Response to Revit Family Creation:

Response to Revit Family Creation:

I have found that families are very, very complex. When completing the last assignment, I struggled a lot with parameters and constraints. Because of my struggle, I was very hesitant to try very complex geometry. Instead, I worked on trying to understand parameters and constraints.

During the project, I got lost in “Revit world” for hours trying to understand why certain constraints conflicted. I started over and over trying to get my key strokes so I could complete what I was trying to do. Mostly I struggled with the offset of the legs in relation to the table’s edge. As soon as I set the offset parameters, neither my length nor width became editable parameters. Even though I spent most of my time trying to figure it out, I still have not been able to figure all of it out. I did get it to kind of work; however, you had to manually move the reference planes rather than typing in a dimension. To me, that was a victory.

When I went to make the shelf in the model, I had a lot more confidence because I struggled with the previous table. I was able to complete all my goals with it and make different parameters to it editable, such as length, width, pillar spacing, etc. Still, I struggled with the pillar offset; however it didn’t matter as much because there was only two of them. Overall, I set more than a dozen parameters that controlled the model.

In terms of the reading, I thought it was very straightforward and easy to understand. His use of diagrams seemed to explain everything, and it was a great reference when I was building my own model. It probably would have been more helpful if I had done the tutorial as described in the readings, but because of time constraints on myself, I couldn’t go through all the motions step by step to create his book shelf/sandbox. Regardless, it will be a great exercise to do on my own after the class to further understand parameters, constraints and families.