Determine family category and part type

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In this video, we will cover determining the family category and determining the part type.

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When creating families.

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It's critical that they are assigned the correct category and part type right from the beginning.

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First off, the category controls some of the default parameters that will be available,

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and also controls the visibility and graphic display of the components in the project.

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And the part type will determine the behavior of that component.

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Let's take a look at how this works.

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I'll start by selecting the valve in one of the pipe runs here, which is a pipe accessory.

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In the properties palette, you can see that it's a pipe accessory.

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I'll click edit family to open the family in the family editor.

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When you're working in a family, one of the first things you do is select the correct template that you want to use to create the family,

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and when you do that, the category will be selected.

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But sometimes you may need to modify this.

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On the create ribbon in the properties panel.

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You can click family category and parameters to open the family category and parameters dialog.

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As you can see here, pipe accessories is the specified category.

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We saw that in the project.

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So once again, when you create a family, uh, you may need to modify this, especially if you start out using one of the generic templates.

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The other thing you want to pay attention to is the part type.

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You can choose the part type here in the family category and parameters dialog.

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The part type is one of the parameters here in the bottom section,

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or you can click cancel to close this dialog and you can see the part type in the properties palette.

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When I expand this drop down, you can see several options.

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These options will be different depending on what the category is.

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So, for example, pipe accessories will have many more part type options than, say, mechanical equipment and plumbing fixtures.

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Each of these options has a different behavior.

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For example, when valve breaks into is selected, then the pipe accessory will break the pipe into two separate pipe segments.

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When that pipe accessory is placed in line, in line with the pipe.

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If valve normal is selected, the pipe accessory will attach to the end of the pipe,

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and so that's obviously a big difference in the behavior of how the pipe accessory works.

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And as you can see here, there are several other options.

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If you want a detailed list of all the categories and all the part types for each category and some of their default behaviors.

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You can look this up in revit help.

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I'll switch back to the project and then I will select one of the fire dampers in the duct and then click edit family.

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As you can see here this is a duct accessory and the part type is set to damper.

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When I expand the part type drop down,

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you can see that there are fewer options than we had for the pipe accessories attaches to breaks into and damper.

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So this is a fire damper and so we want this to be set to damper.

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And once again these options will greatly affect the behavior.

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And to see this, I'm going to change this to first off.

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Let's switch back and you can see the behavior with damper.

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I'll select one of the existing ones and click create similar,

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and then I can click in when I hover over a duct you can see that it finds the center line and I can click and place it in line.

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And now the this damper has split the duct into two separate duct segments in its place the damper right in the center.

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If I switch back to the to the fire damper family and change the part type to attach us to,

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and then loaded into the project will overwrite the existing version and then we will place another one.

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And now right off the bat, you can see that as I hover over a duct,

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it's behaving completely different and I'm trying to find that center line and I'll click and when I do, you can see that.

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It's definitely not what I want to happen.

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And we'll take a closer look here and you can see that it actually just placed it on the side.

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So instead of in line and just attached it to the side there and that's obviously not what we want in this situation.

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So in summary, I'll switch back to the family here, the category and the part type is critical.

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And so you want to get those right from the beginning.