Angled Column Grid Workaround

I'll have to warn you that this post is 100% smoke and mirrors and should ONLY be used as a workaround for documenting existing buildings that use angled column grids...

As we all know, Revit will not let you have two column grids with the same name... but occasionally you may need to document an angled column grid (Revit does not support this as of version 2011). The image below illustrates the column grids in question (A and B).

So, here goes nothin

You will first need to create a new shared parameter formatted as text and name it something like "ColBubbleWorkaround."

You will need to then load this new shared parameter into your project and bind it to the Grids category as an instance parameter.

The next step in the process is to create the new Grid bubble type family. Open your current column grid bubble family and create two new Yes/No parameters named "ShowFakeBubble" and "ShowRealBubble."

These will be used to control the visibility for the current column grid bubble label and the other to control the visibility of a new label where you will add the above mentioned parameter "ColBubbleWorkaround" to display a general text override for your column bubble.

The next step is to create two new family types within the bubble family named "Fake Bubble Text" and "Real Bubble Text." Set the parameters for "ShowRealBubble" and "ShowFakeBubble" respectively for each of the types.

After you've loaded the family into your project you can set the new "fake" bubble family type to your column grid settings in your project. Select one of your column grids in the project and click the "Edit Type" button in the properties palette. Then change the symbol to the column grid symbol you want. You may want to duplicate the grid type so you can use the real column bubble for all grids that are not angled and the fake column grid type for the grids that you need to fake out...