Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Fence Linestyle?

Revit doesn't allow us to create a line style that includes text as a symbol. Common uses for this are pipelines, fences, overhead electrical lines and many more. Revit’s repeating detail makes this somewhat doable if you create a detail component that has the symbol you need, not text though, you must draw the letter with lines. The line based detail component is another possibility. The thinking goes that we should use tags to identify things like pipe. Instead of drawing a line with HW embedded as a pattern we just apply a tag for the pipe system's abbreviation of HW. That doesn't really help for a fence though...

...and about a fence and mimicking a fence line style...an idea popped in my head, “What about a railing and baluster to do this?” We probably want a 3D fence anyway but what if we want the --X-----X-- in plan? At first I thought, “naah, can’t do it because you can’t create a baluster that gives you subcategories to manage visibility of parts”.

So I dismissed it until now. Then I thought, if you nest a detail component for the ---X--- and nested a generic model family for the baluster or fence portions you can assign each to visibility parameters that will give you control over each via visibility graphics under Generic Models and Detail Components. Ultimately we need the ---X--- with no rail visible in plan and the rails/baluster/panel in 3D with no ---X---.

It all comes down to what you really want but this is what I mocked up, messing around. Maybe the concept will spur some other ideas?


Hopefully they’ll just give us more options with line styles and it’ll be easy!

Download the sample File

7 comments:

Mārcis Lukšēvics said...

Hi, look here:
http://revitfamilies.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

cool tips - thanks.

Sorry for a totally unrelated comment but I saw some info in one of your previous blogs about the LA Revit Users Group. Do you guys still meet? I am looking for a user group like this in the Los Angeles area.

Steve said...

There are 4 L.A. area user groups. L.A. (City), Inland Empire, South Coast and Ventura. Which one is closest to you? Send me an email and I can pass you along to the group you'd like to see.

Woojin Kim said...

Thanks for your article.

you can see the Korean version of this article at http://www.rugi.co.kr/viewtopic.php?t=760

Anonymous said...

I'm a little confused. In what file to I nest the detail component and generic model families.

Steve said...

I nested the detail component in a baluster family. Send me an email and I can send you the example. I'd take a look at the example offered by an earlier comment too as it is a good one.

Unknown said...

This is a really interesting solution to the fence linetype issue. How did you hide the actual rail of the railing in the view without hiding the detail component. I'm definitely missing a step.

Thanks!