Creating your own reference planes in families? Unless you name them, your options on what to do with them are limited. But give them a name and suddenly the possibilities open wide (like defining them as host's).
As you create more complex families, and wish to create them parametrically (like different types that can flex based on formulas, parameters and constraints you set up) how you name your reference planes can start to be a big deal.
For anyone who has written formulas in Revit to define an object's behavior knows how tedious, difficult and touchy can be. Start adding spaces to parameters in your equation, and the probability of an error increases dramatically.
If you adopt a naming practice that you employ throughout the program, you can cut down on these errors dramatically and it is recommended that you remove all spaces from custom parameters. This means even if the parameter consists of several words, that the variable used to define it is only one word. To prevent confusion and so you can still spell it, capitalize the first letter of each word.
For example:
'Top Plane' should be 'TopPlane'
'Door Handle' should be 'DoorHandle'
'Super Complex Ridiculous Family' should be 'SuperComplexRidiculousFamily'
See the trend here? Maybe it will take some getting used to start naming things this way, but if you adopt this practice you can eliminate some of your future headaches as your skills progress and you start creating more complex and parametric families.
