2D plumbing fixture - behaves like 3D

[Martin P]

This was what I was tring to achieve with dwg in families post.....

This toilet will appear correctly sections, elevations and plans, and will hide fixtures and objects that are behind - basically it behaves as if it were a true 3D object, but is much simpler to costruct families of these.

It might not be a great revelation to many of you, but I am pretty pleased I got this working, now I just have to create a load of different ones!! Anyone else done similar?

[Martin P]

here are a few of the other families I have done this morning for plumbing fixtures

Hope they are of use to others, enough here to do a batgroom layout that will display in all sections and wall elevations too...

[aaronrumple]

Actually - it will work better and be more flexible in the future if you use detail componets nested inside the plumbing family. These details will respect the view direction automatically plus you don't have to deal with groups to keep the linework together. You can also link the detail componet parameters to the parent family. The biggest advantage to this technique: you can mask the model with filled regions. Filled regions are not available in a 3D family - just linework. (Attached file was posted on Zoog - not sure if it was transfered to Augi...) The model extents are defined by a few invisible model lines in 3D. At any later date 3D geometry can be added.

[Martin P]

I thought I had seen something like this posted by you Aaron, I couldnt find it? had a look in tips and tricks and families??? Thank you for re-posting

Yes, I see that your Method does have an advantage as it will be easy to drop in a 3D family later. I thought for some reason that detail components would only be visible if the object was touched by the cut plane - why I thought that was from the electrical families needing invisible lines etc to show up in plan I think.... I must admit I still cant get my head round what the different properties of all the family types are. Would a detail comp only show up in plumbing fixtures then?

[aaronrumple]

Yes the detail will only be visible if the cutting plane touches a 3D element. Look at my 3D view. You'll see a set of invisible model lines which mark the width, height and length of the toilet.

I had another post at Zoog with a table and chair. family demonstrating the use of the 3D invisible model line. The chair had a 18" high line. The table a 36" high line. When the chair went under the table - the deatil componet of the chair was hidden.

[Alex Page]

Actually - it will work better and be more flexible in the future if you use detail componets nested inside the plumbing family. These details will respect the view direction automatically plus you don't have to deal with groups to keep the linework together. You can also link the detail componet parameters to the parent family. The biggest advantage to this technique: you can mask the model with filled regions. Filled regions are not available in a 3D family - just linework. (Attached file was posted on Zoog - not sure if it was transfered to Augi...) The model extents are defined by a few invisible model lines in 3D. At any later date 3D geometry can be added.

Aaron, this is exactly what Im looking for ...thank you very much, now I can setup all my fixture libraries using and modifying your file
A couple of questions thou. ..(just so I understand how this works!)
1. What are the purposes of the '3d invisable lines'? Dont quite understand their importance
2. Why did you decide not to make them wall-based. We cant decide to or not. Generally its great using Revits intelligence to snap to walls and for them to 'auto' rotate etc etc, but we find sometimes it slows our design process down, and better not to, ie can copy one across and place it on a wall later.

Is there a way to create a wall-based toilet and be able to turn on/off the wall-based aspect?

Thanks again

[aaronrumple]

The 3D invisible model lines establish the 3D extents of the object. This allows the object to act like it is 3D while only having 2D information present.

See the attached file. It demonstrates how the invisible line allows one object to hide another.

Wall based was a bit too retrictive for our design purposes. We might place a toilet in a non-standard relationship to a wall. Other than that they could be recreated as wall based by pasting the objects into a new template.

[Phil Palmer]

Wall based families scare me somewhat.
If you know how the model is put together and the effects it can have then wall and floor based families are fine.

My reluctance to go that route is the fact that I may have various people intercating/changing the Revit model. If one if them users are not sure as to the knock-on effects he could easily delete a wall and WOW - wheres all my families gone ????

I just feel safer developing families that are 'non-hosted' but also realise I loose some of the additional benefits that these could offer.

[Chad Smith]

Aaron, in your Santa Rosa file, you have detail components for plan & elevations.
Inside each of those detail components do you have a detail component that is just a 'mask' (filled region)?

Is there a way to force filled a filled region to the back in a detail component? My filled regions are always on top.
I can see it's going to be a pain to have to create an additional detail component just for a 'mask'.

[Chad Smith]

Don't worry. I got it working.

I was using a Region Fill that had a Solid pattern the was white in colour. I see the trick is to apply No Pattern to the Region Fill. I guess I was under the inpression that would still result in a see through family using No Pattern.