Family Mapping

In This Article

• Overview
• Mapping Families and Family Types
• How Automatic Mapping Works
• Removing Unused or Duplicate Content

Overview

Guardian lets you clean up and standardize Revit families across your projects. Mapping rules tell Guardian how to convert families and their family types (renaming, merging from one family to another, or merging duplicates) so everything loaded into a model meets your firm's standards.

With family mapping, you can:

• Rename families or types
• Merge a duplicate family or type into an existing one
• Merge old families and types into new ones
• Automatically apply these changes as content is loaded into a project
• Find and remove unused or duplicate families and types

Family mapping happens in multiple ways:

1. As content is brought into the model from the Incoming Properties dialog.
2. Across an entire project from the Model Properties panel in Guardian (Model > All Model Properties).

Mapping Families and Family Types

When families and their types are brought into the active model, they can be renamed, purged, or mapped to families of the same category that already existed in the project. Families and their family types are listed and grouped by family category. Please note, family types must be mapped independently of the family itself. There are unique situations for family types:

• If a type is not present in the family being mapped to, Guardian will add that type to the family.
• If a type existing in both families (i.e., Flush Door and Flush Door) but the parameter values differ, unless a mapping is assigned, Guardian will create a duplicate type with the same name plus an appended number, so no data is lost.
• At times, there are duplicate family types within a family. An intra-family mapping of types can performed.

The order of operations is important for properly family and family types mapping.

1. Select the Family to be mapped.

2. Select the Family to map to. Mapping of families is limited to families of the same Revit category. Thus, when mapping family types, the available family types available to map will be limited to only those within the selected family.

3. Select the Family Type to be mapped.

4. Select the Family Type to map to.

• When duplicates exist, it is best to map the duplicates to the original family type (typically the type without a numerical suffix).
• When mapping family types and “No other properties exists.” Means the family type name and properties match those in the family it’s being mapped to. Guardian determines these to be the same family type.

Refer to the Mapping Functions under the Model Properties dialog for a complete list and how the mapping functions work.

How Automatic Mapping Works

Once mapping rules exist, shown by being grayed out, Guardian applies them automatically whenever a family is loaded or copied into a project. End users don't need to do anything extra.

Admins have additional control: when a new or unrecognized family comes in, Guardian shows it in the Incoming Properties dialog, where you can decide how to handle it. Refer to Transactions to learn more how Guardian handles incoming content.

Removing Unused or Duplicate Content

Guardian can also help you identify families and types that aren't actually being used, so you can safely remove them:

1. Deselect the checkbox next to any family or type you want to remove.

• Use a one-time mapping if the family type is only to be removed once and not automatically for all future instances.

2. To check whether something is in use first, open the dropdown under Scan types for duplicates and choose either:

• Scan selection for usage, or
• Scan types for usage