Flexible Families: Learn to Make Your Families Stretch and Flex Like Never Before (REPEAT)

JOHN PIERSON: All right. We've got a couple more coming in. It's going to be two per computer, in some situations. Stuff like that. We'll get started here, in a few seconds. Awesome. So has everyone had a great AU so far? Yeah?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

JOHN PIERSON: Yeah? It's been awesome. Are you all exhausted?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

JOHN PIERSON: Yes. We're going to try to keep this lively, light, have some fun, talk about some pretty crazy stuff. Like I said to a few people before, data sets are available already on my site-- so sixtysecondrevit.com Click on AU2017 and they'll just download. So those are on there for you. They'll be on the app as well. If you don't know me, my name's John Pierson. I'm commonly known for Dynamo stuff and this is not a Dynamo class, so that's kind of fun.

So yeah. Revit families are kind of where I started. It's kind of my passion and where I grew up. AutoCAD and I are old friends, but we don't talk anymore. So there's that. Yeah. So there's one. I'm going to get five more AutoCAD-- no, I'm just kidding. I'm on Twitter as @60secondrevit. So if you want to tag me, take pictures. If I say something crazy, let me know. That way, I can fix it. Tweet. You can bash AutoCAD too much, if you're upset. That's fine as well.

I have a blog-- sixtysecondrevit.com. That was started because I thought, if we work out a little, 60 second tidbits, we could start to learn some cool stuff in Revit. And that's kind of how this class was developed. This content was developed over, probably, the last two years. I submitted it to AU. This was the third time and they finally said yes. So that's pretty awesome.

And you guys all booked the two classes, so I just want to give you a round of applause because it's my first time at AU and you guys made it happen. So that's from me to you, too. So thank you. It means a lot to me. That's my desktop. Yeah. That's not what we want. So we're going to go over the class summary. You should have known this already, though. So if this is different than what you expected, you're welcome to leave, too. I won't get offended. It's OK.

It's the last session. I know we're all kind of like-- so we're winding down. But we're going to also wind up. So we're going to learn how to use built-in Revit methods to make our families flex, stretch, rotate, and behave pretty cool in 3D. So who all makes Revit families in here? Raise your hands in participation. Yes. So that's most of the class. 80%-- something like that. I think that's fair. How many have never made a Revit family? Don't be embarrassed. It's fine. That's fine.

Some of these are some basic concepts as well that you could take home or back to the office and work with them. So we're going to keep it in the intermediate style level. You have to at least know what Revit is. Who does not know what Revit is? I'm just kidding. All right. And I also just want to say a special thanks to all my lab assistants. The labs have been fun to get set up, before you all rush in. And it's not possible without all the lab assistants as well. So let's give them a round of applause.

They're all listed right there. Yes. All right. And that being said, too, we're on Frame. You've used it already by now. Frame runs in Chrome. You can't Alt, Tab. Don't do Alt, Tab, or else you're not going to be very happy. If you hit Escape a lot, it'll minimize the Chrome tab. So hit F11 to go full screen again or there's that little window on the bottom. So raise your hands-- we have several lab assistants who will run up and help you as well. I'll run over and we'll work through it, if we need to.

So we got you covered. We don't want to stress out on the last class of AU 2017, for sure. All right. Key learning objectives-- review the traditional methods of family creation. So I got those people covered that have not made a family. That's fine. We're going to learn new methods to enable 3D grip handles on our family. So in 3D, I can drag a grip panel in the project environment and make them do some cool stuff. Who all has made a 3D grip handled Revit family? Just a couple.

Did you guys look at the data set? Or are you talking adaptive components? Yell it out. You've made a general Revit family with 3D grips? I know you have. All right. We're going to learn new methods to create grip handles that you could turn on and off. So you can click a yes, no parameter and the grip handle disappears. And you can bring it back when you want it, which is pretty cool, especially when you're trying to keep all those other, sneaky Revit users from messing up your Revit families.

You can lock them down. No, I'm just kidding. We're going to learn how to control the location of the grips. And we'll look at that on the first slide. And we'll add some formulas. Who all has used a Revit formula in their families? Good. So you're comfortable with those as well? That's good. We'll also recap them, for everyone. All right. So the traditional creation of flexible families involves using reference planes. So everyone knows what a reference point is. We're just going to be flexible. You guys are the flexible ones.

