What are “System Families” in Revit? (2024)

FAQs

What are “System Families” in Revit? ›

System families contain family types that you use to create basic building elements such as walls, floors, ceilings, and stairs in your building models.

The three kinds of Revit families are system families, loadable families, and in-place families. Within a family, you can create multiple types for different sizes, materials, or any other parameter you want to change. while keeping the material and hardware the same for each type.

All elements that you add to Revit projects are created with families. For example, the structural members, walls, roofs, windows, and doors that you use to assemble a building model, as well as the callouts, fixtures, tags, and detail components that you use to document it, are created with families.

You can access the Family Editor by: Opening or creating a new family (. rfa) file. Selecting an element created by a loadable or an in-place family type, and then right-clicking and clicking Edit Family.

Loadable or Component Families

These are user-defined families which can be created and modified in Revit based on the project requirements. Unlike System Families, the Loadable Families can be saved as external RFA files and can be loaded into projects whenever its required.

In summary, component families offer a higher degree of customization for specific building elements, while system families provide the foundational framework for essential building systems, both contributing to the comprehensive modeling capabilities of Revit.

System classifications are hard-coded in Revit, and you can't create new ones. However, you can create additional system types by right-clicking any of the existing piping systems in the Project Browser and selecting Duplicate.

Revit family creation increases the accuracy of the project models, enables variations of types of components and changes on those variations and saves time and effort spent on recreating this data for future use.

What are families in BIM? ›

Families are the key building blocks of every BIM project in Revit. Their form make take 3D, 2D or both, adapted as required for their given market. Families can meet project-specific requirements that arise from each speciality for the coordination and calculation of facilities.

You can open the folder with saved families, mark the required ones while holding the Ctrl or Shift key on your keyboard, and just drag them into your Revit project.

Parametric and Non-Parametric Families

Parameters are formulas and mathematical equations embedded into Revit family that control its properties. Non-parametric Revit families are elements that have been created in the Revit database and cannot be tampered.

Every object or unit in Revit is an element. The Revit family hierarchy begins with the Category, followed by the Family, then Type and finally Instance.