Can you help me figure out beams and beam systems? mostly their display habits? especially for residential

[3dway]

I've been searching websites and googling for everything and finding articles as far back as Revit in 2005.

I can't seem to find any useful, and applicable information how I can get beams to work the way I expect them to work.

I'm drawing wood framed residential construciton.
I show lintels, and beams as heavy center lines on my drawings.
I show the beam in the ceiling above, over the plan which the ceiling serves. IE, the ground floor plan shows the beams which are built into the floor framing directly above. I never look through the subfloor of the plan I'm showing.

I'd like to use the Revit beam objects (though I'd be happy to make a custom one as I don't work with a structural engineer who uses Revit, though some day I may)

Here's what I'd like to have happen:
Draw a beam, or beam system in the plan view where it should display in the final printed drawing set.
Have the choice to display either the hidden lines (this I can kind of do with LW tool but it feels like a workaround)
or have the center line display in the plan where I want it to show.
I'd also like to make changes to the beams from the plan on which they display.
I'd also like to show a fine detailed plan view with a stick symbol for the beam.
I'd like to be able to show stick symbol for the beam in plan view, and the actual beam lines (geometry) in a reflected ceiling view


Here's what happens:
I draw a beam in the view on which I'd like it to display and it vanishes.
I have to switch to a 3d view to find it.
Once I've hunted it down, I can move it the correct height.
When I go back to the plan view, I can't get the beam to show.
The only way I can get beams to show the way I'd like is to put them on the level above the one where I'm actually cutting the plan. Then create a reflected ceiling view of the level below the one that the beams are on. Set it to course, VG everything out except structural framing and set the view to course,
Then go to a sheet and overlay two viewports. Work with the activated viewport over the plan I want to see.


While I'm wishing wouldn't it be nice to be able to just underlay a view that's already created instead of trying to frig around with a duplicate or another view to get it to show both what you want to see underlaid, and what you want to work on? I just don't get how they've done the view range versus underlay thing.

And please let me checkbox whether or not I want the start and end beams on a beam system.

[3dway]

Here's what I did, and I think that beams may be behaving the way I want them to now.
I can't say how I may have broken them structurally.

I used the light fixture trick.
I put a reference line in the beam family with a parameter so I can control how far down the reference line hangs.
Of course, this creates another problem, but it's easy to cope with. The problem it creates is the beam location form top or bottom. The bottom measurement now counts the reference line as something to locate the beam from. This now makes my instance parameter for how far the ref line hangs down function as the distance to bottom of beam from the reference level.
If the location line is set to top, it functions as before.

But, now I can draw a beam in the plan I want, and have the stick show (oh, I also added a stick symbolic line to the plan)

[dkoch]

Not sure if this would be any improvement, but I recently created a family to show a wall-hung shelf, which often ends up being above the cut plane, and therefore would not normally show up in a plan view. I put in an invisible detail line on one of the elevations, locking one end to the reference plane representing the top of the shelf and locked the other end to the reference plane at the reference level. I have a parameter that controls the height of the top of the shelf above the reference plane. All shelf instances are inserted with an offset of 0 (at the floor line of the current view), the parameter controls the height of the shelf, and the invisible line assures that the family will be cut by the cut plane if the shelf is above the cut plane.

I had started out by adding an invisible line that extended down by some fixed amount, but was annoyed that then the offset parameter was to the bottom of that line. I also found having the line's endpoint at random elevations based on the shelf height to be inelegant, and had not thought to add an instance parameter. So I decided to lock it to the reference level, and that took the offset out of the equation altogether. (On future projects, I intend to use this for counter families, so that the offset parameter does not have to be altered when changing the type to one that has a different height or counter thickness. On my current project, we have counter families that insert initially based on the setting of a height (to top of counter), with the offset parameter becoming the height to the underside of the counter. If I later change to a type with a different height, I have to change the offset to the appropriate value for the new height less the new counter thickness, making the height setting in the family sort of useless and causing me to have to do more math in my head than I care to do.)

I also have two sets of symbolic graphics for the outline of the shelf, one a solid line style and one a dashed line style. There are two instance-based yes-no parameters, one for the visibility of the dashed linework, and the other for the visibility of the solid linework. The solid linework parameter is the "not" of the dashed linework parameter, as is therefore grayed out in a project. The user can place a check mark in the dashed line parameter, and the dashed linework displays (for shelves above the cut plane) or can clear the check mark for lower shelves, and the solid linework displays.

[scowsert]

So lets say you have a 2 story home. It sounds like you want to see the framing for the second floor on your first floor plan? Off the top of my head I seem to think that beams if you make them reference their level to the first floor that they will appear in that view regardless of your view range. I don't have revit here to test this right this sec.

The other option and one that I like for places like this. Create two views, one with your floor plan, one with just your beams above just as you want. Then place them on top of each other on the sheet. Its a hack sure but I love this hack for lots of different things like this.