Converting Wall-based casework to Face-based in Revit

Recently there was a need for a custom piece of Revit family casework which was inadvertently made using a wall-based family template. I came across this post about switching lighting families from wall hosted to face-based and with a little tweak, made it work for casework.

This is how you do it.

1. Open up the family you need to convert to face based. Note the "Host" is currently set to "Wall" below.

2. Click on the "Family Categories and Parameters" button

3. Change the Category type to "Lighting Fixtures"

[We do this because the Copy-monitor function, which is a step in the process, only works on certain family categories]

4. Now, create a new project and load the family into it. Save the project as "Wall-hosted family.rvt"

5. Create another new project and link in the "Wall-hosted family.rvt" file.

6. On the Collaborate tab click "Copy Monitor" and "Select Link", and select the file you linked in.

7. Click the "Copy" Tool and select the Casework family, then click "Finish"

Ok, now here's the last part. 

8. Make sure the family isn't already open. Select the family now live in the project and click "Edit Family"

9. When the family opens up, click the "Family Categories and Parameters" button again to change the Category back to "Casework" and note that the Host is now set to "Face", woohoo!

10. Save your family file as an .RFA file in your library and you are done!

Trash the project files unless you've got more to convert. You can load multiple families into the project for this process if needed but you'll have to edit each one independently and save.

Cheers!

Revit DB

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Revit DB

Unusual Revit build

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