Families - Essential Skill Video

Learn how to use family elements to build your model.

Why Families are Important

All of the elements you use in Revit are families. Some families, such as walls or level datums, are included in the project environment. Other families, such as specific doors, or fixtures, need to be loaded into the project from an external library. You can't create anything in Revit without using a family.

Learning Objective

In this video, you will learn how to:

Place an instance of a door family in a project.
Replace the family with a different door using the Type Selector.
View instance and type properties for the family.
Create a type using the Duplicate function in the Type Properties dialog.

Terms and Concepts

Term/Concept	Definition
System Families	Part of the project environment used to create basic building elements, such as walls, roofs, and floors.
Loadable Families	Families that are: created independently of the project, and loaded into the project as needed. used to create installed building components like doors and fixtures, as well as annotation objects. often hosted by system families. For example, doors and windows are hosted by a wall.
Modeling Families	Loadable families that represent real objects, such as doors, floors, or furniture. These families display in all views.
Annotation Families	Loadable families that are for annotation purposes, such as text, dimensions, or tags. These families do not have a 3D purpose and display only in the view in which you place them.
Family Types	Variations of the family element. For example, a family could be a door with a vision lite, and the types are 3 different sizes of that style door.
Instance Properties	Contain information related to a specific instance of the family element in a project. For example, instance properties for a door could include the sill height and the frame material. Changes made to instance properties affect only that instance of the family.
Type Properties	Contain information that applies to all instances of the same family type in the project. For example, type properties for a door could include the thickness and the width. Changes made to type properties affect all instances of the family created from that type.