Design Ideas for the Built World

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Enjoy Revit: Adaptive Symbol

As known, annotation tags in Revit can show information of families. But Symbols can't.

image © Enjoy Revit

In the picture above, level tags show levels automatically, but it does'n happen in section symbols. It could make some documents incorrect. Of course it's been happening when we use Autocad. But in Revit? I expect it shouldn't be.

So I developed a symbol family which can follow the model and make correction automatically.


1. Make a face-based family which includes a detail item.

image © Enjoy Revit

A rectangle Model Line above is not necessary. It's just for help to understand.
Included Detail Item has parameter for height and wide. Sync them with the parameters of face-based family.


2. Making an adaptive family.

image © Enjoy Revit

This family has three adaptive points and two ref. lines. And place the face-based family at the workplanes of the points on the ref. lines like the picture above. And make a reporting parameter which shows vertical distance between adaptive point #1 and #3.
And add another parameter that connected with the height of imported family.

I used two of the imported family for the cases of right-up & left-up.

At 3d view, you can see only model line rectangles but Detail Items. But in a plan view, you can see them all. I don't think I have to explain why.

image © Enjoy Revit

image © Enjoy Revit

Watch how this works and how to make it.

This family has some differences comparing with other normal symbols. Basically, This is a 3d adaptive model. So this shown in any duplicated plan views unless hide it or use visibility options. And If you want the family, just get it.


This post was originally published on Enjoy Revit’s blog and has been republished here with permission.

Cover Image © unsplash