Converting Beam Familes to Column Families

[jpierce.119502]

I am working for a structural engineer, and we have just started using Revit Structural 2008 (first time with revit). We cannot afford training, so you will have to forgive me if I seem a little behind the curve.

For some of the models that I must create I need to use angle for columns. I find angles under the framing families, but not under the columns, and it is not letting me use a beam in the vertical position. So I was wondering if I could take the L-Angle family file and change it to work as a column family. What would I need to do to the file to get this to work. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks

[TheViking]

Being a structural engineer I will not make any comments about using an angle as a column:).

That being said you can not "convert" a beam to a column. Revit requires different behaviors between beams and columns and to do this it requires different families to be loaded.

I would take a look at modifing one of the existing column familes to display an angle instead of a wide flange section. You could also search some of the revit based web sites on the web, like www.revitcity.com (http://www.revitcity.com).

Best of luck and welcome to Revit!

[dbaldacchino]

We cannot afford training, so you will have to forgive me if I seem a little behind the curve.

Typically such a comment would force my consciousness to be overwhelmed by sensations of laughter, but I digress....that's a sad statement and shows how obnoxious most people in management are. You CAN'T NOT afford training. Anyway......

To make a column out of angle, you could try opening a copy of your W section column family and assign the angle profile to the extrusion instead of the W profile. Of course you'll have to change parameters etc. especially if you're using it for analysis through a 3rd party software. If it's just for dimensional representation, then it might not matter as much. If you have no experience with the Family editor, you're going to have to commit to some time to train yourself. There's no way around it.

[Phil Palmer]

The Metric addtional subscription library appears to have some Light Gauge Angles as columns.

It may well be worth downloading that if you are on subscription.