Parametric Adaptive Chain in Revit Tutorial

in this video I'm going to be showing you how to create this fully parametric and adaptive chain in Revit we're going to start off by creating the chain link family and then we're going to load that in into another adaptive component and we're going to transform that chain link into a full chain let's go Now quickly before we jump into Revit I would just like to ask you to check out my website balkanarctic.com which I'm going to link up in the cards above and then also down in the description of this video if you're serious about learning gravity that's definitely the best place to be with over 140 hours of content dedicated to all of the interesting and complex topics inside of rabbit also I would like to thank binhi's Revit study channel for the inspiration for this video idea so now without any further Ado let's jump straight into a rabbit now to start this this will be modeled as a family so I'm just going to go here to New and it's really important to pick the correct family template so what they'll do is I'm just going to go back one folder find the English metric library and then let's search for the generic model adaptive now you want to use adaptive because it's going to allow you to place adaptive points which just means points that can be adapted or moved around so to place these point points you just go and place two basic Point elements in this case so just like this hit the Escape key a couple of times you select them and then you make them adaptive by clicking here on make adaptive so this is 0.1.2 and that's pretty much it so these are now those adaptive points now the chain link is going to go in between these so I'm just going to select both of them and then click on spline through points that will make this line that will always connect them then let's select that line and let's hit is reference line so it's going to just give us a bit more functionality moving forward let's Place some additional points on that line so here I'm just going to select the draw on face and then draw a couple of points on this face just like so and then hit the Escape key a couple of times now I want to place additional points on each of these so what I'll do is I'm going to go here to set workplane I'm going to hover over it hit the Tab Key once to highlight the horizontal one click to select go to point now you want to select draw on work plane so it's only going to draw on that selected workplane and then you want to click on point now it's going to give you this error message saying that these are two points in one place this is exactly what you want so let's click OK hit the Escape key a couple of times select that point and now you can see you can move it now when we move this point here you will see we have this offset parameter so we can move it with an offset which is really cool now I also want to place one above that so let's just go back to point it's going to recognize the same workplane because we are still here on Drawn work plane place it on that point click OK hit the Escape key a couple of times select that point and then move it up now we want to turn these offsets into parameters so I'm just going to go here to this offset click on associate family parameter we don't really have any so let's create a new one so this will be a radius parameter click here on instance so this will be an instance parameter click ok ok there we go this one will be the same thing however in Reverse so this one is negative this one is positive so let's select this one go to that same offset click and then let's create a new one which will be radius negative this will also be an instance parameter click OK click OK again now we want them to have the same offset so let's go here to the family types click and then I'm just going to copy radius here Ctrl C to copy and then let's just type in here in the formula for radius negative minus Ctrl V to based radius hit apply and now as you can see they're going to have the same value so here if I say 400 this one will have the same value and now they will move together see that's really cool so anyways let's bring this back to 400 okay okay so now I'm just going to be repeating the same thing here on the other side I want to have just uh two additional points there with the same parameters now at this point this definitely doesn't look like a chain link so let's make it one so what I'll do is I'm going to select this point hold the Ctrl key select this one and then go to Splinter points and then repeat the same process for the ones in the bottom select both lines and then let's make them reference lines perfect and now we need to create an arc shape here and here so for that let's go here to set workplane I'm just going to select the vertical plane here but not this one the this one which is kind of following the length of the line so just use the tab key for that then use the center and Arc tool make sure that the draw on work plane is selected you start from the center you go here to one end you make the arc you finish here hit the Escape key a couple of times and then let's just click on its reference and then I'm just going to repeat the same thing on the other side okay so now this is starting to take shape however we still need to add some sort of a profile which is going to be swapped along this shape to create that chain link so what they'll do for that is just Place Another Point again go draw on face place it here on this line hit the Escape key a couple of times go to set workplane and I'm just going to set it to this perpendicular work plane and then let's create a circle so this will be yeah drawn work plane and create a circle there hit the Escape key a couple of times select that Circle and then let's make it reference as well and then also click here on make temporary Dimension permanent and now we can use this to turn this into a parameter so let's go here to label and create a new parameter this will also be an instance parameter and it will also be called radius however you can see that they've used the lowercase R and what that means is basically it's going to be a different name Revit recognize or is a case sensitive so this even though we already have one radius parameter this is lowercase R so this will be a different parameter again make sure it's instance and then click ok so we have that parameter as well now let's add some radius parameters on these so just select them turn the dimension into a parameter and then let's just apply the existing radius parameter that we have so it's a really simple process and you just apply it here okay so now we have these points and actually want to change the distance from this point to the point here which is where our chain link starts or the kind of radius of our chain link so what I'll do is I'm just going to select this point here and what you'll notice is that in the properties panel we have this thing that's called normalized Curve parameter so what this is it's actually measuring from 0.1 to 0.2 and that's the value is one and then this is basically indicating how far along that value this is so it's kind of like percentage or something like that it just goes from zero to one now I don't want to use the normalized curve parameter what we want to use is segment length so I actually want to have a numerical value so now we have this segment length and I'm just going to call this one offset so