Parametric copies?

[Keywordkid]

Hoping someone can advise, I currently have a working parametric family where I have set up an array to add additional items within the component and realign everything as the numbers increase or decrease.

 

The problem I have is I want to be able to reduce the multiple elements from one to many but using the array I always have at least two, reducing to one creates an error report, is there another approach I should use to achieve this?

[Keywordkid]

I found the following on AUGI forums (2007) that explains what I want to achieve:

 

1. I made Family 1, just the one piece extrusion.

 

2. I made Family 2, and loaded family 1 in to it. Family 1 is then arrayed, and i put in a parameter for COUNT and DISTANCE. I then assigned the param. COUNT to the label of the array. I dimension the First blade to the second, and assign the label DISTANCE to that dimension. (i went bottom to bottom...)

 

3. I loaded both families in to Family 3, and placed them both, one on top of the other.

The parameters are then set as follows, as shown:

 

F1V: (Yes/No instance) This will control Family 1 visibility. For the formula,

input COUNT = 1. Go to Family 1 that you placed, and go to its properties. Click the gray area at the end of the Visible field, and tie it to F1V.

 

F2V: (Yes/No instance) This will control Family 2 visibility. For the formula,

input COUNT > 1. Go to Family 2 that you placed, and go to its properties. Click the gray area at the end of the Visible field, and tie it to F2V.

 

Now, make a parameter DISTANCE (length) and ARRAYCOUNT (integer). Go to the Properties of Family 2, and click the gray box at the end of the COUNT field, and tie it to ARRAYCOUNT. Also tie DISTANCE in Family 2 to DISTANCE in Family 3.

 

Make the Formula for ARRAYCOUNT the following: if (Count>1, Count, 2)

 

What that is doing, is saying if the Value input (for COUNT) is greater than 1, use the value input. if its not greater than 1, use the value of 2, so the family doesnt collapse on itself. This wont matter, because the visibility parameter F2V will make Family 2 not present anyway.

 

It demonstrates how the if statement, and the visibility parameters will behave. If the value is 1 (for COUNT), the if statement will save the arrays geometry by defaulting ARRAYCOUNT to 2. It will not display Family 2 in the project, so this is irrelevant.

 

When COUNT is greater than 2, Family 2 shows up with the actual value, and Family 1 is hidden.

 

 

I have followed the details closely and I'm soooo close to getting it working but when taking the family into a proj and changing the count to 1 I get:

 

There are identical instances in the same place. This will result in double counting in schedules.

 

...and my schedule lists 3 elements instead of 1, change the count to 2 and all is good, for some reason I can't fathom, the array is not switchiong off as it shows in the parameters:

 

 

Don't ask why I'm modelling a hamburger it's too painful to discuss.

 

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[Keywordkid]

For anyone interested:

 

...I eventually managed to get this to work, I had to set up the nested array family to hold the visibility/count settings described above and link them in the master family and redefine, somewhat complicated but it works