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First of all, I wish to start this article by saying that this is not going to be a step-by-step guide to the custom family creation process- that is covered elsewhere here at Revit Zone. This is just a very quick overview of the process of creating custom electrical components. The same process can be used for other components- obviously just changing parameters, styles, etc; where appropriate.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to create a power socket. The component will have a 2D symbol and a 3D element that is visible in all other views. Now, you may be asking “Why waste your time creating something that already exists within the standard Revit Library?” Well, I don’t see it as a waste of time. Yes, I could use the included one- but I want to get up to speed with how to create components for myself. I want to know the nut-and-bolts of how Revit works. And there is no better way that to do this than learning to create you own family components. At some point in your “Revit Experience” you’ll get to the stage where the included components are just not enough. You hear a lot of new users making comments such as “Well it’s pretty good, but it hasn’t got X included in the library, so I’ll just have to use Y instead” NO! If it hasn’t got X, learn how to create X for yourself! And that’s what this website is all about- giving you the knowledge and power to enable you to make the system work for YOU!

Anyway, enough of that, let’s get back to the job in hand. OK- an electrical socket in Revit. What do we need? In short, we need 2 parts: A 2D symbol for the socket which will appear in plan view and a simple 3D model of the socket that will appear in elevations, sections, perspectives, etc.

So first of all I’m going to create the 2D symbol. Just to reiterate, in this particular article I’m not going to go through this step-by-step but rather just show you the various stages you need to go through.

Annotation Symbols are a particular type of Revit Family, reserved for 2D symbols and Tags. Examples of these would be Door and Window Tags, North Points, etc. The Family Editor allows you to create your own Annotation Symbols.

I then use “Generic Annotation” as the Template to use.

The above image shows the symbol I have created. For this I just used Filled Regions, the straight line tool and the mirror command. 30 seconds and it’s done! I now save this as an RFA file (Revit Family File)

OK. So that’s the 2D element sorted. Now for the 3D component. Again I use the Family Editor- but this time the template will be “Metric Electrical Fixture Wall Based”. By using a “Wall Based” family, this ensures that my component remains “sticky” to the wall that it is hosted on.

You will see from the following image that a wall-based family has a piece of wall included in the template. “Placement Side” tells us which side of the wall our component will be placed.

You will also notice that I have started to create my socket (for which I will use a solid extrusion) by drawing a rectangle (in plan) against the wall.

In the Element Properties for the Extrusion, I have set Extrusion Start to be 200- so that my socket will start 200mm from the floor. I have set my Extrusion End to 300- so that the socket will have a total depth of 100mm. (Remember Extrusion Start and Extrusion End are always measured from the same place- and that place is the Work Plane that has been chosen)

Upon “Finishing Sketch” my Extrusion is created. Switching to a 3D View, I can see the wall-based socked that I’ve just created...

After you’ve created your extrusion, you need to select it and then change it’s Visibility Properties like so….

You will see that I’ve unticked the “Plan/RCP (Reflected Ceiling Plan” box. This is so that my 3D model (of the socket) does NOT display in any Plan Views- In Plan Views I ONLY wish to see the 2D Symbol that we previously created.

Back to the socket: OK, OK! I know, it has no holes for the plug to go into! If you want to add the holes, just set a vertical Reference Plane on the front of the socket and sketch 3 rectangles (depending on which country you live in!) to represent the holes.

There we go! Three holes added. Note: I could have also created these as proper holes by forming voids in the extrusion. You have to draw the line at some point (excuse the pun)- just how much model in Revit is up to you. Remember to set the Visibility Settings (for these 3 rectangles) in the same way as you did for the extrusion- so that they do not show in a plan view.

All we need to do now is bring our 2D Annotation Symbol into this Family that we are currently creating. So we go back into the Plan View and select the Symbol command...

Now we just navigate our way to where we saved our 2D Annotation Symbol and select the file. We now just place the 2D Symbol on the face of the wall (in our plan view) and centre it on the central Reference Plane….

And that’s about it. All that is left to be done is to save this new Family and then use it! This is obviously a very simple component that we have created it. We could have made it with any number of parameters- so that (for example) it’s height above finished floor level could be changed within a Revit Project. We could have created a sub-category (within Object Styles) such as “Electrical Sockets” so that we could easily control it’s visibility for different Views. We could have created materials for the 3D elements of our component- the list goes on.

Here's the finished socket placed on a section of wall...

Hopefully from this brief article, you will have picked up the fundamentals of creating a 3D component (with inherent 2D Symbol).

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