Exposed rafter tails during DD's

[patricks]

We're working on a fairly large building in the early DD stage, and the boss is showing exposed rafter tails around the eaves of hip roofs all over the building. And there are LOTS of different roofs on this beast.

What would be the best way to show all those rafter tails on the elevations, and have them move and update when/if the roof moves?

[davidcobi]

we use a false raftertail family... a line-based generic model.

[patricks]

So is that like an array, something that keeps adding more instances as you stretch the line longer?

[iru69]

Here are a couple, both line-based. One with fixed spacing, where you enter the spacing, and one with justified spacing where you enter how many tails you want over a specific distance.

But I'm finding that as unwieldly as it sounds, for small projects it might make more sense simply to draw the rafters as in-place families - arraying them as needed.

I saw a thread that suggested using a void to cut out the "bays" between rafters of a roof... that seemed like an interesting approach.

Revit desperately needs some kind of roof tool for rafter ends, etc.

p.s. - I was recently working on those families, so I'm not a 100% sure what state they're in... let me know if somethings broken.

Edit: I updated the rafter families to work like I originally suggested they worked (I think ;) ).

So is that like an array, something that keeps adding more instances as you stretch the line longer?

[patricks]

Well this is a ~40,000 s.f. building (quite large for us) with many different eaves and roofs all over it. There will be literally hundreds of exposed rafter tails all around this thing. So yeah, we need something like this.

*edit what is the 'a' instance parameter for in the Fixed Spacing family? Looks like the formula just ends up giving back the same result as the length.

*edit2 actually it appears that both families act the same way, where you specify the spacing and the length and it calculates the number. I can't pick a number of rafters in either one.

[iru69]

The 'a' instance parameter in the "fixed" version was garbage... I removed it.

The "justified" version now should work as I originally indicated it should. Personally, I only find it useful when i want to throw some rafters into a model without worrying about exact spacing.

They are both now just "generic" line-based model families.

*edit what is the 'a' instance parameter for in the Fixed Spacing family? Looks like the formula just ends up giving back the same result as the length.

*edit2 actually it appears that both families act the same way, where you specify the spacing and the length and it calculates the number. I can't pick a number of rafters in either one.