | I'll select the one right here and
that's going to be the underside of the arch,
| | 04:34 | so that's going to be the Soffit.
| | 04:37 | This is going to be the spring line of
the arch, Spring Line, and this is going
| | 04:44 | to be the Center of Arch Radius.
| | 04:51 | So that's going to be where the center is.
| | 04:53 | Now the Arch Radius will intersect at
the intersection between this Reference
| | 04:59 | Plane and this Reference Plane.
| | 05:00 | Now here is a slightly different
behavior in the Massing Environment than the
| | 05:04 | regular Family Editor.
| | 05:06 | I can click on this Reference Plane
same as we could in the regular Family
| | 05:11 | Editor, and you'll notice that it is
actually pinned just like it is in the
| | 05:15 | regular Family Editor, but I can still
click over here and start to drag, but if
| | 05:20 | you look a little more carefully, what
you see is the 3D extents stayed right
| | 05:26 | there at zero and what it did was
pulled out the 2D extents, so the change I
| | 05:31 | just made only affects the current view,
the Front Elevation and this is just a
| | 05:36 | difference in behavior in
the massing Family Editor.
| | 05:40 | I'm not exactly sure why it works this
way, but that's one of the little subtle
| | 05:44 | changes that you're going to witness there.
| | 05:45 | So for our purposes here that'll be
fine, but I do like to see those two
| | 05:49 | intersect because that kind of feels a little
bit more established to me as a center point.
| | 05:54 | Now that I've got the Reference Planes
there, let me go ahead and start putting
| | 05:58 | some dimensions on them.
| | 06:00 | So again this is pretty typical to what we've
done in other Families in the course so far.
| | 06:05 | Let's put a dimension across the
horizontal and make that equal.
| | 06:10 | Let's put one across the top that's our 8'.
| | 06:12 | I'm going to do one between the Soffit
and the spring line, I'm going to do one
| | 06:18 | between the Soffit and the level, make
sure you say level there, that's going
| | 06:23 | to set the height of the arch, and then
another one from the Soffit down to the
| | 06:29 | center of the arch.
| | 06:31 | So my Soffit line here vertically is
actually driving all of the others.
| | 06:36 | Now I'm going to start
labeling these with parameters.
| | 06:40 | So let's add a parameter.
| | 06:42 | This is going to be Arch Height.
| | 06:46 | This one's going to be Spring Offset.
| | 06:54 | This one will be Arch Width.
| | 07:01 | And finally this one.
| | 07:05 | We're going to be determining the
length of the radius formulaically;
| | 07:08 | we're going to be using a
mathematical formula to determine this.
| | 07:12 | So whenever I use a mathematical
formula to determine one of my parameter
| | 07:17 | values, I like to include the
word calculated in the name.
| | 07:20 | So this is going to be my calculated
radius, let's actually slip the word arch
| | 07:26 | in there, be as descriptive as possible.
| | 07:30 | So now we're not calculating it yet,
but we will be shortly, so we've got
| | 07:33 | that in there right now.
| | 07:34 | At the moment it's just a regular
parameter, and of course like we do in the
| | 07:39 | regular Family Editor, we want to go
over your Family Types, and flex each of
| | 07:45 | these dimensions and make sure they're working.
| | 07:47 | So let's start with some new values here.
| | 07:49 | How about a 1 foot Spring Offset?
| | 07:51 | You can see that one moves.
| | 07:53 | How about a different calculated radius?
| | 07:56 | You can see that that one moves.
| | 07:58 | Now those are both moving
relative to the Soffit line.
| | 08:01 | If I change the Arch Height to 7' that
will actually have the effect of pulling
| | 08:07 | both the calculated radius and the
spring line up, if I change this to 5' it
| | 08:12 | will pull everything down;
| | 08:14 | let's reset it back to 6 and 10 and 6
inches and apply all of that and then
| | 08:22 | finally, the Arch Width, we
should give that a test too.
| | 08:26 | That seems to be working,
let's make it a little wider;
| | 08:29 | that's working just fine
and we'll settle back on 8'.
| | 08:33 | Now right away I'm going to go ahead and
click New here for Family Types and I'm
| | 08:38 | going to create a Family type that is
96 wide, with a 6 inch spring, like so,
| | 08:47 | and that kind of labels that as well,
and then we'll go ahead and click OK here.
| | 08:52 | So that's the basic form work that we
are going to start with, that's going to
| | 08:56 | give us the overall shape that we
need, the basic Reference Planes.
| | 09:00 | In the next movie, we're going to
start adding Reference Lines which are
| | 09:03 | actually very important
in the Massing Environment.
| | 09:06 | We saw Reference Lines in the last
couple movies, but they're going to continue
| | 09:09 | to play a role here in the Massing
Environment and we're going to start adding
| | 09:13 | those into this Family in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Locking down a curve| 00:00 | So let's continue on with our
parametrically-driven Brick Arch.
