By John Flanagan
Revit Families
Families are Revit files (.rfa) which you create and load into Revit Projects (.rvt) and use to create and populate your building model.
There are three types of Revit Families:
System
- These are the building blocks of which you must have at least one in your Revit Project.
- They are predefined in Revit, and you do not create them from external files, nor do you load them into Projects from external Family files.
- Examples include Walls, Floors, Stairs and Roofs.
Loadable
- These are the building blocks that you can create from External Family files and load into Revit Projects.
- Examples include Furniture, Lighting Fixtures, Windows and Doors.
In-Place
- These are the building blocks which you can create within the context of your Project without opening and reloading an external Family file.
- Examples include Custom Mass objects, Casework.
Families are not identified in the Project Browser by their types but by their respective Object Categories.
Although the instances never appear in the Project Browser, you can select all the instances in the view or in the project by right-clicking a type: