Best practices- Model components

[cbalestreri]

I think I have made a newbie error. I modeled a dock seal in place in my project, and then copied around to the appropriate doors. Now when I look in my project browser under generic models, each dock seal has it's own family (38 of them). Was it the wrong way to do this? I figured instead of creating a family and loading it in, creating it in place would be better.

[bbeck]

In general, I prefer in-place families to be kept to a minimum in projects. As you have seen, each one occupies more space then a single family placed multiple times. The database grows significantly. I use in-place for a truely one off instance of some component i.e. custom counter-tops, site specific hardscape, etc..