For the Families Assignment, I decided to create Frank Lloyd Wright's Husser table. Its design is reminiscent of his similarly flat and sturdily proportioned houses.
The 'Husser Table' Family and the Table with the Nested 'Candle Holder' Family
The 'Husser Table' Family with Modified Table Thickness and Width Parameters
Close-up of Nested 'Candle Holder' Family
This assignment was more complicated for me than the last assignment. I imagine this is partly because we are getting into the more advanced aspects of the program and also because it is so different than any other program that I have used. Constructing the building model in Revit was less complicated than this because the method of constructing the building mirrored the way it would go together in real life.
This project was also complicated by the fact that I am used to making these types of objects in programs such as sketchup where the process is very different. Revit seems to be more involved, as I had to constantly switch between the different elevations, plans, and three dimensional design space in order to create the shape I wanted.
However, when making the candle holder family after constructing the table, the process was much quicker and I was able to create the shapes that I wanted to more efficiently. For this reason I am hopeful that creating more advanced families in Revit will just be a matter of practice.
An aspect that I thought was very cool about making families in Revit was the ability to allow people to use and alter your family just by typing different measurements into the parameters. Allowing the dining table to be quickly altered in size while maintaining its overall form is a feature of Revit that is done quite succesfully. With my Husser table family, the table-top and the width of the table can be altered.
One aspect of families that I would like to learn more about is creating families that have curved shapes. There is probably an effective way to do this that I am not yet aware of, as I was experimenting with this process for a while and having alot of trouble. This was because I could not figure out how to assign dimensions to the curved shapes I made and thus could not figure out how to create modifiable parameters for them.
One tutorial that was very helpful for this project was David Fano's tutorial video on creating Families at http://designreform.net/2009/01/revit-family-basics/. It was very helpful in crystalizing the most important aspects of creating families.
This experience of doing this project was quite interesting since it was so different from using other architectural programs in the past, and it has given a better glimpse into the breadth of the program.
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