Face Hosted Families Default Height

[kmarquis]

I've been making a lot of Face Hosted Families lately and I never completely understand how you set up the default height. For example I couldn't find a Toilet Paper Dispenser that wasn't wall hosted today so I made a face hosted version. Of course I had to make the Elevation version of the object in the Plan view of the family so I don't understand how to set heights when there's no Reference Level.

Thanks for your help.

[dhurtubise]

This one is confusing.
The default elevation will be used when placing the family in a view perpendicular to the face.
So if you place the family on a wall in a floor plan, the family will sit at the default elevation. Its measure from the origin of the family.
So basically it's measured from the host.

[kmarquis]

Thanks...
I guess my confusion is there's no where to ground the object to when you're modeling the family in a plan view when the object is intended to be mounted to a wall. You can't set up a parameter for height like you can in a wall hosted family because there's no ground reference plane. It's not a huge deal..just curious about how that works. I wish there was a way to be able to move that surface around in the surface mounted family so it's a little more intuative. I keep having to explain to people..."Well...The elevation is actually the plan"..

[Dimitri Harvalias]

I'm not sure if it would confuse users even more but you could always rename the 'Plan' view as 'View Perpendicular to Face' or similar.
The other alternative is to put a text note in the family in the plan view that explains the view is actually the elevation. Explanatory notes are useful in families to help explain the logic behind them.

[cdatechguy]

We changed a lot of our families to floor hosted because the default elevation of wall or face based elements don't always work