From the course: Revit 2019: Essential Training for Architecture (Imperial)

Families - Revit Tutorial

From the course: Revit 2019: Essential Training for Architecture (Imperial)

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Families

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- [Instructor] This chapter is devoted to the Family Editor. Now, the Family Editor is a very large topic that could easily take up an entire course. In fact, we have a course here in the Linda.com library called Revit Architecture: The Family Editor. So in this chapter, we're just going to cover the high level basics, and we're going to build a really simple parametric family, but if you want to learn more about the Family Editor, I do highly encourage you to check out that other course after you're finished here. So let's start with just a quick look at the basics of the Family Editor just so you kind of have yourself in the right mindset. When we talk about the Family Editor, what I'm specifically talking about here is we're going to create a model family, so it's going to be a model element that we're going to create, and we're going to make it a parametric family. So that means that some of the next steps that I'm going to outline to you may not apply if you're creating either a non model family or if you're creating a family that doesn't need to be flexible. Assuming that we're going to make a flexible model family, here's the basic steps. The first and most important is to choose a template. A template establishes sort of the underlying rules and parameters for the family, things like its category and its overall behaviors. Next, we introduce reference planes. Now, in the project environment, we've been using levels and grids to kind of give form and structure to our project. In the Family Editor, you use reference planes for this purpose, and they achieve essentially the same thing: they help define the overall dimensions, and form, and scale of the family. Next, we add dimensions to those reference planes, and the purpose of those dimensions is that we use them to add parameters and constraints. I like to group parameters and constraints together into what I call adding the smarts to the family. So when you're making a flexible family, when you're making a parametric family and you want it to be able to adjust, we want the length to be adjustable, the width, or so on, those are called parameters. If we want to lock in a relationship so that people can't change it, that's a constraint. So we're going to look at both of those. And then after we've done all of that framework, it's time to build the geometry. So there's actually quite a bit that happens before we create any geometry in the family, and then the absolute most important part of working in the Family Editor is to flex and flex often. Now, flex is just Revit's term for test it out and make sure it's not going to break. So if you flex on a regular basis, if you test out your family on a regular basis, you can troubleshoot many of the errors before they become a problem and create a highly functional family.

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