Visibility of Revit Families from 3D ACAD

Revit families are becoming more common and easier to stumble across.  Website such as Autodesk Seek and Revit City have a great collection of families, and many manufacturers are starting to create their own families for their products.  So what happens after you exhaust all these options, but still the only thing you can find is a 3D ACAD family?

Visibility Settings in Families

One of my favorite ways to explain visibility settings:  "You can model a chair, have it show up in plan as a chair, front elevation as a smiley face, and side elevation as a frowny face".

How do you accomplish this? With visibility settings for lines as well as solid objects.  A simple yet powerful tool that can let you control exactly how something looks in every view that it will show up in, as well as with every detail level.  Here is a recent example, a fin tube grill in the top of a solid surface under a curtain wall.

Side effects of using out of the box door families

Many of the families that come with Revit by default out of the box are very nice, basic and do what you need them to do in your project.  Unfortunately, the doors are not one of those, at least not for the kind of projects that most of us usually do (non-residential).

Elevator Doors

I'm sure we have covered this before, but another example of it and its importance has been uncovered. Using a correct family for model elements.

Families:Revit::Lines:ACAD

The intention behind Revit, or BIM, or any 3D modeling program is that you building the building in 3D in the computer before you construct anything in the field. The benefits behind this are numerous and include (but aren't limited to): performing clash detection, seeing the true sizes, clearances and other spatial requirements of objects, being able to cut instantaneous sections and see the correlation between Architecture, Structure, and MEP.

Revit (BIM) is not ACAD and requires an entirely new way to think. The traditional ACAD thought process does not work with Revit and is not the correct way to go about putting things together in a model. (I believe the first commandment of working in Revit goes somewhere along the lines of: "BIM is not CAD". The second being "Thou shall not draw lines in the model".)

In my experience of writing curriculum and teaching BIM, implementing it in offices, writing office standards and participating in beta testing of new products, one of the biggest issues with people new to the world of BIM having drafted in CAD for the last 20 years is understanding how it works and what the appropriate thought process is.

Here is a situation recently run across. On an RCP, it appears as if an access panel is meant to be placed into the ceiling adjacent to a mechanical device. This 'access' panel was drawn using all lines. This goes against the 2nd commandment of BIM. The reasons this is the inappropriate way to do things is several.

1. It's not an object. Revit doesn't know what it is, how it interacts with the ceiling.
2. As a series of individual lines, it cannot be moved easily.
3. If you wanted to change the size of all hatches, you would need to go to each one an individually change its size.
4. Since it's not an object, Revit (with the help of Navisworks or QTO) cannot tell you how many exist in the project
5. It will not show up in section cuts of the ceiling, you will need to draw it into any section cuts
6. Lines can behave unpredictably when moved.
7. It cannot be given a keynote as an object, linked to a spec section, or be identified by a manufacturer or model number in the model
8. It probably took longer to draw each of those lines than it would have been to find an appropriate access panel family, or to create one
9. Ninth: If this was a family, each of the previous 5 issues would not be a problem.

Adding fire wall patterns

The VA BIM Guide has some excellent strategies (mandatory for their BIM projects) on "how to's" for a couple different things in Revit including scheduling, modeling, dimensioning, room/door numbering, etc. They also specify how to designate fire walls and partitions on a plan, a strategy that can come in useful for almost every one of our projects.


This is accomplished by adding a course scale hatch pattern to a wall type. Since most of your plans will probably be displayed at medium scale, course scale can be used to display the wall patterns and will not affect the rest of your model or project. Since the pattern will be by wall type, you will need to create a new wall type for a non-rated assembly, 1 hour assembly, 2 hour assembly, etc.

In the wall type dialogue box, there is an option to specify the course scale fill pattern. Clicking on the small box with the three dots brings up the fill pattern dialogue box.

Since the pattern we will want does not exist yet, we will need to create it. We will create it from an already created autocad hatch pattern imported. Click on the 'new' box and we are presented with an opportunity to create a new pattern.

Under 'Orientation in Host Layers:' change the value to 'Orient to view'. Click on the custom bullet, then on in import button. Next, select the hatch pattern for the appropriate wall rating. The hatch patterns are found in the ZAS Revit Library on the server at: H:\Studios\Barnes Studio\General\Revit Content\ZAS Library\Fill Patterns. You will want to use the fill pattern with the '...smoke partition' rating that matches the hour rating you are looking to achieve. Click 'OK' and back all the way out of all these dialogue boxes until you reach the wall type box again.

Close out of the wall type box and if your view is set to course scale, then you should see the pattern applied to the wall. Change the view detail setting to medium, and it will disappear.
Repeat this procedure until you create all the different fire rating types that you need.

The VA BIM Guide is an excellent document and can be downloaded from: http://www.cfm.va.gov/til/bim/BIMGuide/downloads/VA-BIM-Guide.pdf

Doors with Frames

One big problem of the 'out of the box' revit door families is the doors don't have a frame. Take a close look in plan or elevation, the door is simply a panel cutting the wall. There is some trim which shows up on the interior and exterior of the wall (typically found in residential construction) but the doors have no frames.

Is this how we really build? Last time I checked we had frames around our doors, and they showed up in plan, but using the normal revit doors, you don't get this. Another danger is using these out of the box families, if you use the data in the doors to populate your schedules (which you should be doing) than the data could be wrong. A door panel width, and the wall opening are not the same.

What is the solution? A custom door family Don't worry, it's already been created and tested and is just waiting for you to use it in your project. It cuts the wall properly, it has different graphics for course, medium, and fine detail levels, and it is entirely parametric.

You can find this wonderful family in our family library: H:\Studios\Barnes Studio\General\Revit Content\ZAS Library\Div 08 - Openings\Doors\Combined Panels

No more not seeing your door frames in plan!

Left: 'Out of the Box' Revit door, Right: Door with frame

Tips for Family Creation

Here are a few basic tips when creating your own families.  Can be good to ensure consistancy among families as well as reduce the chance the family will 'break' when you flex it.

http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com/2011/08/family-creation-groundrules.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WhatRevitWants+%28What+Revit+Wants%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher