Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Moving / Aligning Groups

hank

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Joined: Mon, Oct 3, 2005
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I have a bunch of lines from a 2D cad file that I turnied into a group in Revit within a Generic Model Family.  I want the lines in the group to stay in the same position relative to each other but the entire group should be able to move with a reference plane.  Anyone know how can I do this?

As it is now, the alignment is broken every time I flex the model - i.e. the group seems to need to stay in one place while the family flexes around it.

Thanks in advance. 

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WWHub

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Joined: Tue, May 16, 2006
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hank

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Joined: Mon, Oct 3, 2005
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Thanks but it would be insane to dimension and constrain every line in a group containing 50 objects, including curves and possible elipses.  I understand that I could make a nested detail component family, but this also seems exceedingly labor intensive - for every family I want to create I would have to create 3 detail families to represent front, side, and plan!

 There has to be a better way. 

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Ncurtis

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Joined: Thu, Oct 29, 2009
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You can place a line (invisible type in the group, close the group, align that line with your reference plane, and then lock it.  Your group is now aligned to the reference plane.

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hank

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Joined: Mon, Oct 3, 2005
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Thanks N,

I discovered that the problem I was having was sort of unrelated to the group question but this has been helpful nonetheless.

In case you ever have this problem, here goes:

1. You have a wall hosted family like a sink that you just draw in plan with lines in plan (hoping to actually have time to model in 3d in the future!).
2. You make a group of the sink lines and align/lock to the face of the wall.
3. Then you load the family into the model and the sink seems to float out from the wall.  Other times it may appear to be embedded in the wall.
4. You go back to the family and change the thickness of the wall and the sink moves with it as expected.

Why?

It seems that when you align/lock your group to the wall, sometimes you end up aligning it to the Face of the core when in fact you want to align to the face of the wall.  I went into the structure of the wall (in the Family Editor mind you) in order to add thickness outside the core to verify this.  When I align to this way, everything seems to work fine.

Not sure if anyone else has had this experience, but perhaps this will save someone from the few hours of frustration I endured.

Note also that sometimes the family had a reference plane called something like "Wall Face" that seems to already distinguish between core faces and finished faces.

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