Okay, so I created a blog post that was awesome on an epic scale… but my session timed out and I lost the write up. That reminds me of Revit – when dimensions disappear on me or I take the wrong approach to modeling an object, I just tell myself “well, when I do it again, I’ll be that much faster and whatever I’m doing will be that much better”

…at least that’s what I tell myself!

Over the weekend I was working with the team and one of the redlines I was picking up was relocating parking bollard and creating a chain link fence in an underground parking area to protect some MEP gear.

The bollards were easy – just a quick MM and AA (my keyboard shortcut for move and align, respectively) and I was in business.

…but the chain link fence was a different story.

I’ve done chain link fences two ways before, and I wasn’t happy with either of them:

1) Generic, parametric surface hosted chain link fence family.

a. This sucker is somewhat problematic since it’s simply a series of independent objects that can be quite a headache to keep aligned, turn corners and generally behave correctly, especially over changes in elevation.

2) A basic wall with a chain link material.

a. This is nice, since it’s quick and easy… but for clearly documenting in both elevation & plan, it’s somewhat lacking.

Enter the railing family based chain link fence.

With a bit of initial setup, you’ll quickly have a chain link fence family that can follow sloped surfaces, cleanly connect chain link panels and even resize with minimal drama.

Step 1) Chain Link Pattern File.

Here’s a (somewhat) little-known dirty secret: AutoCAD pattern files (.pat) work like a champ in Revit… if you do two thinks.

1) Insert a single line of code into the pattern file (rename it from .PAT to .TXT, open in notepad, add in ;%TYPE=MODEL on the second line, so that the PAT code goes from this:

(note: if you’d prefer the pattern type to be drafting instead of modeling, use ;%TYPE=DRAFTING instead.

Step 2) Create your Chain Link Baluster Panel

For the sake of starting with something halfway decent, I started with Baluster Panel - Glass.rfa (which is found in your default Revit content library (C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RAC 2009\Imperial Library\Balusters) for us Vista users.

(Side note: Vista rocks – I’m convinced all the crap Dell and others install on top of Vista is the main reason people hate it so much)

Once you have the glass panel open, change the material type to chain link, import the chain link pattern file (set the scale to 3.0 for optimal results) and save as a new panel/file and close.

You can find the materials dialog via: Settings --> Materials

Step 3)

Load the panel you just created into a blank project, create a floor, then go about creating a railing.

For the baluster placement, alternate the panel family we just loaded with the existing 1” (or larger if you want) circular baluster.

Ultimately, you should have something that looks like this:

Files for you!

Revitized chain link pattern file (kudos to www.dotsoft.com for the original AutoCAD PAT file)

Chain Link Baluster Panel

Final Product (chain link fence RVT File)

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Comments (4)

• |2009-09-14 14:41:51 Dave
  Nice post! A similar approach I take is to do the chain link itself with a railing instead of a baluster panel family. Since the panel family is "fixed", it becomes a bit limiting when you place it. For example if you were sketching fencing over 60 feet with posts at 6'-0" O.C., everything would fit nice and dandy, but what if you have a section at 57'-3"? So by doing the chainlink as a railing (continuous; just a thin rectangular profile of the correct height), I have the freedom to set the posts to fit based on a maximum spacing instead, which would not require a unique family for every unique length (plus the unique type-driven baluster panel families). Hope I was clear!
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• |2009-10-05 06:11:21 Charles
  I am always struggling with the best way to do chainlink and this helps. However, do you know of anyway to put doors in this system?
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• |2009-11-25 08:37:05 Victor  - Thanks
  A great help, thanks a bunch.
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• |2010-04-28 04:24:57 Richard Binning  - A continuous example
  Hi John,
  
  One of the project architects at work had need for a chainlink fence today, so I thought I would do a quick google to see what was new. Nice work!
  
  I took the liberty of expanding on Dave's comment and created the continuous style he suggested. I posted it on my blog, besidethecursor - http://www.integr-8.com/besidethecursor/2010/04/fencing-in-revit-co....
  
  P.S. Your post doesn't appear in IE because of the "cut-n-paste" format leftovers from Microsoft Word. It views fine in firefox.
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