There are 2D grips. They can get overwhelming. And I'll show a picture of that. And there's no visibility in a 3D view. They work in a plan view that is perpendicular from where that reference plane was created. That's how those work. Tried and true method. Out-of-the-box families use it. I use it, even though I know the other way. We've all used it. So like I said, there is such a thing as too much, though. And I'm going to drink a lot of water because it's been a long day.

That's 51 reference planes for every piece of geometry in a storefront door. This is a real family that I've seen from someone and they'll remain nameless, for protection. I don't want you guys to rush them at the hall downstairs. Additionally, all the dimensions that are involved with every reference plane, every muntin, every mullian, every door handle, every hinge. I saw this and I was like, no, what are you doing?

And then we had to add rotation to that. And that was awful. We had to rebuild the family. It was not fun. All right. So to start that out, we're going to fix some out-of-the-box families. Who likes that? Right there. Shouldn't that be right there, controlling the thing that it's moving, right? Wouldn't that make sense? Revit doesn't give it to us that way and it's pretty frustrating. Does anyone know why it's in the middle?

AUDIENCE: Because it's in the center.

JOHN PIERSON: Because it's centered on the overall geometry. So when you use that reference plane method, it kind of encompasses all the stuff, even if it's hidden or not. And it's kind of frustrating. Sometimes that's way out here and you're like, where's that grip handle for that? So you just start typing in the properties, and then you're going crazy, and all that kind of stuff. So we're going to fix that and put it right here, where it belongs, right? You're on board? Cool.

I need you guys to appreciate the sucky method to the good method. All right. So we're going to also cover a hidden rotation method for components that I was working through for an example that we'll get to. So how many people have used rotation methods in their families? How many have used Marcello's rotation methods in their families? I use those quite a bit. This is different. This one is an additional method to add to your tool chest. So yeah. All right.

We're also going to create this. What is that? What is that little guy? All right. It's this little, yellow, pizza guy. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: You're too young to know what that is.

JOHN PIERSON: I don't know. I searched for like a pizza-- yeah. I don't know. So what we're going to do is we're going to build this family. That's a grip handle that controls the door opening for us. Pretty cool. So we're going to be able to control Revit elements with a slide. If anyone's used Dynamo, you have sliders to control geometry. I wanted to bring that into the project environment because it's just kind of fun. And you can add visibility to that element and hide it when you're done.

So it's just kind of a fun way to open stuff up. And then we'll learn how to create this animation, right from Revit, for free. It's not an add-in. It uses Dynamo. But we're going to create that animation to be able to advertise our content to our firm. So if you build content for your firm, it's really good practice to advertise what that content can do. So if you have parameters in there, you can create a PDF-- a boring, 2D PDF or whatever. You could do 3D, too, if you wanted.

And you could be like, oh, if you click this parameter and then put several images, this is what it does. Not fun, when you can do an animation. Some call it GIF, some call GIF. I say GIF because it makes everyone mad, so I say that all the time-- like the peanut butter. And then we're going to-- oh, this is a big finish. How many people use annotation families? It's not the most exciting subject. But if you use a title block, you do, so everyone uses annotation families.

How many knew the answer before I asked it? How many people have tried to add a reference plane to an annotation family, like on a title block, to make it drag? That way, you can have grip handles. A couple of people. I struggled through that for months. And I finally found a solution, so I'm going to share it with everyone, for the second time at AU because this class is a repeat.

We can't add it through the UI, so create-- there's no reference plane. And reference line doesn't give you grip handles in annotation. I know because it drives me crazy and I tried it a lot. So I won't put you through that. You can't add it to through the Revit API or Dynamo. This is a Dynamo node that lets us add reference planes. So I was like, oh, Dynamo is going to do it for us, and we can go in, and say, reference plane, and it creates it. This is not valid in this type of family. Sorry, John. This didn't work.

So that's kind of what happened to me. We also can click CTRL, Copy on the annotations. And we'll show that. Because I tried that, too. That was the first one I tried. And I was like, oh, dang it! The error messages are in his glasses. There is a way and we'll cover that. I didn't show this slide last time, but, everyone, do your surveys for everybody. Quick story-- I won an iPad at a conference in July for doing a survey. I won an $800 iPad just for doing the survey.

