Learn how to create a workstation family using the English imperial library in Revit, including the specific process for importing different elements and setting up shared parameters. The article covers how to strategically tag elements and compile families without running into errors with parameters changed in the wrong order.
Key Insights
- The first step in creating a workstation family in Revit is to start a new family using the English imperial library, specifically looking for furniture systems.
- Before importing different elements into the family, it is essential to understand how each element needs to be placed and identify which ones to annotate separately.
- Each element within the family needs to have a shared parameter set up so that the parameters from subfamilies, like a chair or desk, become part of the overall workstation family. This setup should be completed before compiling the entire family to avoid errors from parameters being changed incorrectly.
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Our first step for creating this workstation family is going to be to start a new family. So I'll go to file, new, and family. And we're going to start with our English imperial library and we're going to look for furniture systems.
And we'll use this as the basis for how we're going to import all of the different family elements. So I'm going to go ahead and click open. And what we want to do is before we start importing all of the different pieces that we want to load into here, we want to make sure that we have an understanding of how each of these elements needs to be placed.
And the key here is to make sure that we identify which ones that we want to annotate separately from the ones that we're creating. If we were to take a look at our finished model here, you can see that I have a tag for workstation one, but I also independently have a tag for the standing desk, the chair, and the file cabinet. But all of the other elements that are associated here, like these cubicle panels, the post in the middle, and these cubicle panels are all included with the tag WS1 because that is the tag that was assigned to this workstation here.
Whereas the chair, for instance, has been tagged independently as C2. Similarly, the standing desk has also been tagged independently as C2. In order for us to do that, what we have to do is we have to set up a system where each one of these elements that are located within the family, and this is what we'll be creating here shortly, have actually been set up to have a shared parameter set up so that the parameters from this family, the chair family, become part of the actual workstation family.
And so we'll have to set that up first before we compile the whole thing because then it'll just get, we'll end up with a host of errors with parameters being changed in the incorrect order. So it's much easier if you have it all set up initially. Now back here at our project, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to close hidden windows because I don't really want to have a lot of windows open right now because you'll see we're going to have a lot open here in a minute.
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So I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to go to file and then open. And from my BIM 201 folder, one of the things that you would have got from the dataset would be this Revit families folder. And within here, I've put all of the families that we'll use throughout the project.
And they're all located here just for your use. But we'll start off by opening up all of these guys here. And we want to make sure we open the ones, let's just open the ones that we need to adjust.
So the standing desk and the storage cabinet. So I'll open storage cabinet first. And then we'll go ahead and open up the standing desk because that's also one of the elements that we want to have adjustable.
So just opening that. And then I'm also going to go ahead and open that chair task arms that we were using as well. So I've got all of those families open now.
And we'll start with the chair since that's the one we have open immediately. And what I'll do is I'll go to my family types. And I want to make sure that the shared box is checked on these.
If the shared box is not checked, I will not have the ability to tag these individually. So that one's good to go. And then I will check my standing desk, make sure that one is checked.
It is not so I will have to check that box and hit OK. And then the other one was the file cabinet. We'll go ahead and check in that family category and parameters and make sure that box is checked and hit OK.
At this point, what we can do is we can load those three families into our workstation family. And so before we do that, I want to just save this file because then it's just easier to recognize which one we're working with. So I'll do save as family and then I'll save it in my BIM 201 folder.
And I will call it workstation and click save. Now we can go ahead and we can load these three families into that project. So notice, since we have so much stuff open at this point, it's giving us all these options.
I want to just make sure I have workstation checked. And I can place it if I want. We're going to move it obviously later.
So the chair, I'm going to go and close these down as I load them in because then I'll know that it's been loaded in. We'll load in the standing desk. And again, I'll just place it off to the side because we will be putting it in a different location.
And I'm going to save these ones so that we have the saved changes that we were hoping to get. And then the file cabinet. This will be the last one for right now.
And just close that file so that we don't end up with too many files open. There we go. And that's the start of our workstation.
Next thing we'll need to do is bring in the actual, the stationary desk and all the cubicle pieces. And then we can put it all together into our family here.