let's click here to create a new parameter called this one also make it instance and then call it offset click ok to save that parameter okay and there we go so we have that offset parameter and then on this side what you'll notice is if I select this point we also have it as a normalized curve parameter however here in this case it's giving us a different value just because it's measuring from this point to this point so it's always going to give us a different value from here into here now I actually want the distance from here to here be the same value as distance from here to here so I'll just change the measure from and instead of beginning which is 0.1 switch it to end which is point two and now this number makes a bit more sense and then let's just change this to segment length and there we go so now this is set up as a segment length and we have that segment length here and let's assign the offset parameter to that and now the distance is from here to here and here to here are equal now we want to control roll all of this through some formulas so let's set those up so let's open up our family types and then here we want to find the offset parameter and this will be equal and then let's find radius Ctrl C based so radius minus and then radius lowercase okay so once we have that let's say then hit apply okay so as you can see this is set up here so basically it's this radius minus this value so it's going to give us kind of the inner position of that chain link as it appears and then let's go back to family types and let's adjust the radius Dimension to be radius what's then divided by 2.5 for example like this and then hit apply so it's going to be a bit larger and then click OK finally we have the issue of the length obviously it's too long so let's create a parameter which is going to control the length so as I said this is a an Adaptive point so as you can see we can move it around but it's also better to have a parameter tracking that so to do that you go here to set workplane you find the main kind of horizontal reference plane find the horizontal work plane and then assign that reference plane then you go to Dimension so align the dimension d i is the shortcut and go from point to point just like this and let's place that Dimension here hit the Escape key a couple of times select it and then let's create a new parameter for that so this will be an instance parameter called length and this will be a reporting parameter this is really important so it's going to report that value into the family and then we can use that for calculations so if we open this back up now we can say that our main radius is equal to this length parameter so let's copy it length and then let's divide that by three and hit apply okay and this is what we get so as you can see this now makes a lot more sense it's a smaller chain link but yeah it looks exactly how it should finally to actually turn this from this weird skeleton into actual geometry let's select the circle then hold the Ctrl key select the reference lines and then go here to create form so it's going to create that chain link form finally to complete this family we need to have some of these chain link segments be vertical but some should be horizontal so that can be controlled through selecting this point and here we have the rotation angle so what I'll do is I'm just going to select both of these points go to rotation angle and then create a new parameter so this will be rotation angle you can make it an instance parameter then click ok ok there we go so now this is the rotation angle so now when I open up family types and here you want to type in a negative value of minus 90 degrees for the rotation angle and apply okay so as you can see now this is horizontal so we will be able to adjust this when loaded into a family so now let's save this I'm just going to click on Save I'm going to save it on desktop as a chain link and hit save and now it's time to build a chain out of this so for that let's go again to found new family and then here I want to go one step back to open up metric again I'm searching for the generic model adaptive and then hit open and now for the chain itself I wanted to have three points which I can use to adjust its shape so what they'll do is I'm just going to place three point elements like this hit this skipped a couple of times then select them all make them adaptive and run a spline through them and make it a reference line perfect and now as you can see when you move these it's just going to move the whole thing then you want to select that spline and you want to divide its path and as you can see it's going to divide like this now for the layout I'm just going to set it to a fixed distance just like that so I can basically control uh the length in between these points and as with everything else let's control the distance through a parameter so I'm just going to click here on associate family parameter create a new one make it an instance parameter and let's call it segment length click ok ok again and then in the family types I'm just going to here assign this to 200 millimeters I think this will be fine okay and then you can make it smaller or larger however you like yeah let's just leave it like this okay so now it's time to actually turn this into a chain so for that we need to load in this family so I'm just going to go here to load into project it's going to load it in and it's going to look weird like this so you just want to make sure that place on face is selected then you want to click on that point one for your first click and here for your second click just like that and then for the next one go here with the first click and here with the second click and then you just repeat that across the whole chain just kidding of course not so this is Revit for doing everything in a smart way so let's just select the second one here actually I'm going to turn on 10 lines to see it a bit better so you select the second one and then here we have the rotation angle so let's bring that back to zero just like this so now we have two of these okay hold the control key and then we have this option repeat so once we have selected both of them and we repeat them it's just going to repeat that shape along the length of this spline and that forms our chain so now if I start moving this around I can move this one like that move it around I can actually move it up I can move this one down if I want so I can actually create a chain that follows whichever shape I like and then in one of the future videos I'll show you how to actually implement this inside of a project if you just want to get the complete family without having to go through the hassle of making it yourself or if you want to get access to all of my Revit project files while all of that is available on my patreon page which I'm going to link up in the cards above and then also down in the description of this video thank you for watching guys make sure to check out my website balkanarctic.com for more Revit courses there I have over 120 hours of content and I'm adding more each week make sure to subscribe and for more videos and also I've added a video over there that might interest you as well

Channel: Balkan Architect

Views: 13,316

Keywords: Revit, balkan architect, BIM, tutorial, Autodesk, Parametric, Chain, Family, Adaptive Chain

Id: XEiO9pdPIKg

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2023