In this case you can win a $1,700 AU pass for next year. So make sure to do your surveys for everybody. And then we'll get right into it. So everyone should have Revit 2018 open on their screen. If you don't, click Revit 2018 and we'll get there. It should be open, though. I visited a lot of computers earlier. And if PowerPoint behaves, we should be-- go away. All right. Cool. That was a pretty long intro.

So what we're going to do is click Open. So Open on Revit. We're doing Open Project. Don't do Open Family because it will look at RFAs. We want to look at RVTs. Abilities So Open Project. You can go to your desktop and click on Data sets. It's called Data sets. My name's John Pierson. And then, in there, you're going to already have examples. That's what your folders are going to have. And then you have the PDF and stuff, if you look at it.

So we'll double click inside of Examples. And you'll see this. So everyone kind of sees this, right? If no one sees this, raise your hand and we'll get you to the Examples folder. So we have a few that need to get to the Data sets, Examples.

AUDIENCE: I got it.

JOHN PIERSON: OK. Good. Data sets, John Pierson, Examples. Cool. Most of us-- there's a few with their hands raised and we'll get you. We have two. What was that? Two examples? We might have to sync your examples. Some of them weren't syncing earlier, so you should have, probably, a few. And if you're on RFA, it'll probably show two. And it will show like three or four.

All right. So what we're going to do first is most of us have built a family from scratch, so we won't do the 00. What we're going to do is open O1OOTB for out-of-the-box. Family begin. Let's get that project open, though

AUDIENCE: It's O--

JOHN PIERSON: It's 01, is the example. The one with 01 in the front.

AUDIENCE: I don't have it.

JOHN PIERSON: If we don't have it--

AUDIENCE: O1AS12248O1--

JOHN PIERSON: Yeah. O1OOTB, family, out-of-the-box. And mine's turning quite a bit. I don't know if I like that.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

Has everyone got that? Yes? Nodding heads. All right. So everyone, get there. If you don't have the data sets, raise your hand and we'll get there. My Revit went into a loop, right when I-- OK. Oh, thank god. All right. So what we have here-- we're going to keep on going. What we here is that out-of-the-box counter top that's installed with Revit, that you've probably used. That has these awful, really not great, grip handles. Oh, I hate them.

So what we need to do is bring them in a project environment right now. So what we can do is click that family, click on Edit Family, and we'll go into the family environment. If you're feeling crazy, double click on it and you can get into Edit Family as well, unless we disabled it. No, I'm just kidding. So by default, it takes us to the 3D view of this family. So what we're going to do is jump to the ground floor, which is our level one.

These are kind of the typical plans that they give in a family editor. So we have those accessible to us. And what we can see here is we have a reference plane based family. So reference planes, if you aren't completely sure what they are, they are these little, dash, green things. Those are kind of the bones of the family. Everybody's built the box or the table in an Essentials Family Course. That's how I started out. You use reference planes, map it out, add parameters, and start to use it.

This is called a label on a dimension. And we're going to be using those here, in a second. So when I was working on this, I was like, I want something very similar-- and you don't have to follow me along now. I wanted something very similar to this little grip handle, right there, because I wanted to be able to control the counter top in a way that made sense to how it is in the family environment. I wanted to be able to use it in that same way.

And if I'm dragging one leg, I want to click on the leg of the thing and use it. Reference planes are 2D in nature. That's why we only see them in the plan view, in this case. So we need to use something else. We just need to switch our thinking a little bit. So what we could do is, in ground floor, if we go to Create, we have a few other options. In this case, we're going to use the reference line.

A reference line is very similar to a reference plane, but it has a 3D aspect, so you can see the underlying model curve of it. So we'll click on Reference Line. So everyone, click Reference Line. And what I like to do is I'll zoom out a little. And I like to draw these kind of off to the side, so I can see what I'm doing. So I'm going to draw one on the bottom of the family and one on the right side. So everyone, get two reference lines drawn and then we'll kind of move on.

If you have any questions, raise your hands. I didn't really say at the beginning either. So if we get to a spot and you're like, well, what if this? How does this work? What if we did this? Just raise your hand. We'll get that question answered. I really like questions because I learn a lot as well, if we work through it. Some of the best ideas come from those questions. And truthfully-- yes?

