TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter touches on three topics in Revit that are beyond the basics. These topics are explored in more detail in our Mastering Revit Architecture 2009 (Sybex, 2008) book, but knowing the fundamentals about them early on can be useful as you gain more experience with Revit.
In this chapter, we will review the basics of the Family Editor, using the Design Options tool, and worksharing. The Family Editor allows you to create and edit com ponents in Revit. The Design Options tool allows you to make design iterations within Revit. And worksharing lets you divide the model so more than one person can work on it at the same time. Topics we'll cover include:
Understanding families
Using design options
Worksharing the multi-user environment
Within Revit, components and other content are referred to as families. Some types of these elements can be created and edited on the fly within the project environment, and some are created and edited outside of a project file. Revit comes with a built-in family-editing application called Family Editor that is tailored for making all types of content, from doors and windows, to annotation symbols, to stand-alone furniture. Creating your own content is a critical aspect of working on projects, and thus creating families is a critical aspect of working with Revit, because families make up a vast amount of what goes into a model. Family editing is a relatively complex workflow involving using geometry, understanding constraints, and adding parametric variability into...
