This is an update to the two previous eponymous posts that adds a small but elegant improvement. The idea comes entirely from Bryan Caudill, Electrical CAD / Revit Leader at Cannon Design.
Earlier I detailed how a length parameter, Plan Symbol Vertical Offset, can shift a symbol away from a wall. This helps avoid symbols overlapping in plan view when two objects in the model sit on top of each other, e.g. a receptacle (socket) and a light switch, without having to move any 3D geometry.
As shown in the image above, the parameter’s length value represents the distance the symbol will shift in paper space. If we don’t know the exact dimensions of the symbol, this might require some trial and error to get right. And if we have more than two symbols, we’ll have to do some arithmetic to make sure that all the symbols are evenly spaced.
With Bryan’s improvement, we can simply set the order of the symbols with values like 1, 2 and 3, as shown in the images below, in order to achieve a cleanly spaced offset.
What follows is a technical explanation on how to implement this technique. There is no video this time, but if you had a look at the previous posts and follow these instructions there should be no problem to get it working.
First let’s add a new parameter to the host family and call it Plan Symbol Vertical Location and make it a NUMBER. Then set its value to 1.
Next let’s edit the nested symbol family and change the old Plan Symbol Vertical Offset and call it just Vertical Offset (I also changed the Group from Constraints to Other). Then add the following formula to it:
(Plan Symbol Vertical Location - 1) * [symbol’s height]
We will end up with the parameters and formulas shown below.
Next we will need to create two parameters in the host family, i.e. Plan Symbol Vertical Location and Plan Symbol Horizontal Location, and delete the old parameters (Plan Symbol Vertical Offset and Plan Symbol Horizontal Offset).
Finally, insert the symbol family back into the host family, associate its two Plan Symbol Location parameters to those of the host family, and we are done. Now we can just plug in a sequence of integer values to our overlapping symbols’ Offset parameters – 1 and 2 if we have two symbols, or 1, 2, 3, and 4 if we have four symbols, etc. – and generate a neatly spaced row (horizontal offset) or column (vertical offset) of our symbols in plan view.
There is one caveat. As it turns out, not all symbols have the same dimensions, so in the formula shown above, where it says [symbol’s height], you should make use of the most common height within a library of symbols and then use the same for the width. That will allow you to enter integer numbers for the Offset parameter most of the time, and only now and again require tweaking the parameter to have a value with decimals.