| | 00:03 | In the previous movie we laid down the
Reference Planes that we needed in the
| | 00:07 | Front Elevation and we applied
several linear dimension parameters to them.
| | 00:12 | I need one more Reference Plane in the
Plan View, that's going to serve as my
| | 00:17 | work plane for the entire arch.
| | 00:19 | So I want to establish that first, and
then we're going to come back to this
| | 00:22 | Front Elevation and start
laying down some Reference Lines.
| | 00:26 | So let me go over here to the
Reference (Ref.) Level Floor Plan.
| | 00:31 | I'll do a zoom region
around the center right here.
| | 00:34 | You can kind of see the Arch Width
dimension there and the work plane is
| | 00:38 | currently this default Center (Front/Back).
| | 00:41 | What I want to do is allow a parameter
to actually be able to push and pull the
| | 00:46 | arch in or out of that plane.
| | 00:48 | So to do that, I'm going to create a
second Reference Plane, like so, and then
| | 00:56 | change that number just to some
arbitrary number for now, I'll use 6" and I'm
| | 01:00 | going to click this little, Make
temporary permanent dimension here to make
| | 01:04 | that into a dimension.
| | 01:05 | Now I'm going to take this and label
it with a new parameter that I'm going
| | 01:10 | to call Arch Offset.
| | 01:12 | I'm actually going to make that an
Instance Parameter, because it seems to me
| | 01:15 | like that's something we might
want to control arch by arch.
| | 01:18 | So then I'm going to take this
Reference Plane that we just drew and I'm just
| | 01:22 | going to call this Work Plane, which
maybe is a little too generic of a name,
| | 01:27 | but that's actually what I'm using it for.
| | 01:29 | So that's going to be my work plane,
and I'm going to go back to the Front
| | 01:33 | Elevation now and click on my Set Work
Plane button and choose from the list
| | 01:39 | here my Work Plane Reference Plane.
| | 01:42 | So now that means that the Reference
Lines that I'm about to draw will be drawn
| | 01:47 | in that plane, and then after we draw
them, we can go out and flex and move that
| | 01:52 | plane around and hopefully
everything will move the way we expect it to.
| | 01:56 | Now we were using the Plane button here,
right above it is the Reference Line
| | 02:00 | button, so I'm going to go ahead and
click that and you'll see there is a whole
| | 02:04 | series of Reference Plane shapes
that you can draw here in the Massing
| | 02:08 | Environment, we really only need
to focus on two of them right now;
| | 02:11 | the Straight Line and the Arc.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to start right here at the
intersection of these two Reference Planes.
| | 02:18 | I'm going to draw diagonally down
here to the intersection of these
| | 02:22 | two Reference Planes.
| | 02:24 | Go back up and make a V-shape like so,
and then switch the shape here to
| | 02:31 | Start-End-Radius Arc.
| | 02:34 | The start point is already right there
in a chain, the endpoint is going to be
| | 02:39 | at the other end right here and the middle
point or the radius I'm going to set right there.
| | 02:46 | Okay.
| | 02:48 | So we now have this sort of pie-wedge shape.
| | 02:51 | Now first of all, we're in the Massing
Environment, so if I try to select just
| | 02:56 | one of these edges I'm
actually going to get a chain.
| | 03:00 | Okay, that's the default
behavior in the Massing environment.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to press the Tab key to
get just the Arc and you may notice that
| | 03:08 | the radius is way down here.
| | 03:10 | So what I want to do now is, we are
going to calculate the radius, but my
| | 03:14 | experience is it's much better to get
the geometry positioned correctly in the
| | 03:21 | location where you want it, then apply
your parameter to it and flex after that.
| | 03:26 | So first build it the correct size,
apply a dimension at the correct size and
| | 03:31 | then flex that dimension.
| | 03:33 | If you go right to applying the
parameter to a dimension that doesn't match the
| | 03:36 | correct size, Revit will try and apply
the dimension and flex it in one step and
| | 03:42 | often it won't flex it the way you expect.
| | 03:44 | It'll move the wrong way;
| | 03:45 | it'll move to the left when you
want it to go the right or vice versa.
| | 03:48 | So it's a lot easier to make sure that
you don't break something, if you just
| | 03:52 | build it correctly first and then flex. Okay.
| | 03:55 | What I'm going to do is select this
Reference Plane, our Center of Arch Radius.
| | 04:00 | I'm going to go to the Move command,
I'm going to use this point right here as
| | 04:06 | the move start point, and then I'm
going to slowly move down here, and right
| | 04:11 | where it says the Center Point
right here I'm going to click.
| | 04:15 | Now you'll see the pie-wedge change
shape and you'll see the Calculated Arch
| | 04:20 | Radius change as well.
| | 04:21 | However, if you tab into the curve
you'll see that the radius seems to be
| | 04:28 | running away from us.
| | 04:29 | It's now a lot larger.
| | 04:31 | Well, the reason for that is, I'm going
to do zoom in region, right in here when
| | 04:38 | we moved that thing down it
actually bend the curve a little bit.
