This professionally written article delves into the process of creating model elements, adding symbolic lines, setting up visibility, and creating types that can be assigned to a given family before loading it into a project. It highlights the importance of parameters and their precision in creating a specific model, demonstrating using a cabinet model as an example.
Key Insights
- The article emphasizes the significance of parameters in creating models. For instance, the creation of a cabinet model involves parameters such as height, depth, and the presence or absence of an upper cabinet.
- The process involves creating different types based on parameters. These parameters can be adjusted to create different versions of the model. This concept is demonstrated with the creation of a 36-inch high and 24-inch deep cabinet model, with and without an upper cabinet.
- Adjustments and precision are crucial in model creation. The article demonstrates how to load the created models into a project, adjust the length according to the project’s requirements, and save it. It also elaborates on the methodology of switching parameter types in terms of instance and type, and their implications on the model.
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Now that we've created all of the model elements, added some of the symbolic lines, and set up all visibility settings, we can now create a few types that can be assigned to this family before we load it into our project. So I'll go to our Family Types, and what we can do is we can add types based on the parameters that we see here, even including the upper cabinet depth visibility. So I can go in here and then I can say something like 36 inch high representing the height, so I'll just use the abbreviation H for height, and then I can say 24 inch D for the depth and then my next parameter that I'll define would be whether or not it has the upper or does not have the upper, so then I can say with upper.
So by giving it this 36 inch height 24 inch depth and saying with upper, then I have a recipe for how I'm going to adjust these parameters. So I'll click OK and I can look at the parameters now and I can say OK, the height is set to 36 inches or three feet, the depth is set to 24 inches and the upper cabinet is turned on. If I were to go in and do the same thing and make a new type and use similar nomenclature, so I'll say 36 inch by 24 inch using essentially the same setup there but don't put the with upper included, then I can go in and just uncheck this box here and now I have one that has the upper cabinet and one that does not.
So I'll click OK and if we look at this in 3D you'll see that when I'm not using the type that uses the upper cabinet it's grayed out and when I turn it back on you can see it's now bold and visible like the other ones. So I'm going to go ahead and save this family and then we'll want to make sure that we have our project file open so if you haven't done so you're going to want to go ahead and do that. So I have my project file open here and I'm going to save it and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to load it in and we're going to place it at this location here.
So there might need to be some adjustment in my dimension locations and things like that but that's fine we'll get there. And from my family file (notice I'm just using tabbed browsing to switch back and forth here). From my family I'll use the Load into Project option and just keep in mind I have saved so you'll want to do that if you have not done so already.
And I'll Load into Project and you can see here's my family notice I'm getting the international "no" symbol because it's not against a wall but if I were to place it against a wall here like you see it'll go into place and you can see here there's that symbolic line we discussed earlier, now correctly located. One thing you may notice though is that four feet is definitely insufficient if we're trying to put a cabinet across this entire length here. We'll need to adjust the length and for something like this that's a generic cabinet, I'm not a fan of having multiple types with a parameter that we could easily just make an instance parameter.
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So instead of creating another type parameter what I could do is I could edit this family with it selected I can just say Edit Family takes me back into our family here and from the Reference Level I can adjust the length parameter from being a simple type parameter to a dynamic instance parameter just by checking that box there. And so I'll go ahead and hit save again and Load into Project. We didn't really adjust any of the parameter values so you can see we get these two options so it says "Overwrite the existing version" or "Overwrite the existing version and its parameter values."
If I had gone into one of the types that we've already created and adjusted those parameter values and wanted those changes to be implemented in my model then I would do this one. If I've just made changes to the geometry or made a change from a parameter changing from instance to type or a type to an instance then this one's going to work just fine. Most of the time you're going to want to go this route especially if you have a lot of instance parameters within your model because the last thing you want to do is have all of your instance parameters overridden by what it was shown in the family.
So in this case I'll select the first option and now I've got these grips on the end that I could use to adjust the length of my casework and I can go ahead and set it however I want and with whatever length that I need to suit the location in the project.
