Angled Nested families for structural bridge diaphragms.

[Applecart]

Hello all,

I need to create a set of families for a highway superstructure diaphragm. We are at early stages in the project, so the designers have not sent the final measurements yet. Therefore the families I create need to be adaptive to changes in parameters in the future, and need to be detailed enough at this stage in the project to be uploaded for a 50% check. I have searched online, and I believe that the solution is a nested family, since the diaphragms will each have stiffening plates that are angled between 2% and 4% over the longitudinal length of the bridge.

I started with the truss family creator, which works for setting variable parameters for the slope of the members. However, I need to have gusset stiffeners that follow the same slope of the member. Therefore, I have created a nested family for the gusset plates that will be attached to the girder webs. At this stage I am planning on setting the girders and the stiffeners separately, however I don't think that this is the best solution.

I found this discussion on Revitforum which has a similar end product to what I need, however this is something that neither I nor my coworkers have done before and I do not have the knowledge set yet to create what I need. Are there any good tutorials for created nested parametric truss families, or a source of examples .rfa files I can download and experiment with?

More fundamentally, I am not sure how to use parameter nested families which move in angled space. I have read online about work planes, which seem similar to using annotation parameters for reference lines, however I have not yet successfully applied them. In the attached file I have an example of the gusset family that I want to use, and I have not successfully applied the parameters for changing the spacing and angles like I have successfully been able to do in a simple generic family. Is this because I should be working with work planes instead of reference planes? The nested family do not seem to move with the reference plane as I anticipated after working with generic models with annotation parameters.

Thanks kindly for any assistance.

[Applecart]

Sorry, I tried to repost this multiple times without realizing that posts are approved.


My progress on this solution is thus:

My first tact was to create a truss family and the gusset families separately. Therefore, I have created a nested family for the gusset plates that will be attached to the girder webs. However I have not figured out how to parameterize the spacing between the gussets so that they can be placed correctly onto the truss face. Normally, in a generic family, I can create annotation parameters based off of reference lines, however the gusset plates will not stay attached to the reference lines that move with the annotation parameters. See the previous attachment for an example of my gusset family.

More fundamentally, I am not sure how to use parameter nested families which move in angled space. I have read online about work planes, which seem similar to using annotation parameters for reference lines, however I have not yet successfully applied them. In the attached file I have an example of the gusset family that I want to use, and I have not successfully applied the parameters for changing the spacing and angles like I have successfully been able to do in a simple generic family. Is this because I should be working with work planes instead of reference planes? The nested family do not seem to move with the reference plane as I anticipated after working with generic models with annotation parameters.