| | 04:42 | So what I need to do here is just
simply take this grip right here and you want
| | 04:47 | to make sure it's already unchecked,
but you want to just double check that up
| | 04:51 | here on the Options Bar, the Keep
Concentric button is not selected.
| | 04:56 | If Keep Concentric is checked when you
move that grip, it's going to move the
| | 05:00 | endpoints of the arc as well.
| | 05:01 | I don't want the endpoints to move, I
just want the amount of curvature to change.
| | 05:06 | You can see how I can stretch it back to
the intersection, and when I do, notice
| | 05:10 | the radius now says, 16'-3".
| | 05:13 | So again, what my goal here is I
want my arch to start in the correct
| | 05:19 | orientation, the correct size,
everything to be right, and then I can start
| | 05:25 | flexing it from there.
| | 05:26 | And there is one more thing I need to
do to make sure that that doesn't happen
| | 05:30 | again what we just saw, and
this is really the big trick here.
| | 05:34 | So you remember one of the introductory
statements that we made at the start of
| | 05:37 | this chapter was that controlling
curves could be a challenge in the Family
| | 05:42 | Editor, you've just witnessed it.
| | 05:43 | We move things and the curve decides
to do its own thing instead of what we
| | 05:48 | consider to be logical.
| | 05:49 | If you want to control the way the
curve flexes, you've got to pretty much lock
| | 05:54 | it down in three locations.
| | 05:56 | So we've got it pretty well
locked down on the sides there.
| | 06:00 | Let me just verify that, okay.
| | 06:02 | Let's go over here to Family Types and
let's flex the width a little bit, I'll
| | 06:07 | make it a little wider and you can see
that it's staying attached, and staying
| | 06:12 | attached, but see what's happening right there.
| | 06:14 | Okay, if I make it a little narrower,
see what's happening right there.
| | 06:18 | This point is not staying put
correctly, okay, and that's what's causing
| | 06:23 | us grief right now.
| | 06:24 | So I'm going to reset back to 8,
because I know that at 8, it was working, and
| | 06:28 | the trick is I need to add an
additional constraint to that point.
| | 06:33 | I've got to lock that point down, and
the only way I've found to do this is to
| | 06:37 | use a dimension and I want a dimension
from my spring line and then highlight
| | 06:43 | somewhere on the curve.
| | 06:44 | Notice how it will find the curve.
| | 06:46 | When you do that, it will actually
dimension to the tangent point, but you've
| | 06:50 | got to make sure it's highlighting the
curve, and then what you want to do it
| | 06:55 | simply label this dimension
with the same Spring Offset.
| | 07:00 | So now this Spring Offset is actually
driving the position of this Reference Plane.
| | 07:05 | This Spring Offset is
driving the location of that curve.
| | 07:09 | Let's zoom out a little.
| | 07:10 | Let's go to Family Types and let's flex it.
| | 07:15 | So I'm going to try a different Width, click
Apply and you notice how it stays attached.
| | 07:21 | The radius we haven't actually
calculated yet, so let's not pay any attention to
| | 07:24 | the Calculated Radius;
| | 07:25 | we still have to do that.
| | 07:26 | So in fact, let's cancel out here to
keep us from being distracted by that and
| | 07:31 | let's zoom in nice and close on just
the arch itself, because right now this is
| | 07:35 | what we were flexing.
| | 07:36 | And let's go to Family Types and let's
change the Width to something really big,
| | 07:40 | and you'll notice that it's staying
attached, and it's staying attached.
| | 07:45 | Let's change it back to our preferred size here.
| | 07:48 | Let's maybe increase the Spring Offset
and you can see that everything is working.
| | 07:53 | So at this point, this was the major --
I don't know if breakthrough is a little
| | 07:57 | too strong of a word, but this was the
major breakthrough for me in terms of
| | 08:02 | getting that arch to be controlled
properly and then being able to move on with
| | 08:06 | the rest of the Family.
| | 08:07 | So we still have plenty of work to do in here.
| | 08:09 | In the next series of movies we're
going to start adding geometric formulas to
| | 08:13 | this Family to control the other parts
and pieces that are little difficult to
| | 08:17 | do with dimensions alone, but that's
going to give us the additional flexibility
| | 08:21 | we need to start building the arch,
and then we'll finally be ready to start
| | 08:24 | actually adding some geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with advanced formulas| 00:00 | Okay, so we have most of our
framework established now, we have all our
| | 00:04 | Reference Planes and our Reference
Lines and most importantly we've pinned that
| | 00:08 | arch down, so that it's flexing
in a predictable and useful way.
| | 00:12 | Now, it's time to jump
into the deep end of the pool.
| | 00:15 | We need a few more things here to
control our Family and all of those are going
| | 00:21 | to be controlled through formulas.
| | 00:24 | So when we go into Family types, we're
going to be putting in some formulas, but
| | 00:26 | some of these are going
to get into trigonometry.
