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Nested Detail Component with Tag

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    #1

    Nested Detail Component with Tag

    I am trying to make a nested detail component that will take a angle (AISC Angle Section) family and a Nelson stud family to make a typical Continuous Angle family. I am making both families shared so they can select sizes in the project. This is my thought for the family...

    I want a drop down label to select what angle is being used and a drop down to select what HAS is being used. Then I want a parameter that they adjust for the spacing (just for tagging not visual) of the HAS as well as the length of the HAS. This is all easy enough.

    Angle Type (Family Type: Detail Items)
    HAS Type (Family Type: Detail Items)
    HAS Length with I can link the the length parameter in my HAS
    HAS Spacing (Which controls nothing visually)

    From this I want to make a tag that will say something along the lines of "L3X3X1/4 CONT WITH1/2"Ø HAS @ 24"" Where the information is read from the sizes selected, so if they change the angle size or HAS size the tag will update along with the detail component representation.

    I really am not thinking this will be possible, but thought I would check. I think I will have to just do a "Tag" parameter where they type in the note or information and have to update the sizes manually.

    The problem I am having doing this live is that I can not seem to pull any information through from the nested families into the parent family.
    Tags: None
    #2
    Originally posted by gdoherty0102 View Post
    ... I really am not thinking this will be possible, but thought I would check.
    It is possible. You just need a good map to get there.
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      #3
      Originally posted by Alfredo Medina View Post
      It is possible. You just need a good map to get there.
      The issue I have with this is because it pulls the Family name along with the type. So my tag will say "AISC Angle Shape - Side: L2X2X1/2 CONT WITH HAS: 1/2"Ø HAS @24"" If it would just pull the type name and not the family this would be perfect.

      So that is when I tried to make a parameter that matched the type name in the family and tried to pull that info through to the parent family with no success.

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        #4
        That's doable... Did something like that some time ago as a study when working on redoing my Windows and Doors. To find out Shared DC's won't work in 3D families. Still valuable for CW's though I thought so I kept it lying around. I'll try to find it later this evening (it's somewhere on my "need to get back to this later"-pile).

        EDIT: don't know about the caveat. Like I said, would have to look it up but my workflow was somewhere similar to Alf's roadmap... I also have a mindmap like that stored somewhere with it.
        Last edited by mdradvies; January 18, 2012, 03:08 PM.
        Martijn de Riet
        Professional Revit Consultant | Revit API Developer
        MdR Advies
        Planta1 Revit Online Consulting

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          #5
          Originally posted by gdoherty0102 View Post
          The issue I have with this is because it pulls the Family name along with the type. So my tag will say "AISC Angle Shape - Side: L2X2X1/2 CONT WITH HAS: 1/2"Ø HAS @24"" If it would just pull the type name and not the family this would be perfect. ...
          EDIT: It depends how you want the pull down menus. If they were by type, it would be possible to get rid of the family type name in the tag, but using something like (in my example) "square type name", and "circle type name", (text parameters) , instead of the family type parameters. But, that would kill the idea of flexibility that I assume you are looking for, since I assume you want the pull down menus to be by instance, with total freedom for the user to make a combination. Getting the tag to change "square type name" when the value of the family type parameter changes (square or circle) by instance, does not seem to be possible.

          Another possibility, if you still want to do it by instance and keep the flexibility, is to do an intermediate nesting of the families, into other families that are named with just an abbreviation (just the initial of the nested family), so that instead of the full name of the family followed by the semicolon, at least you could have something like "D:5 ", or "S: 8".

          For cases like this one, it would be great if we just had a nice set of string manipulation functions, like in other applications, such as TrimLeft, TrimRight, Concatenate, etc...
          Last edited by Alfredo Medina; January 18, 2012, 05:16 PM. Reason: conclusion
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            #6
            Could you explain what you mean a little further?

            I actually want them to be type drive not instance driven for this case. Typically in a project we will have only a few different orientations of this detail, so for a given project we may have up to 5 types that vary angle size and HAS size.

            I would like the flexibility to be in the type parameters not the instance. I don't think I will have any instance parameters on this family.

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              #7
              When we load a family with types, and we label that nested family to a Family Type parameter, the values in the drop down menu are in this format: [Family name : Type name] ; but, if the nested family does not have any types, the value of the Family Type parameter is simply [Family name].

              Therefore, if the priority is to give the users the ability to use two or more pull down menus to create combinations of detail items, and have a tag that shows the result of that combination using the names of the types, without the names of the families, I think the only way is to use nested families that don't have any types. It means an extra work, since you need one unique family for each version of the detail item, but if that is the goal, I don't see any other way to do this.

              In the diagram of my first post above, almost everything will remain the same, except that in the first steps above, instead of loading "Family 1 with types", "Family 2 with types",...etc., you would need to load families without any types, which will force Revit to use the name of the family in lieu of the name of the type, for the values of the drop down lists of the Family Type parameters.
              Last edited by Alfredo Medina; January 19, 2012, 06:40 PM.
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                #8
                Thats kind of what I was thinking as well. I will have to think on this a little more. This means I will have 127 angle families which will need to be pre-loaded into the parent family giving a long list.

                My thinking right now is to do a parent family with a type catalog that will give every possible combination of angles and HAS (600+) or doing text that is unassociated to the graphics.

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                  #9
                  Oh, you had mentioned that it was just a few, maybe 5 types. But if you have more than a hundred versions of angles to deal with, yes, of course, just do a type catalog, give each type the name of the combined parts, and make the multi-category tag work with the Type Name parameter.
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