After completing this lesson, you'll be able to understand families, understand parameters, configure family types, add a type and instance parameters, and work with subcategories. The objective domains covered are 2.1.a: Configure family types, 2.1.b: Understand concepts of family categories and types, and 2.1.c: Differentiate between various types of families. Families are at the heart of any Revit project and form the building blocks of projects. The families support the actual 3D components such as structural columns, walls, and beams, but also support 2D annotations like dimensions, text, tags, and title blocks. We can classify all Revit families into three different types: System families, loadable families, and in place families. In most cases, system families are typically assemblies of multiple components and layers. In the example of a wall, you might have brickwork, a cavity, block work, and finishes all with different materials. The floor, again, can be comprised of different materials such as concrete, steel decking or screed. Finally, the stairs are built up of rungs layered in support stringers and treitz. System families are typically created within a project and can be embedded in project templates. System families cannot be loaded into projects but can be transferred from other Revit projects with the use of transfer project standards. Loadable families form the largest area of content that is used in structural projects. Typically, loadable content will be elements such a structural columns, beams, and foundations. In place families are components that you create that are unique to a project and cannot be used in other projects. In this example, you can see a pile cap with a notch to fit around an existing concrete element. In place families can be problematic when trying to enforce beam standards as these types of elements are typically modeled without so much consideration for using correct categories and parameters. A parametric component can resize and be configured by standard sets of rules and parameters that you create. In the example below, a single structural framing family has different parameter values that allow the geometry and associated information to change. Certain parameters are used when a series of components needs to be created, such as W shape beams. Here you have one family with numerous types that the user can select and load into a project. Instance parameters are typically used when each element in the projects might have a different value. A good example of an instance parameter is the length of a beam. Below you can see the same family type, but with different lengths that are assigned to each instance. Go ahead and open up the model 021; managing family categories and types. The model opens up in a 3D view. Our first task is to create a new family type of a pile cap and pile arrangements. You'll see here that we have an arrangement of four piles in a pile cap and the same arrangement over here. We need to create a new family type and increase the diameter of our piles. Let's go ahead and select this pile cap here. In the properties panel; select "Edit Type." Here, you'll see that we are currently using a 68 inch by 68 inch x 35 inch deep pile cap. Yeah, we're going to duplicate this family type. We'll name this one 84 inches by 84 inches by 36 inches deep, and click "OK." Here, we have a nested family within this pile cap; so this is our pile family that we'd like to use. Currently, we're using a 16 inch diameter pile. Let's increase that to 20 inch diameter. We can then go through and create our foundation thickness; so this is going to be 36 inches, and then the length and width of this will actually be seven feet in here, and we'll leave the clearance at one foot and four inches. We can then go ahead and click "OK" to the top properties dialog box, and you can now see that we have a new family type configured. If we go to the type selector, you'll now notice that we have our two original pile cap families and our new pile cap family, 84 inch by 84 inch by 36 inch. Next we investigate subcategories. Before looking at subcategories, this current view here is in a section box. Let's remove the section box. In the properties pallet, uncheck Section Box. We now have the full model displayed. You'll also notice that some floor slabs are hidden in view for the purpose of this exercise. Here you can see that we have some beams on rod down here. These are just structural framing elements. However, if I wanted to be able to control these, and differentiate between these great beams, and also the superstructure beams up here, I wouldn't need to create a different subcategory. For example, let's take a look at this invisibility graphics. Select the View ribbon, and then go ahead and select Visibility Graphics. Scroll down to Structural Framing, and then expand the subcategories. You'll see here that we have subcategories for items such as girders, joists, pricing, and so on. But so I don't have a subcategory setup for grade beams. We now go into creates a subcategory for a grade beam. Let's click Okay, so the visibility graphic overrides box. Well then go ahead, and select one of our ground beams, and select Edit Family. We now in the family editor. If we select Our Geometry, you'll notice in the properties pallet we have a subcategory currently, this is set to none. We now going to create a new subcategory and assign this geometry to that subcategory. To do this, select the Manage ribbon, and then select Object Styles. Here you'll see the object styles just for the category we working with which is structural framing. Notice down the bottom with the dialog box we have the ability of creating a new subcategory. Here we'll name this Grade Beams and click Okay. Here we