| | 00:29 | So if you haven't dusted off your
trigonometry book from high school in a while,
| | 00:33 | now is the time, but don't
forget Google is a great resource.
| | 00:38 | So let's go over here to Family Types
and let's give ourselves plenty of room to
| | 00:43 | work here, and we need to start
creating some formulas here to drive this.
| | 00:47 | The first one we're going to look
at is the Calculated Arch Radius.
| | 00:51 | We labeled it Calculated Arch Radius
because our intention was to calculate it.
| | 00:56 | So that's my little
placeholder to remind me to do that.
| | 00:59 | When we were flexing the spring
angle and the width, the arch was flexing
| | 01:04 | correctly, but because the Calculated
Arch Radius is staying 16'-3" when you
| | 01:10 | flex either one of these numbers, it
actually distorts these angles here of the
| | 01:17 | two Reference Lines and they no
longer match the radius of the arc.
| | 01:22 | So what we need to do is calculate
the radius, so that it keeps space with
| | 01:28 | the shape of the arc.
| | 01:29 | We want the shape of the arc to
essentially drive the angle of these
| | 01:33 | two Reference Lines.
| | 01:35 | So to do this, I had to do a little bit
of research online and I looked at what
| | 01:41 | I had and again taking you back to
high school math here, the Width here is a
| | 01:46 | chord length of the circle.
| | 01:48 | So all we know is the Chord Length
and the Spring Offset, and can those two
| | 01:54 | values give us the radius?
| | 01:56 | And it turns out that they can, it's a
kind of ugly looking formula, and what
| | 02:00 | I've done is I don't feel like typing it,
so I've compiled all of the formulas
| | 02:05 | we're going to need in this family
into this Excel Spreadsheet called Family
| | 02:10 | Notes and this is
included with the Exercise Files.
| | 02:14 | Here is that sort of ugly
looking formula right here.
| | 02:17 | I'm not going to try and explain it to
you because I understood it when I read
| | 02:22 | it on Google, but not well
enough for me to explain it to you.
| | 02:25 | So go ahead and Google it
yourself, but here is the formula here.
| | 02:28 | We're taking the Spring Offset and we're
raising that to the second power, we're
| | 02:32 | adding the Arch Width to the second
power, we're multiplying that by 0.25 and
| | 02:37 | we're dividing the whole
thing by the Spring Offset*2.
| | 02:41 | It works, trust me.
| | 02:42 | Do Ctrl+C and I'll come in here, and I
will do Ctrl+V and of course the most
| | 02:49 | important thing here is that the
names of all your parameters have to match
| | 02:53 | exactly what you wrote before.
| | 02:56 | So as soon as I click out of here, I
will find out if I made any typos, and it
| | 03:00 | looks like I did okay.
| | 03:02 | Now, this is why it was so important
to make sure that we have the geometry
| | 03:07 | matching what we actually
are planning to flex it to.
| | 03:11 | So notice that it grayed out, and
it says 16'-3" but it didn't flex.
| | 03:15 | So we don't have to worry that
something is going to break, because it's going
| | 03:18 | to try and flex in some unnatural way.
| | 03:21 | But now what we want to do is test
this by putting in a different Spring
| | 03:25 | Offset, for example, and notice that, that
will have an immediate impact on the Arch Radius;
| | 03:30 | let's click Apply.
| | 03:31 | Now you see that the
Calculated Radius Line is moving up.
| | 03:35 | That changes the center point of both
these two Reference Lines here and the arc
| | 03:40 | itself, and so now this pie-wedge
correctly matches a slice of the circle.
| | 03:45 | Let me go ahead and set this back to 6
", and apply that, and the next little
| | 03:52 | piece we're going to address is the angle.
| | 03:54 | I want the angle here
between these two Reference Lines.
| | 04:00 | Now to get there, again I did some
research, and we can calculate this angle
| | 04:05 | in here, this is called theta by the
mathematicians, and that boils down to
| | 04:10 | basic trigonometry, because we have a
triangle where we know this side and
| | 04:16 | this side and this side, and so with the
various sides of the triangle, we can calculate theta.
| | 04:23 | So we know the chord length,
okay, and that's the opposite.
| | 04:27 | Remember your SOHCAHTOA, I can't even
believe I'm saying this out load, okay,
| | 04:31 | it's been years since high school math,
but, there is the theta here and that's
| | 04:34 | the opposite side and we also know the
hypotenuse which is the long side and
| | 04:40 | that's the calculated
radius that we just determined.
| | 04:43 | So using those two with a little bit of
trigonometry, we can figure out what theta is?
| | 04:49 | So we're going to add a parameter, we're
going to call it Theta, and we're going
| | 04:54 | to make it an Angle Parameter.
