Please Note: Our Discussion forums have moved. If you would like to discuss this article or any aspect of Revit, please do so at www.forums.revit.biz We will be more than pleased to help you with ANY Revit query.Welcome to Part 9 in this series on creating your own custom families and components. In this article we are going to take a look at the Family Editor itself. We will look at how it differs from the main Revit interface, the main elements that make up the Family Editor and when (typically) you would use each one. The Family Editor itself is a completely separate “corner” of the Revit program that is only used when you need to either edit or create a Revit Family. In other words, for the vast majority of your working time in Revit, you will have no contact with the Family Editor. So let’s just dive straight in and take a look at the Family Editor interface. There are two ways of starting the Family Editor- the first is to select File > New > Family... 
then select a Family Template to use. The other method is to click on a family component already in your model and select “Edit Family” from the Options Bar….. 
Either of these two methods will take you to the same place… The Family Editor….. 
At first glance you will notice that the Family Editor interface is very similar to the “normal” working interface in Revit. In fact it is just a sub-set of the main interface. You will notice that there is just now one Design Bar on the very left of the screen, called “Family”... 
The rest of the interface should be very familiar to you. All the tools you normally use are still there at the top of the screen. The Project Browser is still there- although you will notice that many of the “branches of the tree” have been removed- Note: the exact make-up of the items in the Browser will vary depending on what type of Family you are working on. For example, if we are editing a Door Family, the project Browser will look like this... 
But if we are now working with a “Metric Mass” Family, the Browser looks like this… 
They look almost identical, but notice how the Elevations are named in each. You will find that the Family Editor does vary slightly (in it’s look and operation) from Family to Family. The same applies to the Line Styles that are available for Symbolic Lines, within the Family Editor. If you are adding Symbolic lines to a Door Family, Revit provides you with an appropriate set of Line Types…. 
But say you happen to be creating a new Furniture Family- the choice of Line Styles available (by default) will be…. 
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