Revit 2d Family

[Kym Wash]

Iam having difficulty getting a revit furniture piece to show in the 3D view when I import it into my project. I have found this issue with a lot of Knoll furniture families. When I download and open the family, there is a large mass in the 3D view I'm assuming to give solidity to the furniture piece. I am able to delete that so the furniture piece is actually framed and visible how it should be. I am able to apply materials and such when editing the family and the chair (I'm working with the Barcelona Chair) is visible in its entirety in the 3D view in the family. When I load this family into my project, the chair is not seen in the 3D view. I have tried the visibility graphics and it says all of the furniture is on, I have tried reveal hidden elements and that does not work either. The chair simply disappears when I roll onto the 3D view there is nothing to select or click on it completely does not show. I also tried this leaving the large mass in place which I referenced before, but the same issue occurs. I am unable to troubleshoot this issue and am looking for help and suggestions. I would really like to use the true Barcelona chair family from the Knoll website, which is why I'm so adamant about fixing this file instead of downloading a knock off file. Thank you for the help and consideration in advance.

Open the family. Go the a plan view Zoom in close. You will see a tag that says BARCELONA. That is also creating trouble for you - when you inset the chair in your project the tag grows so big that it hides the chair under it.

Go to a plan view. You will only see the word BARCELONA. Click on it and go into its properties. Uncheck the box for Visibility and Apply. Go to a 3D view. Change Detail (at the bottom left hand corner of your screen) to Fine. Your chair will show up fine.

Geometrically it all works perfectly and even looks right with a concrete fill linestyle. But sadly the instance doesn't appear to realise that it is meant to act like a wall when it comes to adding rooms!

I have tried something and it worked for me. If it is not a problem to change the category of the generic model family, you can make it a WALL, or Column from the "Family Category and Properties" box and reload it into the project. My case was, that I had a "hand-made" chimney, which was generic model extrusion in Mechanical Equipment category. So I turned it to "Column" category, which is room bounding.

Very true, @ToanDN. Just be careful that the instances are hosted to the level - otherwise the room won't recognize them.....as a matter of fact, just switching the family category around is also an option.....

@Sahay_R Hello, i know this is an old thread but i am facing the same problem and just saw this work around! when i choose to save as the group the file extension displayed is .rvt so it is saving the group as a project and not as a family, is there another way to save the group as a family ? i am using rvt 2018

I turned the family I want into wall family and got it as room bounding, but there's another solid in the family with visibility settings in one type (the family contains more than one type) that is affecting the room's area calculation, is there a certain setting that I can turn on/off so the solid won't affect the room's boundary or i should just separate the different types?

Hi Sahay-R, this is an excellent solution!

I don't know why Autodesk doesn't implement a room bounding option for Revit families such as generic, casement etc.

Maybe this should be on the ideas board?

How can you save Group as a Revit Family? I only get an option to save it as a Revit Project. I am trying it in Revit 2023.

Would you please advise on a work-around on this?

Thank you in advance!

Thank you for your response. However, I already have a family (generic model, not model-in-place). And I would like to convert it into a one that is Room Bounding. the solution with the group sounds nice, but I don't get an option to save it as a Revit Family. Would be my work around in this case? Is it even possible?

Hi everyone - I've been experimenting with the process of nesting Enscape assets into Revit family components and I think there's lots of advantages. For example, nesting light sources in an Enscape asset (like this SUV) and prepping furniture / casework with books and other entourage. The visibility of nested assets can be controlled with a Family Type parameter. Step by step process and thread over here on Twitter as well as download links of sample files:

Not sure why but when I nested an Enscape light onto a new revit lighting fixture family to apply a light source and loaded it into my project, Enscape rendered the asset all white and won't show the materials.

Awesome, this is a great idea. It'd help a lot speeding up the "polish" stage of my enscape outputs. It's hard to justify to clients why placing books around bookcases, stuff on tables, or shelves being decorated is worth the time spent. Especially since doing this manually one by one is a very slow process with how Enscape loads in assets to revit (though the use of an offline library has helped speed this up a lot).

To use the graph, place your family you want to explode, run the graph, select the family (only 1 at a time) and hit escape when done. Note: Your family needs to have all the nested families be shared so Dynamo can detect them. Otherwise, the graph wont be able to detect non-shared families and ignore them. Also, since you can pick more than one element at a time when running the graph, it only uses the last item picked.

Basically this graph takes the family you selected, detects the nested families, gets all their coordinates, rotation, flip state, and all parameter values, and recreates those families in the same places as separate components and sets their parameters to match. It detects if a family is line based or not. If the family is line based, it makes a temporary work plane and sets the family on it. It then deletes the original element (optional).

I've been reading the RevitAPI docs (still learning), searching (and finding) some answers, but I can't seem to be able to change the family name in a Revit model. I'm new to Python and have written a handful of scripts. Looking to get off dead center on this one.

I believe that the family is hard-coded to match the family definition RFA filename. At least, that is what Revit always expects. Obviously, once the family has been loaded into a project and the RFA file is no longer present, you may be able to change it. I would be pretty careful in doing so, though...

Whether you are new to Revit or just want a bit more insight into the world of creating Revit families, the following tutorial can help guide you along the right path. While you can use Revit to create just about anything, for the purposes of this tutorial we will take a deep dive into how to create a table Revit family from scratch.

In case you aren't into tutorial videos, would prefer to skim instead of watch, are in a public setting and don't have headphones, or otherwise are averse to the idea of being told what to do by anyone other than your wife, here's a step by step breakdown of what's covered in the above Revit tutorial video.

Draw the base for the parent family by using the extrusion tool. In order to lock the sketch lines to the reference plane so you are able to flex the model, choose the lock button and select the desired reference planes to trim it back into place.

Draw a simple extrusion and lock to the reference planes. Select and apply a radius label to control the radius once loaded into the parent family. Then, select that label and make a new parameter for it.

Do the same thing that you did in the parent family: create a reference plane height and lock extrusion to the top and the bottom. Make sure to lock the top and the bottom, then test it out and make the family reflect the height of the table legs.

Since most people don't think in radius, we are going to add a diameter parameter that will eventually be controlled in the parent family. Add a new formula (Diameter / 2) which will make the radius report as half of what it is.

Draw reference planes offset from the left, right, front, and back. These reference planes will determine where the table legs will lie inset from the perimeter of the table. Assign the same perimeter parameter (say that five times fast) to all of the table legs and name it (for example, leg offset). Make all of those references "not a reference" since no one needs to snap to these locations.

By selecting the nested family, you can associate all of its parameters to the parent family. This means you can assign each of the parameters to the parent then edit it there rather than having to select each nested component and edit it in each dialogue box.

Take the nested piece and add a label (this allows you to swap it out for another family in the same category). Make the other leg style by editing the family with the desired features and saving it as a new one. Swap out the other legs to the new one and you're good to go!

By creating a few preset family types, you can express the design intent and provide the different variations you were intending to have for this family. If you create more than 6, make a type catalog (.txt file) that goes along with the Revit family.

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