Behavior of annotation symbols in other families

[sven.129574]

Is it possible to nest an annotation inside a family of another category, but have the annotation ignore the VG settings of the host category?

I thought it would be a bright idea to include electrical connectors and symbols within certain families from other categories (electric water coolers, air conditioners, electric water heaters, automatic lavs, etc.). That way, it’s easier to ensure that when, say, an architect adds a water cooler, it will have all the graphics pieces necessary for plumbing and electrical plans, and all the connectors necessary to size pipes, circuit it, and so forth.

I tried implementing a water cooler as a simple test case, and included a symbol for an electrical receptacle with the water cooler. The connector worked fine. The annotation seemed to be working great, until I checked what would happen if I wanted to half-tone the plumbing fixtures. The nested annotation symbol gets half-toned, too, which I don’t want.

Is there a way to get the annotation to stay black when you half-tone the category of the host? I tried to make the annotation symbol shared, but “Shared annotations can not be used in 3d model families,” according to the error message I got.

I guess I could probably use a group to do this, but I hoped to do it in a family, because families seem to be a little more idiot-proof. Also, I’ve heard that extensive use of groups can result in substantially slower performance (like 30-60 minutes per day, according to some anecdotal reports).

[Steve_Stafford]

The short answer..no.

If you place connectors in families and those families are in the architectural model you won't be able to connect to them if you link the architectural model into your Revit MEP. It isn't possible to connect to nested connectors (within families) or connectors in families that are part of linked projects. This all assumes that you are not working directly in the same model as the architecture staff. If you are then what you describe is possible, just not the annotation part. You might consider just using tags for the annotation, it will give you a lot more control over how the information is displayed at different scales.

In the linked model scenario you might consider making a few generic connector families that you can place adjacent to such families in the architectural model. The connector families can do the grunt work of connecting systems so Rmep works but without having to worry about the graphics of the fixtures etc. The architectural fixtures can stand in graphically but you can connect to your own.

In a perfect world we could connect to the fixture placed by the architecture in their model. If the fixture were deleted we'd probably have to lose the portion of pipe that was actually connected leaving a pipe dangling to resolve. Similarly a moved fixture would force some sort of response when the link was reloaded. Either the pipe could accommodate a change or it would have to delete part of the run to force our intervention. I imagine it is for these reasons (and probably more) that it doesn't already work this way.

[sven.129574]

I was afraid of that. But thanks for the answer, Steve.