AUDIENCE: So then we've got to drill down right to left, top to bottom?

JOHN PIERSON: It doesn't matter for this part. Did someone tell you? The other day, I drew the reference line backwards for another example. My door was upside down and I was like, oh, no. So that was kind of fun. For this example, you can draw them whichever way you want. So that is a good question. And you reminded me not to do that again. That was fun. All right. So we have two reference lines.

Reference lines enable us to be able to get those 3D grip handles, so we want to make sure that they're on the geometry. So on this bottom one, if we hit AL on our keyboard for a line-- I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts, so I'll read them out as we do them-- we can align, to this left reference plane, the end of that reference line. And lock it. So see that lock? Lock it. We'll do the same to the right reference plane on that bottom leg. Lock. Lock it.

And then what are we going to do up here? Can anyone guess? The same thing. We'll lock it. And then we'll lock it to the bottom. So now what we have just completed is a constraint to center that grip handle on the geometry for us by just hitting Align Lock four times. That's pretty cool, when you start to think about it, because reference planes-- I can't go, oh, keep the grip right there, please. It doesn't work like that. So we got that done now.

So in this out-of-the-box family, the Autodesk team, the Revit team, was nice enough to give us parameters already built-in that are flexing geometry. This dimension string is a parameter that I'm able to use. So what we're going to do is we're not going to mess with any of the stuff built-in quite yet. What we're going to do is DI for dimension. Like I said, keyboard shortcuts. Be efficient. We can rock. We can get stuff done.

We can reuse this kind of logic. So what I'm going to do is hit this reference plane-- the one on the left-- and go to the reference line. And I'll throw the dimension up above the other one, so I know which one it is. I don't want to get too confused, after all of the classes we've been in. So we'll hit reference plane-- this top one as well-- and we'll work to this bottom reference line that we created.

So everyone should start to look like this. If you don't have this here, in a second, raise your hand and we'll get to you as well. I want to make sure you guys are kind of following along. And we'll notice that our reference lines are still out in space. They're not doing anything for us yet, right?

AUDIENCE: Right.

JOHN PIERSON: Right. Cool. You're following. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

JOHN PIERSON: Cool. All right. So this parameter is called length-leg1. So you see that, right there? That's how I tell what parameter that is-- length-leg1. Revit already built that in for us, so I can reuse it. I didn't even have to create a new parameter. Awesome. I'm able to use that logic. I get really excited about this stuff because I've tried to share it for three years now. All right. Now I'm getting the rush from my coffee, too. No, I'm just kidding.

So we'll click on this dimension on the top, click the Label dropdown, and choose link-leg1. What just happened?

AUDIENCE: It went chung.

JOHN PIERSON: It sucked back-- chung. Sound effects. I like it. And Carl has stickers. I didn't have enough for everyone in the class, but if you ask questions or something, we'll throw some stickers your way. It's like a special sticker for this class. If you want some after, hit us up. We'll give them to you as well. All that cool stuff. They shipped them to my house after I left for AU-- the other ones-- so that wasn't fun. All right.

So we're going to do the same on this side. length-leg2 is the left side that controls this leg. So you'll have two sets of dimensions. Don't let that scare you. It's OK. The family will think correctly, I promise. So what are we going to do now? I want to see those grip handles in the project environment. I'm going in a family editor right now. So we can go ahead and do Load Into Project. Don't do Load Into Project and close because we're still going to do a few things.

So Load Into Project. We're going to choose Overwrite the Existing Version. So we'll pick the first option. Don't click on the family yet, either. Let's go to 3D real quick. Everyone, go to 3D. And click on it. Do you all see grip handles centered on the geometry? Yes? If you see it, just come on. Yeah. I've got to keep us lively. It's been a long day. So drag those grip handles and let me know what happens.

AUDIENCE: Nothing.

JOHN PIERSON: Nothing. It's not moving your family?

AUDIENCE: No.

JOHN PIERSON: It's not moving it?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

JOHN PIERSON: Oh, you scared me. I was like, you added your own parameter. No, I'm just kidding. Everyone's kind of seeing that stretch, that leg. And I'll show it, too. I guess I could have done that. It's kind of like when comedians are telling you jokes, and you're listening to it on audio, and they're all, look at this, and you're like, what's he doing?

