open the doors, please

[orwake]

I am new to Revit. Is there an obvious and easy way to make door panels open in a non-plan view like in ADT? I went through the 7.0 update tutorial (p.97-115) on Working in the Family Editor which covered attaching a door swing parameter to the plan view of a door panel, but I can't seem to get my panel extrusion to attach to the same swing. Is it really necessary to start from scratch to create a more intelligent door family or is there an easy way to show open doors in 3d views? Thanks for any help or direction toward the proper tutorials.

Orin

[Steve_Stafford]

There is an operable door family or two on the Revit content page at Autodesk's Revit Web page.

[edited] Sorry they are plan swing adjustable. Attached is a multi swing door from David Conant's AU class on families to demonstrate how it can be done.

[orwake]

Thanks Steve, for your referral file. I also found a few more helps from others with the same requests in the Autodesk Revit Discussion groups. I appreciate the timely response!

Orin

[adegnan]

I've started creating a few. I'm out of town at a conference/vacation right now but I'll try to remember to share soon... Friday or next week.

[sjsl]

I still look back at Chief Architect for door and window creation. It has some missing abilities but, by and large, extremely fast and easy to create almost any kind of door or window in only a few mouse clicks. It will create doors with any swing just by clicking and dragging to your desired location. By the time you do the door swing exercise in Revit you could have a sandwich and a coke.

There really needs to be a more general Family creator for doors and windows that has all of the bells and whistles. Over 90% of the windows we create could be handled this way.
We rarely do custom residential windows and the new templates for commercial windows in R7 are fine.

I hate having to load a whole bunch of sizes and variants of anything when many other programs use only one variant with a dialog that has all of your options. One door type fits all instead of 87 different door types. It seems a somewhat dated approach.

[aaronrumple]

Maybe what Revit needs is a general System Family for Door/Window... You would still be able to use a Door/Window family for the custome stuff, but there would be a built-in set of rules for creating a door/window from a dialog box like the walls.

[dalewww]

I hate having to load a whole bunch of sizes and variants of anything when many other programs use only one variant with a dialog that has all of your options. One door type fits all instead of 87 different door types. It seems a somewhat dated approach.

I to have noticed this and hated it. I wondered why an advanced program with need to set each window to the size instead of having one window that can handle every size by just typing in what you want. So far, being a newbie, I have only used the windows supplied and have had to change them and make a new size which needs to be saved. I did a cased opening that just fit in between some cabinets, and I had to create it and name it the size of the opening. Why not just let us place the window/door/opening and define it by typing in the size? Seems much easier. I think the schedules could then just look for size instead of name of object then. But I may be missing something being a newbie.

[aaronrumple]

You'll need to understand the difference between instance and type parameters. This gets into your office standards and how you want your families to work. If your want preset sizes to be listed in the dropdown - then you need Type Parameters which are what you have been using to-date. With type parameters you can have catalogs of doors. You can preset sizes available to the end user.

If you want one door that is all sizes - you need instance parameters. (See attached...) However - now you have to type in the size for each door instead of selecting it from a list of preset sizes. You also now can't change the width parameter of one door and have all of the same width update automatically.

You can decide which will be the best for you.

[dalewww]

Aaron, This is perfect for our office. You also described it better than I got in my training.

I assume this can be placed in a schedule with the schedule looking for the size of the door and not the name. Am I correct?
Is this a standard door that came with Revit 7 or something you made?
I also assume this works for windows as well?

Thank you. This could save me a lot of time when I set up our systems more.

[adegnan]

OK, here is an example using nested components. YOu can create new components and easily recreate this door to any standard you want to.

I simply placed 2 nested door panels, one closed and one open. A simply visibility parameter changes the open/closed visibility.

Not sure how "heavy" this door is for your standards.

[adegnan]

And here are some of the components I used to create those doors. Have fun! Modify these components and make them work for you.