Assembling the fine detail column

- So now we have our fine version of our capital complete. We're ready to load it in with the other pieces to create the overall column. So in this movie we're actually going to do several things. We'll make the overall Fine version of the column, then we'll load it into an overall column and join it up with the Coarse and the Medium versions. So, there's going to be several steps that we're going to follow here. So to start off with, I'm in a file called Fine Capital. And this is the completed version from the previous movie. And it just has all the parts and pieces loaded in. And the one thing I did not show you in the previous movie is that this file is actually set to the Planting category. Now, I'm going to load that into another Planting file. So I'm going to use Load into Project and Close, because I don't really need to keep this open anymore. So I'll choose Load into Project and Close, and I want to uncheck this and choose Plant Start. PLT_Start. Now PLT_Start is an empty file. And it's just a file that was created from the Planting category. And when I load this capital in, I'll just place it right in the center, snap to the two insertion points right there, click my Modify tool. And at first, before you panic and say where is it, nothing appeared, remember that if we go to another view, like a Front view, or a 3D view, remember that the column geometry is all below the level. So, of course it won't show in the Floor Plan. But the Floor Plan was a convenient place to place it to make sure that it got centered. Now why Planting? Why are we setting these things to Planting? Well, go back and review the movies on the Fine Detail Shaft and we talked all about it there, but the summary is we're using the Planting category because we're taking advantage of its little super power that it has that allows us to scale the object proportionally here with a single parameter. So that's really the only reason we're doing it. Now there is one more thing I need to do in this Planting file and that is select the capital here and notice that it doesn't have a material assignment just yet. So I'll associate a Family Parameter. There is no material parameter in this file, so I will add one and call it Capital Material. And click OK, and OK again. Now at this point, you would just want to save this file and give it another name, and I already have that file handy. So I'm actually going to close this without saving. And this is my saved version, which looks exactly like what we just completed and it's called PLT_FIne Capital, and this is included with the Exercise Files. So you can either create your own or just use this one. So this is our final version now of the Capital. Now we need this, and the shaft, and the base that we created in previous movies, and we'll put all those together into a column. So, we're all set with this file, too. So I'm going to close it and then that takes me to the Fine Column. Now the Fine Column is just a copy of the medium detail column and it still has the medium detail versions within it. So like we did with the capital a little while ago, we're going to swap out the families here and replace them with the fine detail versions. So I'll start with the base and work my way up. So here's Medium Base, I'll right click, choose Reload. And in my Assembly folder, I have a copy of the Fine Base. And it'll ask me if I want to overwrite. And that will change it out with the more detailed version. I do want to select it, Scroll through, and just make sure that everything that's linked up or that's supposed to be linked up is linked up, so I've got the material linked up, I've got the base diameter linked up. So we're pretty good there. Now, I'm going to skip this shaft, because if you watch the previous movie on assembling the Corinthian Capital, you might recall the special treatment we had to give to the flowers. We're going to have to do something similar here with the shaft, because once again this particular version of the shaft is a massing family, but the one that we're going to be bringing in is a traditional family. So we're going to want to bring that in separately. Let's go and do the capital next, because that one we just simply right click and Reload just like we did with the base. And this is where we want to make sure we're choosing that Planting version, okay? So we've got the PLT_Fine Capital version that we want to load in. I'll overwrite the existing. And of course we're going to see a slight problem. When this thing loads in, it somehow is a little bit too small. Well, I really tried hard to pin this down, but we're using a workaround as it is with this double-nested planting family to get it to scale, and it seems like there's a setting or a behavior in there that I wasn't able to pin down in terms of getting it to scale exactly correctly. But it turns out it was really easy to overcome with yet another workaround. So if I go to Family Types, and I look at the parameters that are in here. I measured from here to the bottom of the capital and compared that from the level to where it should be at the top of the shaft. And then I just did the multiplication and came up with a variance of 62.4. And it turns out that I was able to make a parameter here called Capital Mult, for Capital Multiplier and if we use the 62.4, it works. So all I need to do is take this column capital and assign it to this parameter and it should take care of the problem. So I'm going to select it, Edit Type, and while we're here we need to do two things. Let's link up the material. And then there's that Height parameter, which is currently reading 58.5, which is