AUDIENCE: So how did it associate with that--

JOHN PIERSON: Yeah. I'm going to break that down next. So now we have a 3D grip handle in like, what? Five steps? Something like that. So now we've made this family less terrible, right? Cool. It's still pretty bad. No, I'm just kidding. In reality, what I would do is I'd add another grip handle on the back. And we could probably work through that, too. So the way that this is working-- a question came up, how the hell did it move the geometry when I didn't it hit Align Lock with the geometry, right?

Did we do that? No. What we did is we added the label. And I'll open it up. It's kind of sneaky, what we did. It's a little funny. We're very sneaky. So we can all hit Edit Family. You can follow me along for this part. So Edit Family. So what we did is we added another dimension string that's controlled by the reference line now. That dimension string has the same label that's right here. This dimension string controls this reference plane.

This reference plane controls this geometry. So now it's going, I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm moving. And it's pulling that with it. So I didn't have to do Align and Lock. As a matter of fact, if you do Align and Lock, sometimes it says it's too constrained, and then you get mad, and then you say, I'm never using Revit again, and all this stuff. So if we use reference planes as the geometry puller, it helps us out a lot. So we just have to kind of change that thinking a little, which is pretty cool.

So let's go ahead-- let's do Load Into Project again. I don't want anyone hitting Alt, Tab or Control, Tab because you're on Frame, which is an awesome product by the way. Just don't hit Alt, Tab. Actually, my computer's running updates on Wednesday. And I tweeted it. And I was like, oh, man, I'm running updates before a lab. The Frame CTO e-mailed me. And he's like, oh my gosh, we'll be right there. And I was like, oh, it's my laptop. Don't worry. He's like, oh, thank goodness.

So back in the project environment, we'll jump to level one. Click on that family again. You should see that text, if you're on level one. So if you don't see the text-- what do we have?

AUDIENCE: Multiples.

JOHN PIERSON: We have multiples. We got all kinds of them. We made a bigger mess, right? Man, this is like that friend that's inviting itself to the party still, that you just don't want. I want you, I don't want you. That's not great. I don't want to give that to people because now they're confused. They're like, well, which one do I grab? They both work, right? You probably tried it, I hope. We don't want that other one. So let's fix that as well.

So what we're going to do is click Edit Family again. I'm doing that instead of the tab thing, like I explained. Yeah. So what we could do is I don't want to delete those reference planes because what are they doing?

AUDIENCE: They're controlling the geometry.

JOHN PIERSON: They're controlling the geometry. If I delete them, then I'm screwed-- like I lost all of that work that was done for me. That's not fun. But what we can do is I'll zoom in, and click this reference plane, and we'll look at something else that's been in Revit a while. Is Reference-- this thing in the properties-- we can click on the drop down-- so that has a little drop down next to it-- and change it to Not a Reference.

So if we click Not a Reference on the bottom one, and we click Not a Reference-- oh, this one. I clicked on the name. Click Not a Reference on the right one, and load that into project, gut Overwrite, click on it. What happens?

AUDIENCE: Woo.

JOHN PIERSON: Woo. We get the single reference plane grip handle that we want. Awesome. So that wasn't so hard, right? We didn't have to rebuild logic. That's fun. Cool. So is that something that you can use? You can start to position those in a good way.

And they're not saying, well, in AutoCAD, I can control where that thing is. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. That's, partly, where this was all borne from. It's like, well, dynamic blocks, blah, blah, blah. Do we have a question? Is that someone up there? Do we have a question?

AUDIENCE: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE], but I wonder if you connect the geometry directly to the reference lines, so that you would--

JOHN PIERSON: So the question was, instead of leaving those reference planes, can we connect the geometry right to the reference line. I think reference lines will let you. We'd have to try it. They will. But my next example won't work. That's why I'm not showing Align Lock. Typically, I won't lock to reference lines or what we're going to use in a minute, just because I've had a lot of those over constrained areas, and they tick me off, and I'm a redhead, and I get mad, and it's not good. All right.

