By Dennis Collin
In previous blogs discussing this topic, I was discussing the usage of the Revit repeating detail system family.
Whilst simple to use and customise, they do have certain limitations. When drawing certain types of details, such as the placing of brick and concrete elements, it is sometimes difficult to accurately position courses to other details or reference lines.
Another approach of detailing a wall would be to use a regular detail family, with an array parameter, that would repeat the brickwork in a similar way and permit the aligning mortar joints to other families and reference objects.
To achieve this, create a new line-based detail component and into that load the desired detail to repeat, in this case a brick. To make my sums easier make the controlling length of the reference line ten times greater than the element I wish to repeat.
To repeat the brick, the Array command is used, creating 10 items, which will correlate to the modified overall length. The parametric array number will then be made into a label which will then be driven by the length.
Add a parameter and name it ‘Number_of_Bricks’. It will vary so it will need to be an instance parameter type.
After testing the parameter, the detail is aligned and locked to the reference planes. Remember to align the first and last item in the array to keep everything together!
The next step is then to get the built in Length parameter to drive the number of bricks. This is achieved in the family types dialogue with a formula.
Formula is the Length divided by the size of the arrayed item, in this case, 75mm. Once applied adjust the length to ensure the brick is arrayed correctly. If all works correctly save and name the new detail family appropriately and load into your current project or project template file.
This component is just a regular family that can be accessed in the same way as standard singular details via the annotation tab on the ribbon menu.
Drawing two sets of similarly created details will now permit the alignment or moving of items to set references using appropriate graphical object snaps.
Another benefit is that keynote data can be attached to these components.
One issue that will be apparent is the geometry will fail when the number of bricks is less than two. At the time of writing Revit does not permit an array value of one, but this limitation can be addressed with a conditional if statement which will be covered in a future blog.
The tasks mentioned here are covered in our Revit Content Creation courses for all disciplines, for details on these please look here: https://training.cadline.co.uk/