In-place families in groups!!

[patricks]

I have a large warehouse with lots of steel dock stairs at man doors all around the building. I created stairs with railings, and then did an in-place family for the rail extension and return condition at the bottom of the railings.

Now I can copy and paste the stairs, railings, and in-place rail returns all around the building just fine. However I thought I would make a group and copy that instead. Problem is, when I copy or even move the group, the rail extension pieces fly off to right or left, out away from the stairs! Why is it doing this?

I made the rail extensions with an in-place sweep, using my circular handrail profile family as the sweep profile. I made it in a section view, using a grid line as the work plane. Then I dis-associated the sweep from that work plane and moved it over into position where my other hand rails were. Does this have anything to do with why they fly away from the railings when I move the group? It's odd that it only happens when everything is grouped together, and not when the individual parts are copied separately.

[dbaldacchino]

I've had that experience with groups of in-place families since I started using Revit in 8/8.1. Support had suggested using a generic model family instead of in-place for my case. If I were you, I would model that piece as a baluster family instead. You should be able to copy & paste your existing geometry into that family.

[patricks]

No good, as the in-place family partially follows and continues the slope of the hand rail above it, and the slopes of stairs and railings are not always the same.

[dhurtubise]

I have to agree with David, add it as a baluster famiyl, make it either parametric or create multiple family.

[Scott D Davis]

In-place families are meant to be....in-place. One spot, one location, one orientation. A truely "one-off" occurrence of an object. Not to be duplicated, not to be changed to a new position, not to be copied around a model. As soon as you need something in more than one place, build a Family in the Family Editor, not in-place.


Maybe we should rename in-place families to "one-place" families.

[ron.sanpedro]

Maybe we should rename in-place families to "one-place" families.

And remember that a group is NOT a block. If you have a group of 10 objects, and you copy the group, you have 20 objects in your file, and two groups that help you manage things. But you really do have 20 objects. And since by definition an in-place family is one of a kind, as soon as you copy that group you have another different in-place family, and in the process you have broken one of the major benefits of groups.
As for renaming families, I have asked folks to think of them as Single Instance Families, just as I have asked them to think of an "Editable" workset as a "Checked out" workset. Both are examples of nomenclature that mad some sense early on, but as Revit has changed and improved the nomenclature went from rational to confusing. Hopefully the Factory will see fit to change it sometime soon, given that the number of future users who could be confused hugely outnumbers us current users who have simply gotten used to it.

Gordon

[B. Strube]

I've recently experienced something similar with seating risers for a stadium that I created as inplace floor families. Each in-place family consisted of an extrusion utilizing a vetical refrence plane that I created before starting the family. The families also included one or more void extrusions utililizing a floor level as the work plane. I intended to group them and then mirror the group in plan. When I did this the riser families became rotated in plan strangely, but the voids were cutting the risers just fine. So, this got me thinking about how the work planes were working. I experimented with the work plane for the risers being a reference plane that was created as part of the family. When I did this it worked just fine. Without much science to this...does it make sense that when we create non-in-place families, all of the reference/workplane information is contained in the family, while when we create in-place families it does not necessarily have to be, but might need to be if it is in a group. Not sure if this solves your problem, but it did mine.

[Sweetshelby]

I really wish you could create an object like that (for example something like a kitchen counter top that is unique and does not need to flex) in the project and then right click and turn it into a generic model family.

Wish list! wish list!

[aaronrumple]

I really wish you could create an object like that (for example something like a kitchen counter top that is unique and does not need to flex) in the project and then right click and turn it into a generic model family.

Wish list! wish list!
...just copy the massing into a generic family template and load.

[Sweetshelby]

...just copy the massing into a generic family template and load.

That is what we do, but it would be nice if there was a one step command. :)