Tagging Furniture Families Within a Family in Revit
A look at the behavior and benefits of shared nested families in Revit and when it makes sense to employ them.
Nesting in Revit allows us to place families within other families in order to brandish their combined geometries and brand them behave like a single unit within a projection. At that place are many utilize cases for nesting Revit content, such as employ of repeated components or parametric elements in an array.
There are also situations where placing a set of families together would be very convenient, for instance a table and its surrounding chairs. But if nosotros practise this by nesting chairs and tabular array within a Furniture System family, we wouldn't exist able to count those chairs independently at a later stage.
This is where shared nested families come up in. Past making the chairs and table equally shared nested elements of the family, we get the best of both worlds: ease of placement within the projection, and total functionality for the data independent within the nested families.
The best way to think about it is that you should utilize shared nested elements when those elements could also be used on their own inside the project. On the other hand, regular (non-shared) nested families should exist used to aid in the creation of repeated elements when creating Revit content.
A good instance of when it makes sense to use shared nested families is the one mentioned above: chairs and a table beingness nested in a furniture organisation family.
We tin can select the shared nested elements, tag them and schedule them. The shared nested elements also display in the project browser, while non-shared nested elements don't appear at all. The shared nested elements can also be edited in the family editor and brought dorsum to the model, updating all instances of the nested element.
Shared nested families in Revit take a category that is independent of their host. This category will define how the shared nested families display in views.
Inside a Revit project, all filters and visibility settings that apply to the category of the shared nested families will touch them independently of the host. At the aforementioned time, filters and visibility settings applied to the category of the host family unit won't impact its shared nested families if they are of a different category. For example, hiding category of Piece of furniture won't hide shared nested casters of category Generic Models.
Depending on the types of content involved and their apply within a project, there volition be tradeoffs between the benefits of sharing nested families and the benefits of treating a host family unit and its nested elements equally one unmarried family unit.
MEP systems in Revit offer some more creative options for using shared nested families. But that'southward material for some other post.
Naming
Shared actually means shared! Within a Revit model, a shared nested family is identical beyond all families into which it is nested.
This is great for maintaining consistency, considering it ensures that one and the aforementioned version of the nested family unit is being used across the project. This is a luxury nosotros don't take with regular nesting, where modifications would have to be done separately in each host family unit. This feature, notwithstanding, makes it critical to take a solid naming convention.
Names such as "desk", "handrail" or "handle" for regular nested families don't encounter the lite of day when loaded into a Revit project, and different families can take a different nested "desk", "handrail" or "handle". This is not the case if the nested families are shared.
A shared nested family that is unique to i particular host family should have a unique proper noun. For instance, the name of the host family can be added before the name of the shared nested family. This mode, it's articulate that it'south distinct from other such nested families that might get loaded and used with other host families.
If a shared family is non meant to exist placed on its ain inside the model, and will just be loaded as a nested family unit, and so it's besides expert do to indicate this in the name. For instance, we can append "-to be nested" to the shared family's name.
The ability to nest families is a useful tool for building Revit content, but that use is express to the host family unit. Past sharing nested families, Revit will bring them into the model on their own, which not just allows u.s.a. to tag and schedule them, but also allows us to ensure consistency across all model families in which they are nested.
This ways that standards applicable to families in models (such equally naming conventions) need to be applied to shared nested families too. Nosotros should be selective about what really needs to be shared and approach this setting with a item employ example in heed. In the majority of cases, it will exist best to exit the Shared setting off.
In a follow-upwards post, we'll take a look at a few tricks and workarounds in Revit that rely on shared nesting – in detail issues with cuttability when using masking regions and detail lines – too as how to show generic annotations of vertically placed face-based families in program views.
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