Escalators and how they view -

[TerribleTim]

Ok gang, this may be something that was covered before but I couldn't find it.

I'll cut to the quick :
I've got an escalator on my plan that doesn't quite show right. I need it to show only the lower half on the first floor and only the upper half on the second floor. But since Revit is cutting it, it displays the entire escalator on each floor. Is it possible to make it display more like a stair run or am I stuck?

[arb]

does it work properly if you make the family "shared"? have you tried using a plan region at the upper level plan to limit the bottom plane to control visibility?

- Alex

[TerribleTim]

Hmm... I am not sure how to do either of those things.

Can you expand on that a bit?

[kmarquis]

I think it also depends on what category the family is in. For example families like Furniture are always shown in projection. For example if a table was 4' high and your cut plane is at 3' it won't show the 4 legs being cut, it will only show the top of the table. It's possible that the family category is one that always is shown in projection.

[patricks]

I would make it a generic model. Those families always cut, and you could place a plan region with a higher cut plane than your overall floor plan so that you could see it up to the halfway mark.

[TerribleTim]

Hmm... So I tried making it a generic family and didn't have much luck. I'm not the greatest at family creation, let me state that. What I did was take the family I have for an escalator, edit it to get into it, copy everything and paste it in a new generic family. The problem I have is that it comes out all messed up since none of the dimensions in the parameters are correct. The width is all jacked up and you'd have to be super skinny to use it. When I try to change them I get an error message that the constraints are not satisfied. So in the end, that didn't work for me. But I was able to see that it would cut correctly if I can get it to work.

Is there a better/different method I should try?

[kmarquis]

You don't have to create a new family. You can just open the original family and open the Family Categories and Parameters box and switch it to generic models. You can switch most family categories over but not all. You can't switch a face hosted family over to a non-hosted family or vice versa but I doubt your escalator is hosted. Secondly don't panic when you see that your constrainsts are going to be removed. It's not always a huge deal. It's really just geometry with dimension strings on it that can be replaced.

You'll figure out the family environment eventually. Just disect some other well made families and try to figure out how they're put together.

[TerribleTim]

Thanks for that tip! It was a "Specialty Equipment" category.