dbaldacchino
2006-02-24, 11:18 PM
Hi all,
I might be posting this in the wrong forum, but it gets more coverage here in my estimation :)
We were looking at how joists behave when we rotate the slab, parallel to the longitudinal axis of the K-series joist and it causes the joist to rotate. This is not what we want. Looking at a W section family, there's a rotation parameter, but we couldn't do that in the joist family because it's so much more complicated. So we tried nesting the K-series into a beam family. We created a reference line and another reference line perpendicular to it in the longitudinal direction, on one of the former reference line's planes (forming like an inverted "L" shape). We added an angular dimension parameter from the ref. level to the reference line and flexed it. Then we picked the longitudinal reference line's plane and used it to nest the joist.
We were delighted as we were able to give a rotation parameter to joist this way. We needed to add parameters in the host family and then connect the nested family's parameters to it. We tried to start from the length, but we couldn't align the ref. planes from the joist (that define the length) to the planes of the beam. For some reason, even if you set the planes in the joist family to Strong References, the align tool doesn't "see" them when nested into another family. I've created some nested families before (doors) and the reference lines could be used for alignment as the align tool would see them.
So then we tried to set the joist family as a Generic Model and it accepted it. We loaded it back into the beam family and that caused Revit to get dizzy and gave us a fatal error :screwy:
So we cannot post our example since we'd have to start all over. Has anyone ever tried this or have a K-joist family that can be rotated? :) Any tips about connecting beam lengths to planes when nesting in other beam families? Is it even possible?
I might be posting this in the wrong forum, but it gets more coverage here in my estimation :)
We were looking at how joists behave when we rotate the slab, parallel to the longitudinal axis of the K-series joist and it causes the joist to rotate. This is not what we want. Looking at a W section family, there's a rotation parameter, but we couldn't do that in the joist family because it's so much more complicated. So we tried nesting the K-series into a beam family. We created a reference line and another reference line perpendicular to it in the longitudinal direction, on one of the former reference line's planes (forming like an inverted "L" shape). We added an angular dimension parameter from the ref. level to the reference line and flexed it. Then we picked the longitudinal reference line's plane and used it to nest the joist.
We were delighted as we were able to give a rotation parameter to joist this way. We needed to add parameters in the host family and then connect the nested family's parameters to it. We tried to start from the length, but we couldn't align the ref. planes from the joist (that define the length) to the planes of the beam. For some reason, even if you set the planes in the joist family to Strong References, the align tool doesn't "see" them when nested into another family. I've created some nested families before (doors) and the reference lines could be used for alignment as the align tool would see them.
So then we tried to set the joist family as a Generic Model and it accepted it. We loaded it back into the beam family and that caused Revit to get dizzy and gave us a fatal error :screwy:
So we cannot post our example since we'd have to start all over. Has anyone ever tried this or have a K-joist family that can be rotated? :) Any tips about connecting beam lengths to planes when nesting in other beam families? Is it even possible?