| | 04:56 | We're going to put it under Other, and
the reason for that is a lot of times
| | 05:02 | what you'll see family authors do is
they'll take the parameters that they
| | 05:05 | really don't want anybody messing with,
and they'll drop them in Other and that
| | 05:09 | usually kind of puts them down at the
bottom of the list somewhere, so it's just
| | 05:11 | sort of a little best
practice thing that folks do.
| | 05:15 | Let's go ahead and click OK there.
| | 05:17 | So there's Theta, but now what I'm
going to do is create all of the missing
| | 05:20 | parameters that we need from the Excel
Spreadsheet, and then we'll come back and
| | 05:24 | we'll start adding in all the formulas.
| | 05:28 | Okay, so that's all the basic parameters.
| | 05:30 | Now, let me go ahead and widen this box a
little bit longer here, so that we can see all this.
| | 05:34 | I'm going to collapse down the
identity data, you don't really need to be
| | 05:38 | distracted by that right now.
| | 05:40 | So if you compare what I have here on
screen to the Excel Spreadsheet, you can
| | 05:43 | see I've created all of the parameters
that we still need and assigned them to
| | 05:47 | the different kinds of parameters;
| | 05:49 | so Number of Bricks for instance is an
integer parameter and some of these are
| | 05:52 | length and some are angle.
| | 05:53 | Now, what I've done is I've put
anything that controls the shape of the
| | 05:57 | geometry, but that's going to be
driven by a formula or that otherwise I
| | 06:01 | don't want anybody to input
anything in, I have put that either under
| | 06:04 | Constraints or Other.
| | 06:07 | I put it under Constraints if I wanted
them to see that it was a value that was
| | 06:11 | important, but it's being controlled
by a formula and I put it under Other if
| | 06:15 | it's just a means to an end
that I just wanted out-of-the-way.
| | 06:18 | So this Calculated Arch Radius is in
dimensions because by default that's where it put it.
| | 06:23 | So I'm just going to modify that and
I'm going to move it to Constraints.
| | 06:26 | All I really want in Dimensions is the stuff
that my end-user is actually going to type in.
| | 06:32 | So basically, I want them to input
their dimensions, and then those dimensions
| | 06:36 | will drive everything else.
| | 06:37 | You may come up with a different
strategy when you're building your own
| | 06:40 | Families, but that's the way I did it here.
| | 06:42 | So now I'm just going to take a
couple of minutes to jump out to the Excel
| | 06:44 | spreadsheet, copy the formulas,
and paste them in here into the
| | 06:47 | appropriate fields.
| | 06:48 | We'll start with Theta.
| | 06:50 | Now, the way that I did this in the
Excel Spreadsheet is I have numbered them
| | 06:54 | in the order that we're going to create the
formulas to try and make it a little bit easier.
| | 06:58 | So we mentioned before that we needed a
little bit of trigonometry, so here it is.
| | 07:03 | If you want to do the arc sign,
you type asin, and then the formula.
| | 07:08 | So I've got that there, you can look
this up in the Revit Help if you want to
| | 07:12 | know the complete details on the syntax.
| | 07:15 | I'll copy that and I'll paste
that into Theta right there.
| | 07:23 | So I've completed pasting in all of the
formulas from the Excel Spreadsheet and
| | 07:27 | you can see that most of the values
have now grayed out because they're being
| | 07:31 | controlled by these formulas.
| | 07:33 | Let me just point out a few
things here that we've done.
| | 07:36 | We of course calculated the angle.
| | 07:38 | We had to convert it to Radiance.
| | 07:39 | Now again, I understood what radiance
was in high school, and I understood what
| | 07:43 | it was when I was reading it on Google,
but I'm not going to try and explain it
| | 07:46 | to you now, but notice it's
got the pi symbol in there.
| | 07:49 | So the way you write pi in Revit is pi().
| | 07:54 | There are some syntax issues here.
| | 07:56 | Over here for the Brick Width, I've
sort of taken a loose approach to it.
| | 08:02 | I'm assuming a relatively standard brick,
and I started with a value of 8" and I
| | 08:08 | just divided that by 3, and that's
giving me this number of 2 and some fraction.
| | 08:14 | We could obviously put in a much
more precise Brick Width, but what I am
| | 08:18 | trying to do is get an overall size of the
brick without worrying too much about mortar.
| | 08:22 | We're going to be moving
these bricks along a curve anyway.
| | 08:25 | So in the pie wedge, we're going
to have little gaps, that's going to
| | 08:28 | represent our mortar.
| | 08:29 | So graphically, it's going to
appear correctly for most scale views.
| | 08:34 | If you zoomed in super close, then yeah,
the mortar wouldn't be 100% accurate.
| | 08:39 | We could address that if it's important
to you, but in this particular example
| | 08:43 | we're going to keep it relatively
simple and focus just on the bricks.
| | 08:46 | So that's where I came up with that number.
| | 08:47 | Finally, up here, I'm using a new
feature in Revit 2012, the roundup feature and
| | 08:53 | this is because I want to end up
with a nice even whole number here.
