Reasons to be Cheerful - about Revit Adaptive Components

Why did I publish a list of Reasons not to use adaptive components in Revit when I have previously published so much good stuff about them?  Well, it is because they have so much potential to allow us to do wonderful things in Revit - but it is largely unrealised potential for the average Revit user.  We need Autodesk to remove those "reasons" so that we can start to use adaptive components in everyday life, instead of just for specialist situations.

However, Adaptive Components can be used to do amazing work, so I need to redress the balance of the previous negative post with this list of positive reasons for their use.

Adaptive components started out life as a special tool for filling in edge pieces on mass surface patterns.  From there they have developed into a totally different beast.

• Multiple placement points can be used to control orientation in 3 dimensions (unlike line-based families that can only rotate in 2 dimensions).

3 point adaptive tubes

• Multiple placement points can be used to control the scale of many and varied parts of the family - just by the spacing of the adaptive placement points

3 point adaptive tube placed at varied angles and lengths

• Adaptive points can snap to elements in 3d space, and remain linked to the vertices of those elements - which become hosts - perfect for tensile structures (just remember never to delete the hosts):

4 point adaptive component tensile canopy

• Points!  These are wonderfully powerful elements in the mass/adaptive family environment - I miss them back in the traditional family editor.  They can be used to host and control other elements, once you understand them.

• In v2014, three points can host an arc by start, end,radius - this cuts out lots of trigonometry and formulas

• Points can also be hosted on lines, arcs, etc - they then take on different, very useful properties 

Points hosted on lines and intersections

• Points can be used to control rotation within families.  Wow, no more reference lines and dodgy angle parameters!  thanks to Alfredo Medina

 

• Divide Line & Surface commands are available in the mass/adaptive family environment - they cut out a lot of the work we previously had to do with formulas.

 

• Repeaters - the adaptive version of the Array command, but oh so much more powerful than traditional arrays.

Calatrava - Station roof support using nested repeaters, hosted on divided paths on geometry hosted on points!

Now, if only we could use all this stuff in the traditional Revit family editor . . . . . or else have all the traditional functionality in adaptive components . . . .  then Revit would really rock!