By Justin Doughty
This idea evolved from a discussion with a customer about Fabrication Parts. The goal was to have a prefabricated module that contained a set of fabrication parts with hangers, that could be easily copied around a project, usually when there are lots of repetitive sections. I had the thought, but didn’t know how useable this would really be in Revit. The best thing to do was test it. It turned out to be easy to use, without the need for large amounts of customisation.
The first step is to create some Channel families. There are some families out there from the brand manufacturers, however they seemed very over-complicated for the task.
Using copies of the default box section structural steel families, the size and profile can be edited to match the required channel shape. This gives simple beam and column families that can be edited easily inside of the project:
One of the main reasons for using a Structure family is that the Fabrication hangers can then be attached to the channel. This would also enable the use of joins and structural connections if needed.
Place the frame and the fabrication parts spaced as needed, to build one module. Once this is done, it can be grouped, named appropriately and copied around the project as one element:
Another plus is that route and fill can still be used for all other connections, even between the grouped modules: