First off, welcome to the forum! :thumbsup:

Next up, let's address that elephant in the room... 2013?!?


...as for your query - opinions vary, and the topic's been discussed to death, have a search of the forum, you'll find a good few threads that cover many of the aspects of your efforts.

Thanks will do and thanks for the welcome

Never mind that, the OP's attachment in this thread is 2009

A Bullet Point Summary that you should find from your search should reveal:
-Create Groups per Unit Types.
-Create Groups per Facade Styles (full vertical extents).
-No Wall Hosted/Line Based Families in Unit Groups. I Prefer making Bare-bone Units (except Countertops) then adding the Finishes/Cswk/Millwork/FFE in the Typical Unit Type being Documented.
-Origin Point of Units Matter most down river.
-Use Instance Based Doors/Windows for Units. Separate families from Public areas.
-Make sure Parameters can Vary per Groups where desired.
-Unit Demising Walls not in Groups (I usually create the whole assembly, even if it's 2 partitions as I see them as Area Separation Walls). This is where Origin matters, & I insert Ref Planes to make sure they stay aligned through Typical Corridor Layouts in other Levels.
-Only populate Units per typical Floor Layouts. I never populate all levels if Level 5-10 are Identical, then only Level 5 Interiors gets Modeled/Documented

There are more that can be listed or further elaborated, but it can depend on other variables like "situations", requires a sit-down to 'esplane, & some can be looked upon as preferences.

As snowy said, opinions vary wildly. I do a lot of things on large multi family (which i do a lot of) that are the exact opposite of Cftrevizo:

1. None of my units are bare bones: They are all completely filled in, and are all grouped.
2. My instance based Doors get used in the Core/Shell. My *unit doors* are the type based doors, so they can tag them by type in the units.
3. I populate every group on every level, regardless of repetition.

The models get *large,* but they run fine.

Does an instance based door/window mean its Width and Depth are Instance parameters? Or are you referring to the fact that it is not in a Group?

cftrevizto: Why do you use these for units please?

Aaron: Why this for core/shell please?

Thanking you.

I use Instance Based (mostly all instance parameters) Doors everywhere, generally. Its just a much better User Experience, to work with.

With large multi family projects, if there are 8 doors per unit, and 400 units, they only want the "Unit door schedule" to show 8, not 3200. So they call them Door Type A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. And the schedule lists door TYPES, not door numbers. So in that case, i load in my "Unit Doors" which are a modified library of my Doors that are mostly Type Based except for swings and graphics.

That way im sure all of the "Door Type B's" in the project are actually the same, since we arent scheduling them.

But my Unit Doors (Type Parameter Based) arent even loaded in my Template. I do everything else Instance.