In-place Specialty Equipment problem

[patricks]

I made an in-place family in the Specialty Equipment category, with 2 solid extrusions. One solid is front of a section cut plane, and the other is completely behind the section cut plane, and neither solid is being cut by the section. Yet when I open the section, BOTH solids are visible! How/why is this happening?

[archjake]

Speciality equipment can't be cut. Try another category or some other tips listed below.

Just reset the category like you would for any family in the family editor except you just do it while editing the in-place family.

Other things you can do... Turn the visibility of the solids off and have some line work representing the cut object. You could even set it to sub-categories and make it view specific.

Also, Did you know that if you open the family editor and edit the in-place family that you can cut and paste from the in-place to the family editor?

Give it a shot. In-place families can have a decent future as a real family.

[patricks]

but the 2 solids in the family aren't being cut by the section cut line, yet the one behind the cut is showing up in the section view.

[archjake]

I think this is because you are cutting through part of the family. Not part of a solid, but part of the overall bounds of the family. Does this make any sense? I have not tested this, but its my theory. What happens if you put the solids in 2 different families? Does it still display the same way in the section?

[s.messing]

but the 2 solids in the family aren't being cut by the section cut line, yet the one behind the cut is showing up in the section view.
You should read the help section on Cuttable (and Non Cuttable) Families. I am fairly certain that your issue is that Specialty Equipment cannot be cut so it displays all of the family even if it is completely behind where the section is located. We had this problem awhile back and could not figure it out and went to Autodesk thinking it was a bug. They explained it and we fixed the issue. Basically, if you change the family category and parameters under settings to one of the cuttable families, I think this issue will go away...

HTH,
Stephen

[jamie.casile80054]

would you mind posting an image?

thanks,
jamie

[Calvn_Swing]

Ditto...

We modeled a bunch of HVAC ductwork as "special equipment" because it seemed logical at the time. We spent several days trying to figure it out, and couldn't fix it till we changed the category.

Personally, I don't understand why they'd do this. I'd rather have a VG setting per view to determine if something cuts in section. It would be a lot more helpful than having such a general category as "special equipment" be unable to cut no matter what you do. That category is such a good catch-all for so many things, and since we can't make our own categories, we're really screwed with this. We changed our ducts to general model, but that has its own issues too...

Sigh.

[patricks]

I changed it to 2 separate families and it works now.

As for ductwork, I typically create a Mechanical Equipment subcategory under Generic Models and put ductwork and mechanical units on that.

[s.messing]

would you mind posting an image?

thanks,
jamie
Did you mean me post an image or Patricks?



Personally, I don't understand why they'd do this. I'd rather have a VG setting per view to determine if something cuts in section. It would be a lot more helpful than having such a general category as "special equipment" be unable to cut no matter what you do.

As for why they did this, I think (I am not 100% positive about this) that they made this decision many years ago. I have heard through the Revit grapevine that they needed to separate stuff like furniture (that you'd never really want to be cut in section) from things like casework (that you'd always want cut). That was long before what we now know as VG existed with so many options and overrides. And it's been in the code ever since...

Help me out old timers: Am I just a young whipper snapper spreading urban myths?

Cheers,
Stephen