While leading a webinar on the Warnings Manager in Ideate Explorer, I received a great question:
“Can Ideate Explorer grab lines inside a Revit Family?”
At the project level, Ideate Explorer doesn’t investigate all the sub-components of Revit Families. Depending on the project size and loaded Revit Families, it could take an extensive amount of time to review every sub-component within each Revit Family. However, the better option would be to open a specific Revit Family for editing within the Family Editor and let Ideate Explorer display all the Revit Family sub-components for review and auditing.
Here’s an example of how to select lines within a Revit chair Family:
- In the image below, you can see the selected chair. It has 2D representation, 2D detail lines, and some 3D geometry. At the project level, Ideate Explorer is displaying information about the Category, Family, and Type plus any parameter data via Ideate Query, meaning that Ideate Explorer will not reveal the individual lines in that chair while still in the project.
- The Ideate Explorer results tree will automatically update depending on your location, either in the project or the Family Editor. If you edit and open the family while in the Revit project, Ideate Explorer reveals how many symbolic lines there are, and you can highlight one of the lines, double click, and see which view it will be in. You can also search on extrusions, such as the back of the chair or the sweep that makes up the leg of the chair. From this place, you can drill into the individual family and show the 2D line information or any 3D geometry.
- You can review the components of the Revit Family and audit the entire family to ensure that 2D geometry such as lines and 3D geometry such as forms are constructed the way they are supposed to be. You can also check for CAD files, images, and other family sub-components that may impact the performance of the Revit Family when it’s loaded into the project. For more detail on auditing your Revit project with Ideate Explorer, check out Auditing your Revit Project with Ideate Explorer video and pay close attention to tip #6!
For more information on how to use Ideate Explorer to explore, quantify, and manage your Revit building information model, visit our robust help files or our short how-to videos.
About the Author
Richard W. Taylor, Associate AIA – Technical Evangelist
Richard has more than 30 years of experience working for companies that develop architectural and engineering software solutions, such as Intergraph, Bentley, and Autodesk. He has over 18 years of Revit experience, and he was part of the original development of Revit while at Revit Technology Corporation. He worked for 12 years at Autodesk, where he presented, taught, and worked to improve features in Revit. Richard holds both a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. As Technical Evangelist, Richard works with AECO clients worldwide, developing and consulting on BIM solutions. Find Richard on Twitter.