Monday, November 15, 2010

Structural Families - Categories & Parameters - Beam cutback in plan

I recently gave a talk at REVIC (Revit Users Group of Victoria) on Structural families, where I talked quite broadly about structural families and the settings available which affect their display in the project. It required a quick refresh for myself when preparing in some areas for settings which are not commonly used.

In the next couple of posts I will investigate in more detail or explain a few of the settings less commonly used and known

One of the settings specific to the the Structural Column Family is the checkbox "Beam Cutback in Plan"

Sounds quite straightforward, but it actually only applies to the symbolic line for the beam in plan

The two options we have are;

  • From Geometry
  • From Bounding Box

Symbolic linework with the two options
So checking the option "From Geometry will only take the Symbolic line through to the column and it will leave the model geometry unchanged

Regardless of the cutback option you choose, your 3D geometry wont change

In most cases this is fine, you dont need the beam geometry to continue through to the column web

But if you do need to model the beams accurately with a set distance straight from the column web, you will need to start playing around with the beam family and the start and end extensions

More Family settings soon...


3 comments:

  1. We found a similar problem with nesting a base plate family into our columns. the geometry of the base plate dictated the connection of the beams at the top of the column, regardless of the bounding box setting. It was very disappointing, and we are still looking for a way around it.

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  2. Chris, You are exactly right there. Once another family is nested in it will affect the beam cutback as well. To my knowledge there is no solution at the moment, no matter how you nest the family in.

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  3. We have a similar problem as we have shown the centre lines of columns (plan view) in the family. The centre lines are only symbolic lines but it still affect the beam cutback. I can understand if you have geometry loaded in to your family but symbolic lines SHOULDn't affect the bounding box.
    Sorry I just needed to vent.....
    Johk

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