| | 08:57 | So it's taking this number into account
and using the Calculated Soffit Length,
| | 09:03 | which is the length along the curve,
the actual circumference of the curve, and
| | 09:07 | it's dividing that by this Brick Width,
it comes up with a number, but it's
| | 09:11 | rounding it up to the next whole
number because otherwise I'd end up with a
| | 09:15 | little sliver of brick on the end
and I don't really want to do that.
| | 09:17 | I want to have nice whole bricks.
| | 09:19 | So this may be the size of the brick, or it
might be slightly larger or slightly smaller.
| | 09:25 | So once we've got all of these formulas
in here, we can click Apply, make sure
| | 09:30 | that we don't get any error messages.
| | 09:32 | If we didn't get any error
messages, that means they're all
| | 09:34 | functioning properly.
| | 09:36 | If you like, we can create another Family type.
| | 09:38 | Let's try another size like 72 wide
with a 9 inch spring, click OK, and that
| | 09:48 | means that I need to change the Spring
Height here to 9" and the Arch Width to
| | 09:53 | 6' and let's click Apply here, and you should
see everything adjust there in the background.
| | 10:02 | So assuming that you've got the
same result I did, congratulations!
| | 10:06 | I know this is the most complex Family
I've ever created and probably the most
| | 10:10 | complex one that you've created as well.
| | 10:11 | We're going to go ahead and click OK
here and in the next movie, we're going to
| | 10:16 | actually finally add some geometry to this.
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| Creating a divided surface and completing the arch| 00:00 | We have all of the painful math out of
the way and our armature is complete and
| | 00:05 | it's flexing properly
and that's half the battle.
| | 00:08 | We're now ready to start
adding some geometry to this Family.
| | 00:12 | To do that I think it would be a
little nicer to do it in the 3D view.
| | 00:15 | So I'm going to open up my default
3D view here and because we're in the
| | 00:21 | Massing Environment, let me do a zoom
region, you see that it looks a little
| | 00:26 | busier in here in 3D.
| | 00:27 | The Massing Environment actually shows
Reference Planes, so that's what all of
| | 00:31 | these are, these are actually
the Reference Planes on screen.
| | 00:35 | So be careful about selecting those;
| | 00:37 | if you actually click on them it
makes them the active work plane.
| | 00:41 | So you want to try and avoid clicking
something if you don't intend to make it
| | 00:44 | the active work plane.
| | 00:45 | Now of course you still have the Set
Work Plane button, so you can always be
| | 00:49 | much more deliberate about setting your
work plane, but one of the features in
| | 00:53 | the Ma ssing Environment is the ability
to just simply set the work plane just
| | 00:57 | by clicking on a Reference Plane.
| | 00:58 | Let me zoom in just a touch closer
like so, and to create form in the Massing
| | 01:07 | Environment you start by drawing the
shape you want and then clicking the
| | 01:12 | Create Form button.
| | 01:13 | I showed you that in the very
first movie in this chapter.
| | 01:15 | Also, you may recall that if you
highlight a shape in the Massing Environment it
| | 01:19 | actually chain-selects by default.
| | 01:22 | So right now it's highlighting the
entire chain of walls or this entire pie
| | 01:26 | slice and it looks really busy.
| | 01:28 | Just remember to press the Tab key and
that's how you can reach in and select
| | 01:32 | just an individual edge.
| | 01:33 | Now another unique feature in the
Massing Environment is that you can
| | 01:37 | create surface geometry.
| | 01:39 | It doesn't have to always be solid forms
like it does in the regular Family Editor.
| | 01:44 | So all I need to do is click on this
arc and I can go to Create Form and I can
| | 01:49 | create a curved plane directly from that arc.
| | 01:54 | So this is just a thin little plane right here.
| | 01:57 | Now when I click on this form element
over here on the Properties palette it has
| | 02:02 | a Negative Offset and a Positive Offset.
| | 02:05 | Now for this example I'm going to
dial in explicit numbers and just assume
| | 02:09 | that my bricks are 8 inches deep, but notice
that there are the little buttons over here.
| | 02:14 | So we certainly could link these up
with parameters, but I think by now that
| | 02:17 | you've maybe had your fill of
parameters for the time being.
| | 02:21 | So we're going to go ahead and just
dial in some direct numbers in here.
| | 02:25 | I'm going to put in a Negative Offset
of 8 inches and a Positive Offset of 0,
| | 02:33 | and when I apply that you're going to
see the arch actually shift the other way.
| | 02:39 | So I'm using the curve at the leading
edge here as the front of the arch, and
| | 02:44 | then having it go 8 inches back from that point.
| | 02:48 | Now you may recall we set up the arch
offset parameter a little bit earlier.
| | 02:52 | I'm going to flex that right here and
if I change that to say 1 foot, that's
| | 02:58 | going to actually move the entire arch
forward relative to this line here, which
| | 03:03 | is going to be the
insertion point of the Family.
| | 03:06 | Let me click it again,
change it back to 6 inches.