what it's supposed to be, but we're going to scale it just slightly with that multiplier parameter. So I'll click there and I'll link up that Height parameter inside the capital with the one that I've called Capital Height here in the parent family. And when we click OK, that should scale it correctly. So I don't really like the fact that I had to do that workaround, but it works, it's effective, and it gives us the end result that we're after. So when I compare the pros and cons, I was okay with it. Now, let's go back to the shaft. As I said, if we try and swap this family, it will let us, but then it will make the family very unstable and it will probably crash. So we don't want that, crashes are not any fun. So let's do this instead. I'm going to right click the shaft over here, and Delete it. Now we'll get a warning that deleting that will actually delete this instance and we'll click OK. So now we have a big chunk missing in the middle. Next, I'm going to go to the Insert tab, click Load Family. And I've got a copy of the fine detail version of the fluted shaft right here. It is also a planting family so that it will scale, and I will click Open to load that in. Then the best place to place it is going to be in the Floor Plan. So I'll go to the Floor Plan view, and go to my Create tab, click Component. It should already be on your cursor, but if it's not, you can take it off the Type selector there. And I'll snap it right to the inner section of those two reference planes right there. Now, if you want, you can align and lock in both directions, but you really shouldn't need to, it's not going to go anywhere. Now, let's go back to the Front Cropped view. And now you'll see that the next issue is it's sitting right down there on the floor. So it's not quite in the right spot. Now, you could see here I've got a reference plane called Shaft Elevation. You could just align and lock it to that reference plane. But it turns out that I had that reference plane there for the massing family. We don't really need it for a traditional family, so I can delete it all together because a traditional family has an offset parameter. So I can click this Associate Family Parameter here, and choose that same Shaft Elevation parameter and that will move it up. So it's really six of one, half a dozen of the other, you can do it whichever way you prefer. It looks correct right now, but if we flex the family it wouldn't flex properly. So there's one more thing that we need to do. We need to Edit Type, and notice that the height of this is not linked up with anything. So I want to link that up with the Shaft Height parameter so that that will scale properly. Furthermore, while I'm here, I'll go ahead and assign it to the Shaft Material and click OK. And so now if we go to 3D and deselect, we should have a very nice-looking fine detail column. But of course the real test here now is does it work? So let me go to Family Types and I'll take my Base Diameter and I'll change that to 30, and click Apply. And if everything was set up correctly, it should scale down half as big. And there you have it, it's scaled down and you can try other values as well if you like. I'm going to set it back to 60, click OK. We have one more file open in the background. This one right here, which is the final column that includes all three levels of detail, coarse, medium, and fine. And I already have those three loaded in there, but the version of the fine detail still looks like the medium detail because it looks like what we had a few moments ago. So I'm going to Load into Project and Close here. It's going to ask me if I want to save my changes, I'll go ahead and say Yes. And then when it gets to the other family, it'll ask me if I want to overwrite, and I'll overwrite the existing. Okay, so we're almost there. We now have three versions of the column sitting right on top of each other. So if you put your mouse over here and wait for the tooltip either onscreen or down on the status bar in the lower left hand corner, you could see that currently I'm highlighting the medium detail so I can start with that one. I'll select it, and what we want to do is go to this Visibility Settings button right here. And because I have Medium detail selected, I want to uncheck Coarse and Fine. So the only time I want that one to display is when we're in Medium detail. And I'll click OK. Now, to make it a little easier to select the others, I'll just hide that temporarily and then I'll go to the next one, and that's my coarse detail version. Visibility Settings. So this time I'm going to uncheck Medium and Fine. Click OK, still selected, I'll hide that, too. And that leaves me with my fine detail version. So I'll select it, Visibility Settings, and uncheck Medium and Coarse. Now I will reset Temporary Hide/Isolate. That brings back all three. And then over here on the far right of the View Control bar, there's a Preview Visibility icon for the Family Editor. I'm going to click that and turn Preview Visibility on. And now it's going to preview the family based on whatever setting I have right here. So currently I'm set to Medium, and we're seeing the Medium detail version. If I change to Coarse, I will see that version. And if I change to Fine, I will see that one. And that's the experience that folks will have when we load this into the project. So this single column will now be usable in any scale, Coarse, Medium, or Fine, and it makes it a little more flexible and certainly more pleasurable to regen that in smaller scale views. So let me turn off the Preview Visibility. You can save this file. And in the next movie we'll load it into our Tivoli corner model.