GRUG 6 Family presentations 20111019

1. Families - Entrances
• Entrances to Underground
Stations
• MRT Kuala Lumpur
• Width driven and constrained
parametric model to suit varying
widths of entrance as a concept
design.

2. Families – ETFE Pillow System
• ETFE Pillow system
• Gogar Interchange
• Ref plane based pillow system,
• Parameter driven to
accommodate various lengths
and setting out. Ref plane
based to enable it to be tied to
roof slope, again this sloping
roof may be further
parametrically driven to ensure
pillow move in conjunction
with roof, easily draggable or
parametrically Pillow ensures
increase in lengths and widths
depending on slopes.

3. Families – ETFE Support
• ETFE Pillow stub support
system
• Gogar Interchange
• Parametric array to enable
ease of setting out of centres of
stub’s if altered to suit ETFE
widths, number, height and
set-off from working plane.

4. Families – Walkway Support
• Pedestrian Walkway Support
• Gogar Interchange
• Parametric Height, angle and
width of steel work support array
for walkway canopies.

5. Families – Station Gateline
• Passenger Gateline
• Gogar Interchange
• Parametrically driven gates sizes
and visibility parameters for Left
and Right gates.

6. Families – Existing Building
• Existing Building
• Refurbishment
• One family for door and
window variants to
match existing,
parameters driving
various heights and
widths.

7. Families – Various
• Custom Curtainwall
panel used as sliding
door.
• Wall hosted families
incorporating voids to
cut out unique openings
within walls.
• Non parametric shelter • Model from literature

8. Families – ( www.revit-content.com)
• All In One - Escalator
• Escalator family, 27
Custom Parameters

9. Families – ( www.revit-content.com)
• All In One - Doors
• Door family, I gave up
counting Custom
Parameters somewhere
around the 300 mark..
• THIS is a complex family

10. Family Types
• System Families
• Walls, roofs, Ceilings, Floors, Levels, Grids, Viewports are all system families. The are all predefined in Revit and cannot be
customisable ( per se ) but you can edit how they look visually, but cannot edit the inner workings of a system family such
as mentioned above.
• Loadable Families
• Loadable families are families which can be created from the templates supplied by Autodesk when you install Revit such as
Wall Hosted, Line Based, Face Ceiling Based, Generic Annotations and Generic Models, they families are highly
customisable and reusable time and time again in various projects. For example Doors, Windows, Kitchen Units, Sinks,
Plumbing, annotations and symbology, templates are already created for the likes of these elements.
• In-Place Families
• These tend to be unique to the project you are working on, and are created from within the project itself, generally used as
a one off, a project specific family. One of the things to note however, In Place families ALWAYS take up more space than
the creation of a generic model using an external or ‘Loadable’ family. If you are using multiple ‘copies’ of In-Place families,
it’s time to rethink and do it using a loadable family for two reasons.
A) It will not take up as much memory by doing so.
B) If an in place family has to be updated further down the line, it will NOT update all the copies within the
project.

11. Family pointers
• Loadable Families
• TEMPLATES: You should use the templates supplied to you with your installation of Revit, this is because each of the
templates come preloaded with the likes of parameters or specific hosting information, so that Revit knows what can
and cannot be done with your family once it has been loaded into the project.
• Pre plan what you need the family for, if it is a Light Fitting for example, there are various types of Light Fitting family
templates available to you. If it’s a piece of furniture there is a template for that.
• Familiarise yourself with Reference Lines and Planes you really cannot get anywhere in family editing without knowing
what these do.
• Familiarise yourself with Constraints, constraining reference planes and lines together form the basis of parametrically
controlled families.
• Reverse engineering families is one way to go to help understanding how families work, a word of warning however, you
start in a complex model, you will not know what is constained to what, and if what you are doing will constrain other
references, chances are it WILL fail. Sometimes better to bite the bullet and start fresh with a complex family.
• Pre Plan what you want the model to do, don’t go straight into the family and start modelling without thinking what
needs parametrically controlled. Common parameters that you want to include in a model may be Height, Width, Depth
and Angle.
• Set out your model ‘skeleton’ first using References plans and Lines, lock and constrain Planes together with dimensions,
then convert that dimension to a label, which forms your parameters.
• Once you are happy with the ‘Skeleton’ Flex, Flex, Flex, this is testing your model ( it can be without geometry in it just
reference planes or lines…) This will ensure your model ‘works’ before you start adding geometry and locking that to
your reference planes.

12. Family Downloads
• http://www.revit-content.com
• http://www.revitcity.com
• http://www.broutek.com
• http://revitcomponents.com
• http://www.turbosquid.com/Revit
• http://www.andekan.com
• http://www.familit.com
• http://www.revitstore.com
• http://www.arcat.com
• http://hermanmiller.com