Revit basics - Reference planes

Hi

This video is a quick run through reference planes and why they are there. This is only the very basic stuff you need to know to get started. I will go into parameters later and will revisit planes to look at the more advanced features.

Revit family basics - Reference planes from Quintus on Vimeo.

The case of the Palisade...and how you can be too clever for your own good

I'm feeling a bit stupid telling this story but I think it illustrates the concept of being too clever for your own good. Sometimes keeping it simple and working with the fundamentals is a good thing.

So what is this all about I hear you ask. Well, being all into Revit families at the moment and wondering how far you can push it the idea was to construct a garden palisade that would look like this:

and would add columns etc automatically every few meters or so depending on a value set by the user.

 The idea was this: construct a linebased family that would be one section of the palisade and then array that into another linebased family that would add another section as soon as already placed sections reach a certain length..simple enough. So I whipped out the notebook and started scribbling the formula's and ideas. I wikipedia'd math formulas, played with nested families, struggled with accessing parameters of one family inside another (thanks to Zach Kron's blog for clearing that up)  and even dabbled in the dark art of Revit conditional logic.

After about a day of struggling and finaly giving up and deciding to go to bed I had a thought - what if the palisade is on a slope? uhm..you cold probably nest something inside a railing system and then...hold on..what did you say.. a railing system! The lightbulb moment was as overwhelming as it was humiliating. Everything I wanted this family to do was already possible with a railing system..without any clever tinkering.

I tried it and it took me about 10 mins..oi.
I'm not going to do a video on this one but if you have any questions post it here or on the Facebook page but I will give you the file.
Here is the file

Q

Revit basic window family

This video shows how to create a basic window family and Revit and then how to add parameters to it.


Revit basic family tutorial from Quintus on Vimeo.