I have a large project with lots of vertical fan coil units. Some have supply outlet grilles as a part of the fan coil unit, some have one duct connection on the right, some have one duct connection on the right, and some have two duct connections on each the left and right. I want to make the fan coil unit one family with different types for the different nominal supply air flows, for easy keeping track of and scheduling.
But I can not control the visibility of the connectors, which forces me to create multiple families with different arrangements and different numbers of connectors, or to create one family for the unit casing and separate additional families for the grille and for the duct connections.
I have been looking at making one casing family and then several face based families, with zero, one, and two duct connectors. The great thing about these being face based is that they move with the fan coil unit casing. The bad things about these families are that these separate families do not know the size of the fan coil unit they are on, they can not communicate the cfm of the connector into the fan coil unit casing, and because they are a mechanical equipment family they have their own mark parameter. Darn.
I have the same situation with air handling units where similar units have a top supply outlet or have a front supply outlet. I just took the plunge and made two different families because here the air flow is much more important than for the fan coil units. For the fan coil units I can just schedule the air flow and put the air flow designation on the one or two grilles. But for the air handling units I want to be able to sum up the air flows of many grilles.
Is anyone handling this a better way than I am? Can I make the fan coil unit duct connections a different family than mechanical equipment so the connectors still work, but they don't contain a mark parameter? Is there any way to have more control of the visibility of the air flow connectors? I tried to turn off the visibility of the extrusion that the connector is on, but when that part disappears in the project, the connector is still there.
(Another problem is that because these units are vertical, I can not have the lower unit casing as one family and put a separate family plenum box on top, because then when we label the units the plenum box is what highlights, and I need to make what I do understandable to others who would not know that the actual labeled and scheduled unit is below that casing. Another good thing about the face based grille and duct connection families.)
Thanks.