| | 03:10 | It's going to move the whole thing back.
| | 03:12 | With this parameter here we're giving
ourselves the flexibility to be able
| | 03:15 | to move the entire arch in or out relative to
the plane that it's going to be inserted on.
| | 03:20 | So it's going to start off at this
plane, and then we can push it in or
| | 03:24 | out using that number.
| | 03:26 | So I've got this shape here and now I'm
going to turn this into a divided surface.
| | 03:32 | So I showed you that at the start of
the chapter, go ahead and click on that,
| | 03:37 | zoom in even closer, and you can see
that it's divided the thing up into a
| | 03:42 | grid pattern and we've got these long
thin lines right here and then these
| | 03:47 | other divisions this way.
| | 03:49 | I don't want to divide it at all in the depth.
| | 03:51 | I only want to divide it along the curve.
| | 03:53 | So I'm going to come over here to the
Properties palette and I'm going to take
| | 03:59 | the U Grid layout and click on
there and there's a dropdown of choices.
| | 04:04 | So you can do a Fixed Number, a Fixed
Distance, Maximum or Minimum Spacing, and
| | 04:08 | you can actually say I
don't want any grid at all.
| | 04:11 | So when I choose None there and apply
that you're going to see all of those long
| | 04:16 | thin lines along the
curve are going to disappear;
| | 04:19 | we're not dividing in that direction.
| | 04:21 | Now in this direction the layout is
currently set to a Fixed Number, and that
| | 04:26 | fixed number is currently just 12.
| | 04:29 | Now 12 is somewhat arbitrary;
| | 04:31 | that's just the default number that Revit uses.
| | 04:33 | Well, notice the little button right
here, I'm going to click on that, and I'm
| | 04:37 | going to assign that to number of bricks.
| | 04:39 | Now we painstakingly calculated the
exact number of bricks that we needed in the
| | 04:44 | previous movie by writing out that
very detailed trigonometric formula.
| | 04:48 | So now I'm just going to link that
parameter up with the division here and
| | 04:52 | you'll see that number of spacing, 37
in this case, gets applied to the curve
| | 04:58 | and those are our individual bricks.
| | 05:00 | If you'd actually measure those you
would find that that's one-third of that 8
| | 05:05 | inch dimension, more or less, it's a
little plus or minus, because as we
| | 05:09 | talked about, we're rounding the value
up, but that's roughly one-third of 8
| | 05:13 | inches or brick size.
| | 05:15 | So we're using that number in there for
the width of the brick and we've got the
| | 05:19 | 8 inches back here, and so that means
that the height that we want here is about
| | 05:23 | 4 inches, 3 5/8, because we're
essentially setting up a rowlock situation here.
| | 05:28 | So in the next movie we're actually
going to go in and apply some geometry along
| | 05:32 | there to represent the bricks and
start seeing how the arch is shaping up.
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| Finalizing the arch| 00:00 | So the only thing our brick arch
is missing right now is some bricks.
| | 00:04 | So our bricks are actually going to
be panels loaded in to each of these
| | 00:08 | divisions that we've
created on this divided surface.
| | 00:11 | So the methodology in the Massing
Environment is that you create these
| | 00:14 | surfaces, you divide them up, and
then you load in panelized geometry to
| | 00:19 | rationalize the surface.
| | 00:21 | I thought about it and I'd say, well
that's pretty much exactly what I want to
| | 00:24 | do with bricks and so that's why
we're going at it with this approach here.
| | 00:27 | At the moment it says _No Pattern.
| | 00:30 | If you open up this list here in the
Massing Environment they have all of
| | 00:34 | these built-in patterns.
| | 00:36 | What we need to do is actually
go in, we're going to use the
| | 00:40 | Rectangular pattern.
| | 00:41 | We need go into the Rectangular
pattern and create a panel Family, and that's
| | 00:47 | going to be of a single brick and then
that panel is going to get loaded in here
| | 00:51 | and give us our individual bricks.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to go to big R. I'm
going to go to the New and choose
| | 00:58 | Family, scroll down, and this time,
I want the Generic model Pattern
| | 01:05 | Based family template.
| | 01:07 | It's got the gray background, so it is
part of the Massing Environment and you
| | 01:11 | get this surface out here and you can
see that this is just sort of, like all
| | 01:16 | hosted Family templates, this is just
sort of a temporary surface for your use
| | 01:20 | in constructing the geometry.
| | 01:22 | So this represents the surface that
we'll be creating in our project and
| | 01:27 | they've got this one square in the
middle accentuated by these Reference Lines
| | 01:33 | and these points and that's the
controlling geometry that's going to control
| | 01:38 | the shape of this object.
| | 01:39 | Now in our case, everything we need
here in terms of framework is already here;
| | 01:44 | all I have to do is select this chain
of Reference Lines that's already here in
| | 01:50 | the Family template.
| | 01:52 | Come over here and click the Create
Form button and Revit will see two
| | 01:58 | possible forms here.