What's really cool about this is they're 3D. So if we hit the little house, they're 3D. Cool. Oh, I almost went too far. That's crazy. So there's 3D. We can still see them in plan. Cool. But it can still get better. Because what if I wanted to turn them on and off? That way, once I've adjusted it, I could turn them off. Or I align and lock it, and then I turn them off, and it moves the walls or something like that. Kind of fun. We've done this for some sockets and things like that.

We work in 3D. Why aren't my grip handles in 3D? That kind of was my first thought, when I started looking at this. I was like, I got to go back in plan view, and align and lock that thing. That's not fun. So what we'll do is Edit Family again. We're jumping back and forth. And I'm very sorry guys and gals, but we've got to undo all that work we just did because we're going to make it better.

I did want you to see the reference line example, though, because it's pretty awesome, right?

AUDIENCE: Right.

JOHN PIERSON: All right. So go in, and do a crossing window, and select your reference lines. You can try to Tab, Select but that's also a little strange on those machines. So be careful. So I have two reference lines selected and I'm just going to hit Delete. Not reference planes, reference lines.

So those dimension strings disappear as well because those parameters were associated. So when I was working on this, I needed the ability to have references, grip handles turn on and off. So I had to think to myself, what can I see in 3D? What's something else that I can see in 3D besides a reference line? So I came in here and I'm like, Create Tab. Model Line. Model lines are able to be seen in 3D, right?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

JOHN PIERSON: Yeah. So I can use those. Cool. So how do we do this? So we just draw a model line, just like we did for the reference lines. So what we could do is come over to the side and draw them. Hit Escape once, in my case. Come on the bottom. And who can guess what we're going to do next?

AUDIENCE: The same thing, eventually.

JOHN PIERSON: The same thing. Eventually, he said. So we're going to Align and Lock those again. So this is a little bit of review now because you're pros at this Align and Lock stuff, right? All right. We're going into hyper speed. So we're just going to lock those. Align and Lock. What's next? Dimensions. So we're going into Dimension. And we'll reuse those labels. In reality, we could have probably kept our dimension strings and reference lines, before we added the model lines.

But this is reinforcing that. That way, we can reuse it. And then we're going to reuse those labels again. The top dimension string will be length-leg1. Awesome. The bottom one will be length-leg2. So change that label-- length-leg2. Additionally, we could do a little crossing window. So I go left to right, to do the left or right selection, not the Select All. And we'll get our model line. You can also use Filter. The lines are, by default, casework projection.

So if you do a filter, you can also get them that way. And I'll show that real quick. So just select everything the lazier way. Check None, Lines Casework. And I have the two lines. So while we have those selected, model lines are pretty cool because, unlike reference lines-- the one that we're pros at now-- they support visibility. When I added these, I was like, oh my gosh, that parameter showed up for me. That's awesome. So I can use that.

This little button right here, that's called an ellipsis button. If you're not familiar with associating a visibility parameter, that's how you do it. So we're going click that little ellipsis button. I just like saying ellipsis. I'm going to keep saying it. And what we could do is Create Parameter. And that's a little Starburst sign thing with the form on it. And what we can do is name this parameter. So typically, when I do a visibility, I don't name it hide something, I name it show grips.

Because when it's checked, it's showing. When it's unchecked, it's not so showing. All right. So we'll do show grips. And we'll make this an instance parameter. Does everybody know the difference between a type and instance parameter? And I skipped over it, a minute ago. Yeah? Does anyone not know the difference? Carl? So a type parameter is accessible through this edit type dialog. Instance parameters are the ones that give us grip handles.

So that's kind of the premise of all that stuff we just did. So I should have, probably, talked about that while we did that. There were already instance parameters, so I didn't have to change it. So we'll make this on, off parameter an instance. Additionally, good practice, we're going to group this under Visibility because that's what it does. Visibility. Who all use Tooltips? They're pretty good. The other day, I was like, one uses them. And someone's all, they're wonderful. I was all, I'm just messing around.

So what we're going to do is we can also add a Tooltip and say show grips, show grips. So Edit Tooltip. And we'll delete all this stuff. Whoa. Don't add the bracket. Cool. Show grips. And then we're going to click OK. Boom. Click OK again. Cool. We still have the line selected, if you don't click anywhere else, right? I don't want to see the lines in 3D because I just drew a model line that's a category. That sucks. That's not fun.

