nesting beam families - Length?

[tlwhite]

Can someone please tell me what i am missing. I am trying to nest a "beam" family inside another family and cannot find a way to control the length of the beam. I've tried using a shared parameter but the "length" parametered is not accessible.

[dhurtubise]

Did you attach the nested beam ends to the host ref plane?

[tlwhite]

Yes. When you attach the beam ends to a reference plane and try to flex the parameter, it removes the constraints on the beam. Typically in families you can link the parameters of a nested family to a parameter inside the new family and everything works great. But for some reason the Length parameter in nested beams is not accessible.

[dhurtubise]

After a few minutes i find the situation pretty interesting. It wont allow me to attach any ends, even if you switch them to reference.
It also wont let you try to fool the system with a Generic Model.
So the next question is, what are you trying to achieve exactly so we can find another way to do it :)

[tlwhite]

The family i am creating is for roof/floor opening frames. Basically i am creating a floor based family (opening included) and was thinking i could simply nest the beam/angle families into the family.
I know i can create solid extrusions and use the angle/beam profiles to achieve that goal but it seems a bit odd that i have to go that route, and why is such an important parameter such as "Length" not linkable when nested. Was hoping that i was missing something simple.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[jmccool620683]

Any solution to this? I too am wanting to control a beam length in a family in Revit Structure 2012 and can't find any way to dimension/align/snap to any kind of reference that doesn't blow up when I flex it. Ideas?