Grid lines and in place families (Revit)

[iwalker673339]

Anybody have any luck / experience / suggestions for trying to add gridlines to an in-place family?

[irneb]

Simple answer? ... No.

Sorry, but a family can't contain grids. Much less an in-place family. You might want to try grouping the grid with your family.

BTW, why do you want the grid as part of the family? Are you thinking of making a parameter to position the grid? If so you can include a reference plane / line inside the family which is dimensioned with a parameter. Then outside you can align & lock the grid to it.

[iwalker673339]

We're using the reference planes now on our current models to make them parametric but I'm working on an earlier version where it wasn't set up properly and now hoping to find a quick workaround. Oh growing pains!

[Dimitri Harvalias]

May I ask what the in-place families are? Even if in-place seems like a quicker way to do it at the outset a 'loadable' family is almost always preferred. In terms of control and flexibility, model overhead, ease of change... in-place will always lose.

[irneb]

May I ask what the in-place families are? Even if in-place seems like a quicker way to do it at the outset a 'loadable' family is almost always preferred. In terms of control and flexibility, model overhead, ease of change... in-place will always lose.

+1 In place makes life difficult in the long run.

Not to mention it's more dangerous if you attempt to duplicate the instances of the family - it's easy to have it "linked" to some grid/level/pane/face which is outside the family. This would cause the family to error and / or mangle itself to pieces if you move/copy/rotate/mirror its instance(s).

My rule of thumb is: If I can see any possibility that there might be a 0.00001% change that I might want to duplicate this same family anywhere else (including inside this same project) ... then I will rather create a RFA file than use an in-place family. Which means that I've not made many in-places since I've made that rule (I think in the last 5 years I can count them on one hand), and I'm very glad of it - since reuse has made my efficiency go up 10+ times.

[iwalker673339]

I was hoping simply to find a temporary work around to make an older project more intelligent until the final product is complete. The older project was built with a completely different mindset and I'm just grabbing at straws now.