I don't want to see that everywhere. So what we could do is, in the family template, they gave us this really cool thing called invisible lines, right? Yeah. That's cool because it lets us keep our grips, but the line's invisible, kind of like the name. So let's change that to invisible lines. All right. So now what we're going to do is load this into the Revit project. So Load Into Project. Overwrite the existing version.

So now select it and it still works, right? Cool The same. That's old news to us now, right? We do 3D grip handles in here, with reference lines. We've done it for years. But additionally, what is this? Click that visibility parameter, select Out, and what happened?

AUDIENCE: You can't change it.

JOHN PIERSON: You can't change it? Did your visibility parameter lock?

AUDIENCE: I kind of lost you, so I'm just going to--

JOHN PIERSON: All right. Carl's heading up. So now we have the ability to turn those grip handles on and off. That's really cool because you can start to have these grip handles respond to conditions. I actually use this. Is everyone doing all right? Are there any questions? Thoughts?

AUDIENCE: Just an observation. The work plane was already set to the bottom of the counter top, so then [INAUDIBLE].

JOHN PIERSON: Oh, that's true. I'll talk about that. Any other thoughts, questions? We have-- someone got hung up. All right. You got it? All right. So did you have a question or you got stuck? Stuck? All right. So the grip handle visibility thing is really cool because who all has built a door family? And it's awesome and so easy to do, right?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

JOHN PIERSON: Yeah. I built door families that can do an inset frame and a wrap frame, but I don't want a grip handle to control where it is in the wall all the time. like reference planes give you. So I used the model line, add a formula. When I say that it's an inset frame, the grip handle appears and someone can drag it. So that's like a practical, in context example of using a visibility.

Additionally, Brian pointed it out-- which is really something cool that I didn't talk about last time-- if we do Show Grips again and we kind of pan around, we can see that that grip handle is on the bottom side of the table. Who knows why, beside Brian? Yell it out.

AUDIENCE: The work plane [INAUDIBLE].

JOHN PIERSON: The work plane, I heard. The work plane was set to the bottom of this counter top and that's where the model line was drawn. So additionally, when you use model line grip handles, you can also stack them. So if you have something that has several stretching things-- I can have a grip handle here, a grip handle here, a grip handle here. Not just in freaking plan view. That's so like years ago, right? Yes.

So now we have a visibility on that. So is that something that you can use back at your office? At least that, right? Yes.

AUDIENCE: Yes.

AUDIENCE: Yes.

JOHN PIERSON: Cool. All right. Thank you. Yes. It's the last class of the day. I'm trying to keep it lively for you guys, too. I'm losing my voice. That party was good. All right. So that's that example. You can save that. The data set's available, like I said. You can use that on a lot of stuff as well. So what we could jump into now is we're going to jump into some rotational stuff in family. So who all uses door families? A lot of people. Cool. Yes.

There's a few that aren't engineers, things like that, probably. All right. So we're going to look at a method to add rotations to doors in a pretty easy, tricky way, if that makes sense. So what we could do is we could go ahead and hit Close. I'm going to Close Hidden, just to make my life a little easier. And we could close these files. We're done with them. You can hit save, if you want. This is the last lab. I don't think anyone else is using these files. Hit Close.

And then we should be back on this screen. Yours might look a little different than mine because people were doing a lot of crazy stuff in Revit in here. I also saw a lot of black backgrounds, so people were doing really crazy stuff with Revit. All right. So what we could do is go ahead and, on the family portion, go to New. And we're going to start a new door family. So door.rft. So everyone, get to door.rft. Not curtainwalldoor, a regular door.rft.

And I have my little timer going here. And we're going to go ahead and click Open. All right. Cool. So this is the door templates. This is a perfect door already done for us, right? Now So we need to actually start to model some geometry. In our case, it came with these little extrusions already. We're not going to use those, so you can go ahead and delete them. Those just come in the door template. They come with it. You don't need them. You can delete them. I just don't want them in my way.

Get out of my way. Cool. So what we want to do is we want to build a door that will hinge on that point. So we're able to do that with dimensional parameters. Who all has used the angular parameter to create that rotation? Do you love it?

AUDIENCE: No.

