AUGIWorld Magazine - September/October 2008 - (Page 18)

REVIT ARCHITECTURE In the Family Way How to get the most out of custom content in Revit Editor’s note: Revit Architecture software’s standard content libraries contain thousands of model components, details and annotations. Somehow, this pre-created material is never enough. Everyone who uses Revit needs, at some point, to create something that does not exist in the libraries. In this column we point you toward tools, controls, and work habits that will allow you to expand Revit software’s content for your own use. --Chris Fox, Revit Architecture Editor If you work in Revit® you deal with families, which are the software’s organizational building blocks. Inside families are types, which is where you, the user, can start to expand your control of families. Everyone who has ever placed a door and needed to change the size has worked with type properties. Creating a new type of a standard family, such as a door size that does not appear on the type list, is the first step on the road to being able to make your own content efficiently. Think of the Edit/ New followed by the Duplicate sequence as one integrated tool! Figure 1: You will make new types in just about all the standard families you use regularly. Figure 2: Family Types – make yourself at home in here. Reverting to type plates have all sorts of parameters already set up for you—we’ll mention parameters again soon. If you start an in-place family in a project file by clicking the Create button at the bottom of the Modeling Tab, the same Family Editor opens with the same Family Types tool at the top. I told you this is important! a well-constructed family, every piece of it is built by using Reference Planes. Use them as a scaffold for your work. Door and window families will have up to a couple dozen Reference Planes to control the shape and size of the frames, trim, jambs, muntins, or mullions. Reference planes are Revit’s construction lines, and one of your best tools for modeling in families. Without them, you will have to redraw everything every time you want to make a change. Not only do they give your family a flexible structure, but they provide snap lines for dimensions and alignment once in your projects. What’s in a name Get on the plane In the family file for a model component, you should open the Elevation views and study them before you change anything. In The next level up from adding a new type to a family in a project is opening a component family file itself. To continue the example of a door that you want to change, with an instance of the door selected the Options bar will show an Edit Family button. Click that to open a copy of the door family file. The Design Bar switches to a mode called the Family Editor, with the Family Types tool at the top (right below Modify). It is extremely important to know your way around inside this dialog. Here you change existing type rules and create new ones. You can start a new family from scratch by using a family template. Family tem18 Figure 3: There are templates for all sorts of families. When you start making reference planes, take the time to give the important ones names. Once you place a reference plane, click Modify, select the plane, open its Element Properties, and fill in the Name field. It’s a little tedious, but well worth doing. You see the name when you later hover or select the reference plane. In family files you will see reference planes named Center (maybe Center Front/Back and Center Left/Right), Left, Right, Top, Sill and various others—that way you don’t have to guess, or try to remember later why you did what you did. The other half of naming important controls in a family is giving dimensions—which move your reference planes and thus your 3D content— coherent names by way of Labels. Did you ever change the width of a door? Well, Width is the name given to the dimension that spreads the door sideways in the family file by controlling the placement of the reference planes around which are built the door frame, trim, and panel. w w w. A U G I . c o m http://www.augi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine - September/October 2008

AUGIWorld Magazine - September/October 2008 Contents The CAD Manager 2008 Salary Survey Save Time with Impression Blocks In the Family Way Structural Stairs Autodesk University 2008 Preview Action Recorder How to Embrace Third-Party Data On the Back Page

AUGIWorld Magazine - September/October 2008

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