can change the projection line weight of our grade beam, and also the cuts. Here we're going to match the same as our superstructure, so we're going to say a cut line weight four, and a projection line weigh of one. Let's go ahead and select Okay. We can then select our geometry and in the properties pallet, you'll note here that currently the subcategory is set to none. We should now be able to select Grade Beams. When we use this particular ring beam family and I use it in the project, it would automatically now appear in the grade beam subcategory. Here we can load into project and close. Here I'm not going to solve this. The dialog box we can see now is informing us that the family all ready exists in this project. In this example we want to overwrite the existing version. The Grade Beams have now been overwritten. If we go to visibility graphics, and we scroll down to structural framing again, and expand structural framing, you'll now notice that we've got a new subcategory that we didn't have previously, Grade Beams. If I uncheck the visibility and click Apply, you can then say just the grade beams are removed from the project view. This is very useful. This means I can override the graphics of this grade beam, I can change the coloration, and control the visibility of this separately. This can be useful when you want to map the grade beams to a particular IFC property. Next we investigate nesting families and also how to create some simple formula. We're going to do this by taking a 2D detail component and utilizing that within our pile family. To better understand why we'd want to do this in the project browser, let's switch to lift pits plane. You will notice in the lift pit plane, we can see our pile positions. However, generally in a structural plane we might want to see a symbolic view for the pile which is going to be a simple cross represents in a sensor of the pile and then a circle representing the diameter. However, because this is a 3d component, we're actually seeing the physical section through the pile. We can change this. What we're going to do is edit one of these piles. To do this because it's nested into the pile cap, we will first need to hover and pre-selects one of the piles, press the Tab key and you can see we can then go ahead and select a single pile. Let's select this and on the context ribbon, we can select edit family. The pile now opens up in the family editor. In the project browser, let's open up the reference level for floor plans. You can see here that we have our 3D model of our pile currently displayed. What we are going to do here is go ahead and insert a 2D detail component from our exercise files. To do this, I can select the annotate ribbon and then go ahead and select detail component. Revit informs us that currently no detail components are loaded, would you like to load one now? So we'll say yes. Browse to your data-set and then select Pile plane Symbol_2D. Click Open. You'll now notice that we have out detail component placed on our cursor. We'll go ahead and place this down over the top of our pile. Let's review some of the properties of this new symbol. Select the 2D symbol and then select Edit type in the properties pad it. You will note here that we have two type parameters set up. We have one for the pile diameter and another one for the line projection. Of course, the pile diameter really wants to match the 3D detail component. To help us understand this better, I'm just going to drag the detail component away from the 3D view. On the modify ribbon, if I go ahead and select family types, I can see the type parameters controlling the pile. For example here, you can see that I have a diameter for my pile. So in this case I'm going to reduce this to 12 inches or one foot. You'll now notice that the 3D family updates, but the 2D detail doesn't update. We need to link these parameters together. The process is called associating the family perimeter. To do this, in the project browser, expand detail items folder. Here you can see that we have our Pile plane Symbol_2D. Let's expand that so we can see the family type underneath. Here, I can right mouse click over this and choose type properties. In this dialogue box, you'll notice that the pile diameter can be set. Instead of setting it here, we want to associate this to one of our parameters in our 3D pile family. In this case, of course, it's the pile diameter, this one here. We'd also like to drive the line projection of the symbolic view. So again, I can associate this to a family perimeter. But of course here I don't have a suitable parameter sets up. Fortunately here I can go ahead and create a new parameter. Here we're going to create a family parameter and it's going to be a type parameter. I'm going to call this one Line Projection. We are going to group this under our dimensions, and we can then go ahead and select Okay. Go ahead and select Okay again to the type properties dialog box. You'll now notice that our 2D detail symbol matches the diameter of our 3D family. Let's return back to family types. Notice here now that we have this line projection, which is our new parameter that we just created. To control this, I could set up a very simple formula. Over here, I'm going to make this equal to the diameter of the pile multiplied by 0.75. So really that's going to make that three-quarters of the size of the pile. Let's go ahead and select Okay. You can now see our symbol is configured. All we now need to do is drag this over the pile and lock it in place. We can then go ahead and load this into our projects and close. In this case, I'm not going to save changes and then I'm going to overwrite the existing version. You'll now notice that all my piling is represented with my new 2D detail component.
