cre8iveThings

Revit TotD – 3.23.09: Cataloguing your Families

Hope everyone had a good weekend!¬† I’m back with a quick tip on helping you manage those family files.

Ever notice how some of the families that come out of the box with revit have multiple options to select from before you load the family in?¬† For instance the Structural Column families give you a “Catalog” to choose from before you.¬† There is way to do that with your own families and there are only a few things you need to do to accomplish this.

Video of cataloged family loading into revit.

  1. The text file must be formatted correctly.
  2. The text file must be named EXACTLY the same as the family.
  3. The text file must be placed in the same folder as the family.

1. The correct format for the file is as follows:

,W##other##,A##area##inches,d##length##inches,bf##length##inches,tw##length##inches,tf##length##inches,Space##length##inches
2C15X50,100.0,29.4,15.0,3.72,0.7160,0.6500,0.0000
2C15X50X.375,100.0,29.4,15.0,3.72,0.7160,0.6500,0.3750
2C15X50X.75,100.0,29.4,15.0,3.72,0.7160,0.6500,0.7500
2C15X40,80.0,23.6,15.0,3.52,0.5200,0.6500,0.0000

The first line must always be the following:

<intentional space before first comma, this space is reserved for the Type Name parameter>,<<parameter name1>##<parameter1 type>##<parameter1 units>>,<<parameter name2>##<parameter2 type>##<parameter2 units>>

The lines following that follow this format:

<Type name>,<parameter1 value>,<parameter2 value>

I’m not clear about the units portion of the formating on what happens if the parameter type doesn’t require a unit (like angles or text) as to what to do.¬† I’m guessing that you will just end the parameter group after the <parameter type> entry and then move on to the next parameter group.

2.  If your family file is named MyCrazyCatalogedFamily.rfa then your catalogue file HAS to be named MyCrazyCatalogedFamily.txt

3.  If your family file is in C:\my\family\file\location then your text file should be in C:\my\family\file\location

Some things to note about the catalogues, you have to use File > Load from Library to get the catalogue option.¬† If you drag the file into the project from a file explorer, it’s not goign to ask you which types you want to load.¬† You can select multiple types to load at once using the Ctrl select technique (shown in the video above).

Hope this helped, and see you later!

-Carl

rkitect

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