Revit Families – Window & Door Tricks

Last updated January 31, 2025
By Ian Story

Nesting Different Family Categories

The trimmer studs are a Bundled Studs shared family (Structural Column category). As a Structural Column these elements respond to the same layer control as the rest of the project. And as a shared family they can be tagged individually and separately from the door/window.

The casings are a Door Casing / Window Casing shared family (Casework category). As a shared family they can be joined with other model components separately from the door/window. This is especially important because Door and Window families can not be joined, but Casework families can. As long as the casings are a shared Casework family, you can use the join tool to join them to other casings or other objects in the model. This allows us to merge overlapping casings where windows are placed side by side without needing to use manual linework overrides.

Detecting Wall Layers and Thicknesses

Covering Up Shear Walls

Summary: Set all 3d model elements in Doors, Windows, and Casings to not display in plan views. Instead, create a separate 2d Detail Item “symbolic representation” family to display in plan views. Use Masking Regions for the symbolic representation family and set the Visibility/Graphics settings for all of the Masking Regions to show only in the “Fine” detail level. In the model family, set the “symbolic representation” family instance to “Draw in Foreground”.

In our drafting standards, there is a complicated relationship between Shear Walls and Window/Door openings. We model Shear Walls as a solid extrusion (that matches the core thickness of the wall), with a particular cut hatch. The challenge here is that this Shear Wall hatch appears on top of the Window/Door model. This is the correct behavior in wall framing plans where we are trying to emphasize the Shear Wall continuity, but for architectural floor plans we want the Door/Window to cover up the Shear Wall hatch.

This can be accomplished by using Masking Regions to represent the plan view of the Door/Window. As long as the Masking Regions are set to “Display in Foreground”, they will print above model-based hatches and will consistently cover up the Shear Wall hatch (and, as a side benefit: casings drawn using Masking Regions will cover up the wall siding, making it look like they are joined with the siding without actually having to use the join command, and without creating extra cutouts in views where the casings are turned off). This strategy has several additional challenges and peculiarities that need to be negotiated:

• Masking Regions do not respond to subcategory visibility control. While the edges can be assigned to subcategories (for example: Frame, Sill), the fill itself is always associated with the parent category (Windows). This is problematic because we want to be able to turn off the masking region for framing plans without turning off the entire Windows category.
  • Workaround: Masking Regions can be set to only display in certain detail levels (Coarse/Medium/Fine). We don’t currently use this display setting for anything else, so we have set up the following policy: Masking Regions should be set to only display in the Fine detail level, and framing plans should use the Medium detail level. This allows us to turn off Masking Regions for framing plans while still using them for architectural plans.
• Masking Regions disappear if their family participates in joins. For example, we tried drawing the Masking Regions directly in the Window Casing family, but as soon as we joined the casing to an adjacent window casing the Masking Regions disappeared.
  • Workaround: Detail Item families nested in the family don’t change when the family is joined. Create a separate Detail Item “symbolic representation” family for each model family. You will also need to create additional subcategories under Detail Item to allow layer control to match the geometry type. For example, we added “z_Casework Casing, Sill” as a Detail Item subcategory so that we can turn the sill lines on and off to match the display settings for other Casework families.
    • Notable Revit Quirk: For Masking Regions in a Detail Item family that is nested within a model family, the masking fill’s visibility is based on the model family category. For example, a Detail Item representation of a window casing ignores any view overrides for the Detail Items category – instead, it responds to overrides made to the Casework category. This only applies to the fill portion of the Masking Region – the line edges are still Detail Items and respond only to overrides for the Detail Items category. This behavior is helpful for our purposes, because it means we can use the embedded Detail Item Masking Regions without relying on the Detail Item category being set up a certain way.