mjdanowski
2007-03-09, 05:38 PM
I have been working on my firms first Revit project over the past month or so, and have been charged with creating all the families for our non-existent library. As per the recommendation of the training firm we hired to help us with this as well as my initial findings in Revit, I decided to make all of our initial "generic" families wall based. (receptacles, panels etc)
The main reason I chose this was because when I tried face based families, Revit did not recognize the elements within their respective rooms. This means it would not spit out the room number on the schedule, and worse - it would not give us room electrical load information. However, as I am sure many of you know, you cannot host wall based families on the architectural link, and have to use copy/monitor.
At the time, Copy/monitor seemed like a pretty easy concept so it didn't really phase me. However, now I am hitting some major snags with it. When you copy/monitor a wall or something over from the link, the walls seem to loose a lot of its "connecting" properties to the building around it. Walls get shorted, unjoined, center lines moved and all sorts of fun stuff which really makes my life difficult. Worse though is its effect on a coordination review. Every wall I copy seems to be in conflict with the arch link, making a giant spam on my coordination review tool. Worse still, when I update my arch link, (as was the case today) it sometimes feels the need to see the copied walls as "to be deleted." This morning I lost half my receptacle layout on my project because I thought the walls I "accepted" to be deleted were a result of architectural changes.
In addition, the screwy walls also mess up a lot of my notation, and do really messy shenanigans because some (especially exterior walls) are not simply one part, but many.
Ultimately, the Copy/Monitor in regards to hosting surfaces is just a really bad idea, as it just creates a big mess. Right now I feel like I am at an impasse where I don't feel I can sustain a design with wall based, copy/monitoring, and feel that without my families being recognized by Rooms there is little point in designing at Revit.
Two obvious solutions would be to allow hosting via walls on the reference (without copying over), and/or make face hosted devices more recognizable as far as organization of systems/rooms is concerned. As an engineer, I personally don't really want to deal with walls and other building elements, that is the architects job. As engineers we need to design around what the architect has given us. Ideally, a coordination review that centers around changes in the link in regards to things we have hosted on that part of the link would be perfect.
For example, if the architect moves wall 5' to the left or something, and I have a receptacle hosted on that wall, I should get a list in the coordination review that says said wall has been moved 5 feet to the left. Then there would be options to move receptacle with it, or delete receptacle, or even manually displace it to somewhere else. All other information is really inconsequential for us.
[/rant]
My questions from this thread is however, is there a way to make families hosted on a face, to "show up" in regards to rooms when hosting them on the link?
The main reason I chose this was because when I tried face based families, Revit did not recognize the elements within their respective rooms. This means it would not spit out the room number on the schedule, and worse - it would not give us room electrical load information. However, as I am sure many of you know, you cannot host wall based families on the architectural link, and have to use copy/monitor.
At the time, Copy/monitor seemed like a pretty easy concept so it didn't really phase me. However, now I am hitting some major snags with it. When you copy/monitor a wall or something over from the link, the walls seem to loose a lot of its "connecting" properties to the building around it. Walls get shorted, unjoined, center lines moved and all sorts of fun stuff which really makes my life difficult. Worse though is its effect on a coordination review. Every wall I copy seems to be in conflict with the arch link, making a giant spam on my coordination review tool. Worse still, when I update my arch link, (as was the case today) it sometimes feels the need to see the copied walls as "to be deleted." This morning I lost half my receptacle layout on my project because I thought the walls I "accepted" to be deleted were a result of architectural changes.
In addition, the screwy walls also mess up a lot of my notation, and do really messy shenanigans because some (especially exterior walls) are not simply one part, but many.
Ultimately, the Copy/Monitor in regards to hosting surfaces is just a really bad idea, as it just creates a big mess. Right now I feel like I am at an impasse where I don't feel I can sustain a design with wall based, copy/monitoring, and feel that without my families being recognized by Rooms there is little point in designing at Revit.
Two obvious solutions would be to allow hosting via walls on the reference (without copying over), and/or make face hosted devices more recognizable as far as organization of systems/rooms is concerned. As an engineer, I personally don't really want to deal with walls and other building elements, that is the architects job. As engineers we need to design around what the architect has given us. Ideally, a coordination review that centers around changes in the link in regards to things we have hosted on that part of the link would be perfect.
For example, if the architect moves wall 5' to the left or something, and I have a receptacle hosted on that wall, I should get a list in the coordination review that says said wall has been moved 5 feet to the left. Then there would be options to move receptacle with it, or delete receptacle, or even manually displace it to somewhere else. All other information is really inconsequential for us.
[/rant]
My questions from this thread is however, is there a way to make families hosted on a face, to "show up" in regards to rooms when hosting them on the link?