Did you make it in the family editor or as an in-place component in the project?

You may have come up against one of the real challenges in Revit. Most elements don't like being rotated out of the vertical.

In the family, from the ribbon choose Create > Family Category and Parameters > Family Parameters. Un-checking Always Vertical may help, but is unlikely to I would guess.

In the family, from the ribbon choose Create > Family Category and Parameters > Family Parameters. If Work Plane-Based is checked, then the family can be placed on a rotated workplane in the project.

If the family is Face Based (has a big square floor under the object), then you can place it on any face or plane in the project.

You could make your family work plane based; create a new empty family and set a work plane there as appropriate; then nest in your first family and place it on the work plane, thereby rotating it; save the new family; load it into your project.

It can be quicker just to recreate the so-and-so again and remember this for next time.

Hi sorry for the late reply. @Andrew yes I made it in the family editor using forms.

@anthonyB - yes that's exactly right! for some reason it doesn't sit right when I rotate it. I tried unchecking always vertical but it didn't work.

I have used a plumbing fixture template if that's any help. If I change the category do you think this will make any difference?

Thanks for your help Anthony I have tried recreating it in a different view which has worked so far I was just hoping to see if I could work with the model I had and rotate that somehow. Unfortunately I didn't build it on a work plane in the family so I guess I wouldn't be able to rotate it but I will definitely remember this for next time. Thanks for your help

No, families placed in a model don't work that way. Unless hosted, they all have a "reference level" that expects to be parallel to a model level. Although you CAN break this and get families to "misbehave" in the manner you're describing, it's not best practices and I think you will find yourself wasting much time on this.

Unless you are using adaptive components, you did use a workplane to build your forms (they are sketch based, and a sketch uses a workplane). You can't "rotate" these elements because they are based on planes that are locked to ordinal directions. They're not just forms floating in free space (as in other software). Your families need to be built to take advantage of the built-in functionality or you will constantly be fighting them.

Thanks for the reply. I just made it in a view on the default plane in that case. I know they are not floating free in space as I use Solidworks quite often and have only recently switched over to Revit so I'm still trying to get used to it. So what would you recommend I try? just using modelling it in the conceptual mass and using adaptive components that way to give the freedom of rotation?

From my experience, loadable, placeable families in Revit do not need freedom of rotation. Or rather, in most cases, it's not worth it to chase that. I wouldn't want to show a light switch that is not vertical, for example. Revit is concerned with buildings and building components, not arbitrary geometry or handheld objects. Revit takes advantage of the fact that objects used for building construction are typically used in a certain orientation or fashion. From my experience, this strategy is DRASTICALLY different than strategies employed by other software, to the point that knowledge does not really transfer between the platforms. Your Solidworks knowledge will not automatically make you better at Revit modeling.

I think I see where you want to go with this (well, if adaptive components allow "free rotation", i'll just make everything adaptive), but that's not going to work in Revt. See here for example: RevitCat: A Dozen Reasons Not to Use Adaptive Components in Revit

What would I recommend for you? Frequent trial and error. When you go down a path, go more widespread and shallow before you go deep (model one trinket as an adaptive component and see how it performs in many situations before modeling ALL the trinkets as ACs). Often there will be one situation that has the potential to invalidate your logic (ACs are not level aware, so you'll have problems scheduling them). Take note of how many workarounds are stacking up in your workflow; revise your logic to minimize the workarounds.

I think the problem with using purely adaptive components in a massing environment is going create a mountain of a data size for what we need just for the model even if it offered the facility to rotate the model regardless of in which view you designed it. I feel it's a little silly that there isn't a simple command like the copy command (or even just that) where you are able to just copy what you modelled in one view and paste it in another view, giving the option of what projection you want it to have in the desired view, so in other words, if you were meant to design it in the floor plan rather than the front elevation, you can take it from the front elevation and paste it into the floor plan and it gives you a dialog box with options of the different views or projections you want it to be in in that view. I hope that makes sense. If this sounds really dumb, my apologies I'm starting this with very little experience.

If you nest the family into itself, and set the work plane host as a reference line, you can alter the rotation as much as you want by adjusting the reference line.