| | 02:00 | We can either create a box or a surface.
| | 02:04 | Now in this case, I want the box,
because my brick is three-dimensional, so I'm
| | 02:08 | going to choose that and it just
extrudes it up and creates a box out of it.
| | 02:12 | It puts a little dimension over here.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to turn that
into a permanent dimension.
| | 02:16 | I'm going to select that permanent
dimension and label it with a parameter and
| | 02:22 | I'm going to call this Brick Height,
click OK and it defaults to 4' which is
| | 02:32 | an awfully tall brick.
| | 02:34 | So let's go to Family Types and
change that to 4", click OK and now this
| | 02:43 | becomes a very small thin little
surface and the reason for that is, if you
| | 02:47 | come out here and you click this
rectangular grid pattern, it's actually a 10 x
| | 02:51 | 10 Vertical spacing.
| | 02:54 | So it's not that the brick is so short,
it's that the size, the width, and
| | 02:58 | the depth is so large. It's up to you.
| | 03:01 | You don't really need to do anything else.
| | 03:03 | This Family is actually fine the way it is.
| | 03:06 | We could leave it 10 x 10
because what happens is that's just
| | 03:09 | stand-in dimensions.
| | 03:11 | The grids here, the squares, will
automatically conform to the size of the
| | 03:16 | divided surface that we have in the host Family.
| | 03:19 | So it's automatically going to become
brick size when we load it in, but if you
| | 03:23 | want this to look a little bit more
like brick size, you can just simply come
| | 03:27 | over here and put in more rational numbers here.
| | 03:30 | I could say the Horizontal spacing is
only 8" and the Vertical spacing is 2 1/2
| | 03:36 | or really what is it, it is 2 2/3, right.
| | 03:41 | And when I apply that, it's going to
become super small and it looks like brick size.
| | 03:48 | Now again you don't really need to do
that, but if you want to, if it makes it
| | 03:53 | more understandable, you certainly can.
| | 03:55 | Now the other thing that you can do as
an option is you can actually select the
| | 03:59 | brick itself, now you might have to tab
into it to get the whole form, and you
| | 04:03 | can actually apply materials to it.
| | 04:05 | For the time being, all I'm going
to do is click the button here, add a
| | 04:09 | parameter and just call this Brick
Material, but I'm not actually going to
| | 04:15 | assign it to anything I'm just
going to use that as a placeholder.
| | 04:19 | And then let's save this as and
I'll just call it Brick and save it.
| | 04:29 | It's probably the simplest Family
we've created in the entire course.
| | 04:32 | Let me load it into my project and go
back to my 3D View, select the divided
| | 04:42 | surface, click on the dropdown here on
the Properties palette and notice that
| | 04:49 | under Rectangle now is Brick as an option.
| | 04:53 | So the Rectangle default family now
has a sub-option of Brick and when I
| | 04:59 | choose that, you're going to see a bunch of
bricks appear along the arch, and there they are.
| | 05:09 | Now of course we have to flex
this thing and see if it's behaving.
| | 05:12 | Let's shrink this guy down a little
bit so we can get a better look and let's
| | 05:19 | choose one of our other sizes here,
apply it and everything is functioning.
| | 05:26 | And if you've followed along with me
this far, congratulations, you now have a
| | 05:30 | fully parametric brick arch.
| | 05:32 | Now there is plenty more
that we can do with this.
| | 05:34 | We could add actual materials to it,
we could make different brick setting
| | 05:39 | positions, like rowlock and
soldier and double rowlock, and so on.
| | 05:43 | I've done some of this for you in
a sample file that's provided with
| | 05:46 | the Exercise Files.
| | 05:48 | So feel free to open up that sample file
and poke around and reverse engineer it
| | 05:52 | and take it as far as you like, but
with that, we're going to complete the
| | 05:56 | exercise and enjoy it.
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12. ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, I'd like to thank you for spending
time with me exploring the Revit Family Editor.
| | 00:04 | I sincerely hope that you found this
course rewarding and that you learned
| | 00:07 | something that you can begin
using in your Revit projects.
| | 00:10 | Practice what you've learned, pull out a
sketch pad, or an iPad, or whatever you
| | 00:14 | have handy and plan out your first Family.
| | 00:16 | Think of an object that you would like
to have or that you would find useful, or
| | 00:20 | rebuild one that you already
have from any previous project.
| | 00:22 | Just remember the Family Editor
can be complex and challenging.
| | 00:26 | So start small, start simple,
and slowly work your way up.
| | 00:30 | Furniture is a great place to start.
| | 00:32 | Furniture is free standing and many
furniture items are relatively simple forms
| | 00:37 | and only have a few parameters.
| | 00:39 | There's nothing like the feeling of completing
your first successful piece of Family content.
| | 00:43 | Trust me, you'll be hooked.
| | 00:44 | So good luck, send me a screenshot
and I'd love to see what you built.
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