Hi there,

First I'd like to start with mentioning that you used an imported symbol for the geometry, probably some imported dwg. This in my opinion is way to detailed and will slow down you project when you have a couple of 100 of these in there. Build your own geometry, from just 1 simple Sweep and you have the basic shape at the right size without all the little nooks and details, I mean do you really need the manufacturers info modelled in there?

To get the right J-Hook in your tag I would make different Family types. For each type you choose a different J-Hook with the Parameter you already have and fill in Parameters like Description and Type Comment for each type. So you will end up with 1 Family called J-Hook for example, with in your case 5 types called:

cat16hp - 1in dia
cat21hp - 1.3125in dia
cat32hp - 2in dia
cat48hp - 3in dia
cat64hp - 4in dia

You place the names of the type of J-Hook in the Description of the different types in your Family and you can build a Tag that reads and displays that Description.

For the height, I don't believe you can read and display the Elevation in a Tag or Schedule and this is why I have added a Height Parameter to some of my Families. You would have to set the build-in Elevation to 0 all the time and use your own Height Parameter. Not perfect, but for me it works because it is just me using them. If you works with multiple people in your company then maybe it would not.

But you should be able to make a Dynamo script that changes the values, reads the Elevation value, sets it to your Height Parameters and sets the Elevation to 0 for all the families at once. That's one I'm going to give a shot myself now I think about it.

Thank you! I was unable to make it read elevation off of a height parameter, cause I cannot figure out how to get this to work when making a face based family as there is no base elevation to work from like a wall based family has. We want to be able to put them on either the wall or ceiling so I need to use face based. Here is the link for the simplified model (note: the box extrusion is because my boss wanted to be able to see it that way when in coarse/medium detail level).



If you are able to get this working with dynamo or have any example you could give of making the height parameter work on a face based family, could you please share?

Thank you

Here is your own family back with the height parameter.
Quick and dirty and I think I might have broken you array, but you'll get the idea.
For it to tag of read in a schedule you need to make it a shared parameter.

For on a ceiling I don't know. This is the reason I made my fire safety families as unhosted and just type in the height I need them to be.

I might look into Dynamo for this at some point, but right now I have no time digging into it. Just a few more weeks and I have some free time (I hope).

Thank you Robin! I'll have to ask people I'm working with which method they prefer because of the ceilings. I'm trying to start learning how to use dynamo myself as I've never used it before, but it seems like it has the potential to be very useful. Just need to find free time like you.

Dynamo is fun to use, but it is always a balance on how much time would it cost me to build in Dynamo and how much time would that save me on a project (every time). Being a 1 man shop myself a lot of the dynamo stuff is not really worth it for just 1 time use compared to having multiple people use the same graph multiple times. But for example having a Dynamo graph for creating levels, views and sheets is very useful and changing stuff in titleblocks for example, especially when you have a 100 of them like I have on my current project. And once in a while I just build it in Dynamo because it is fun to do .

Still have a Dynamo Enigma Machine I need to finish one of these days