Family Counseling Requested

[MitchellT.]

Attached is my first attempt to build a universal Marvin window framer. I needed to adjust sill trim, side trim, header trim and shutters independently. After days of effort and several peculiar work a rounds, here it is in all its bloated glory. (I can’t figure out why the left shutter needs a separate dimension and won’t move with the side trim like it’s better behaved twin on the right)

I started with Michael Gatzke’s Marvin UDH windows and a downloaded shutter.

If any of you more experienced family practitioners could offer more efficient techniques, I’d be most grateful and will have more to time to spend with my actual 3d family

[adegnan]

I'll take a look... I'm inspired after all my recent work but also tired!!

[adegnan]

Well I actually was able to flex the family. The only time I couldn't flex the family without an error was when I changed the default head height.

What is the exact problem you experience?

About the only thing that is not-quite-perfect is that your solid extrusions for the side trim appear to be locked to other objects and dimensioned to their edges, rather than dimensioning to reference planes and locking to reference planes. But as I mentioned the family still flexed for me, so this isn't a fatal error. Revit is better about this now than in the past.

So I'm not sure what you are looking for. Upload a second type catalog with just one window, that gives you problems and I'll see what I can come up with. And post a parameter that I should enter and see if I have a problem with it as well.

Good luck,

[MitchellT.]

Thanks Abe,
I was able to get it to flex also, however I had to add a second dimension to the left side or else the shutter wouldn't move with the outside of the trim. I suspect that your observation that:

"side trim appear(s) to be locked to other objects and dimensioned to their edges, rather than dimensioning to reference planes and locking to reference planes" is the culprit. I'll go back and study it.

This was my first attempt at a family so aside from looking to fix the mentioned problem, I was looking for other best practices or references. Any suggestions or posts by family planning experts that you can reccommend?

Next stop will be to attempt parameters for diferent shaped header trim, somithing like a key stone or crown molding.

Is there a practical limit in terms of size of family for all these different parameters?

Thanks,
Mitchell

[adegnan]

Well you'll want to use visibility parameters to turn the different styple of head trim on and off. WIth "lazy parsing" as Leonid has mentioned, I think that it will not slow down the drawing speed too much to have differnt options. You'll want to set it so that only basic window info is seen at "coarse" view detail and all is seen at "fine" detail. See the Visibility properties for each individual piece.

Reference planes are a best practice. And make sure the reference planes flex before you start adding geometry to them.

Also go with very thin wall thicknesses (4 1/2" inches is good as it is usually the thinnest residential wall that is used) and very thick walls-- 3' or so-- to make sure that things move in thickness as well.

[MitchellT.]

Thanks for the assistance Abe.

Where do I find more about the mysteries of "lazy parsing"?

Cheers,


Mitchell

[adegnan]

Search for it in the forum, you should be able to find the posts. I don't exactly understand it, it has something to do with how Revit reads the model information out of the file. Basically it means that if it isn't a visible object that Revit doens't generate it. Makes sense right? So more detailed geometry that is visible slows things down.