Loading a family with a Type Catalog

Packages
1

I am looking for a Package with a node that will load a family from a server. The family will have a type catalog, so if the node has a option to filter out by type name that would be great. The Node Clockworks has will load the family, but it loads about 20 random types from the catalog.

2

@jtmiller

actually Autodesk rolled out a family manager… i think thats the best way.

3

Type Catalogs aren’t available in the API unfortunately. All LoadFamily methods are for the entire family definition. If you really wanted to avoid unnecessary types in your project, you’d have to load the full type list and then delete the unwanted types from the project afterwards. You can still automate this with a selection after loading the family. It will be slower than loading through a type catalog, but it will effectively give the same result.

4

Thanks for the replies. I am aware of the Content Catalog since we were already using Unifi, but thanks for the video.

Good to know about the LoadFamily saves me time from what my objective is. I will go about it in a different way then.

Was hoping to write a script that when a Structural Element is loaded into the project, it would load the matching Detail item.

5

Doable, but instead I would recommend authoring the base family with a parametric profile, and then author the detail family with the same parameters to control the profile. You can then build the type catalog on the fly after import.

I recommend making this a full add-in though rather than a Dynamo graph as you can build an event listener for loading structural framing types and automatically execute the code without needing to take another action. While doable with Dynamo it’ll run faster, be easier to write, make deployment a breeze, and more reliable.

6

Thanks for the reply, Not really understanding. Can you dummy it down a little. “Authoring the base family with a parametric profile?” Events are something new to me, can you recommend a place to get started. I am just a basic Dynamo user.

7

Event listeners aren’t a ‘basic’ Dynamo thing, so you’ll have some work to do there.

By Parametric profile I mean the following:

  • Rather than doing stuff on demand, I recommend building two families - one detail family and one model family for each object.
  • When you build model object, be sure it’s parameters are parametrically controlled - the width of the beam, depth of the beam, and all the rest are driven by parameters. Make note of them all in terms of what they control and what they are named.
  • When you build the detail object, add all of the same controls from the model family into the detail family. You shouldn’t need anything new; if you do it’s a sign that you missed something in building the model form.
  • Once this is done, you can load the matching detail family into the project for each beam family in the project.
  • From there you can get each beam type from the beam family, generate a detail type from the detail family, get the beam family’s parameters and set the detail type parameters to match.

This can happen on demand without issue. To get into the event listeners you’re going to want to build an add-in not Dynamo.