JOHN PIERSON: No. No one loves it. It's awful. Yeah. So we're going to use another method. Who all has used a sweep in here before? Yeah. That's quite a few. Well, I'll explain what it is, too. We have a lot of people who use extrusions, apparently. I'm just kidding. So a sweep is under the Create tab, Form Panel, and it's right there. You don't have to click it right now. So if you did, you can hit Cancel.

And what that lets us do, is it lets us create some geometry that sweeps. Yeah. Kind of simple. And we can host it on other geometry, or on lines, and things like that. In our case, we're going to host it on a reference line because we kind of dissed the reference line and it needed some more love. So that's what we're going to do. After we switched the model lines, we ditched it.

So in our door family, we have a couple elevations as well. So we're going to go to the Exterior Elevation. So double click on that one. Cool. We should see this view. Who all knows what that means? Have you ever heard the bird's mouth analogy, where the bird's mouth opens? Yeah. Cool. Once I learned that, I was like, oh, man, that's what that thing is. I need to stop deleting it. I'm just kidding.

So what we're going to do is we're going to-- you don't want to do this part, I just want to talk about it. I want it to rotate right here because the door's not going to hinge from the middle, for the most part. I think that's possible, but not in this example. So we have a reference plane on where it should hinge called Exterior. That comes with the door family template for us.

So in your exterior elevation view, we're going to go to the Create tab-- this is a tab-- the Work Plane Panel, we're going to hit Set. And right away, it kind of gives us a little blue outline of what we have set. By default, it's the center of the wall. It's that center, reference plane. We could click this drop down and choose Exterior. So click that and click OK, with the Exterior selected.

AUDIENCE: How did we get there?

JOHN PIERSON: Oh, yeah. Let me do it again. So Create tab, Work Plane Panel, Set, Set Work Plane.

AUDIENCE: Set Work Plane. OK.

JOHN PIERSON: And then you're going to choose Exterior and click OK. And if you don't have that, raise your hand and we'll get someone to you as well. All right. So what we're going to do now is very similar to what we did a minute ago. We're going to draw a reference line. And I'm not going to draw it in here and then try to find it later because that's not fun. I don't want to go through all that mess. So we'll hit reference line and draw it off to the side, kind of like that.

And this question came up earlier and we're going to work through it, if I did it backwards, which I did. Don't do this part. So a reference line, depending on which way you draw it, stuff that's hosted to it will flip a certain way. I'm pretty sure we have to draw it bottom to top, in this example. I drew it backwards the other day and it went down a really bad rabbit hole. That was crazy.

So if you drew it like I just did-- top to bottom-- draw it bottom to top for me. So Create Reference Line. And I could very well still be wrong, which is fine and we'll fix it. So bottom to top, reference line that's bigger than my stuff. And we'll talk about why it flips some more, too, once we get some geometry. So now we're going to do a Align. So AL on our keyboard, reference plane, and then we'll hit the tip of that reference line. Lock it.

And then we'll do the same thing for the reference level. Because it's right there, we're going to use it. And lock the bottom. Lock. Additionally, we have this pivot reference plane, at the right side. We can also lock to that one. Lock. So now we kind of have a hinge built. We can think of that as a hinge. I'll hit Escape and we'll go to 3D. A little house. Cool. I'll hit Escape again. So now, if we hover, we can see that we have a little, flickering reference line, right?

It's available in 3D. We can use it. I like to work in an isolate mode a lot because it just makes life a little easier sometimes. That's available on the bottom, with these little eyeglasses. Or you can hit HI on your keyboard, after selecting the reference line. This is a great mode to work in. And makes life easier, like I said. So we'll be in a isolated mode-- we can tell by the cyan color around the screen. Cool.

So now what we're going to do is we're going to use a sweep for this. Sweep is available under the Create tab. But before we do that, let's go to Insert. And we're going to load a profile. So in Revit, if you're not familiar, you can use a profile to create sweeps along stuff. And I already created one. We could probably create it faster, but I'll just show you how to load it. It's fine. So load family.

In your Data set folder-- so you should have Data sets, my name, and then it will be Examples. It won't look just like mine. I'm using my personal computer. So you need to go in the Examples folder and find the family called Sweep Host. You all should have that, I hope. If you don't, raise your hand, we'll get you, in a good way. We'll get you. And then we'll click Open to load that sweep profile into our family.