Welcome to part 16 of this 17 part series on creating your own custom model components using the Family Editor. If you have just stumbled across this article without reading the previous parts of the series, you may want to start here

OK. So we are almost at the end of this series. We’ve covered quite a number of topics along the way and (if you’ve been following from the beginning) you should by now feel comfortable in creating your own basic components. I would just like to say again at this point, if there is any aspect of the process that you’re still a little unsure of or would like further clarification, please do not hesitate to ask in our Forums.

Back to the subject of this article: “Testing your component”. At this point, you may be wondering what I’m referring to- why would you want to “test” a component, or even “HOW do you TEST a component?” Surely you just create it, then use it?

The answer to the above is: Not necessarily.

And now to explain why: In this series of articles we have concentrated on the key concepts of creating your own parametric components. The examples we have used have been very simple. There is very little to go wrong. But as you become more and more familiar with the process, so your components will become more sophisticated (ie complicated!).

They will probably have lots of parameters that have inter-dependent relationships between them. Have you ever created a complicated spreadsheet in Excel, only to get one cell reference incorrect and it messes up the whole sheet? Well, it’s the same with Revit- where parameters have a relationship with each other or have constraints placed upon them, the difference between them behaving as expected and not, can be “delicate”!

Let’s take two extreme examples:

The first is a very simple component- one that I created as an example in Part 15:-

We only had three parameters in this model- and none of them were really inter-related.

Now compare this to a door that comes as standard in the Revit library….

In elevation (above) and plan (below)….

Wow! What a difference. The door has many, many parameters and constraints. Lots of reference planes and lines, lots of length parameters, dimensions, etc.

Ie Lots to go wrong!

So the moral of this story, sorry “Article” is this: If you’re going to create complex components (which you invariably will) make sure you test them as you go along- ie at each stage of the creation process. For each parameter that you create and assign, TRY DIFFERENT Values for it to see how it behaves! I can’t stress this enough. In fact I’m going to type it again…..

For each parameter that you create and assign, TRY DIFFERENT Values for it to see how it behaves!

If you wait until you finished the component and then find it does not respond correctly to different parameter values, it can be VERY, VERY difficult to find the source of the problem.