Use shared nested families

Some elements, e.g., bolts or piles, are the assemblies of a host family, e.g. a steel connection or a pile cap, and they might be nested/ used in multiple families. People usually expect them to be scheduled independently.

Those elements should be created as "shared" families before they are nested into the hosts to enable them to be "shared" among hosts. The example is shown as fig 1,

 
 Fig. 1, Family Category and Parameters' settings of a shared steel pile

If a host is nested with shared components, after it being loaded into a project, each nested shared assembly will be shown separately in the project browser under its respective family category, shown as fig 2. As a result, the shared nested families (e.g., the steel pile) could be scheduled independently, shown as fig 3.

  Fig 2, project browser shows the nested shared steel piles after the pile cap is loaded

 
Fig 3, Pile cap scheduling, shared nested components are schedulable.

Thanks

Wai