Model In-Place to Family

Model In-Place to Family

Turns Model In-Place elements into real, loadable families (.rfa) of the same category - Furniture stays Furniture, Casework stays Casework - and puts each new family back exactly where the in-place element was. Convert a whole element, or only the parts of it you pick. The plugin copies the element's actual forms - extrusions, sweeps, blends, voids, with their sketches, materials and subcategories - so the family can be edited like one drawn by hand. Every placed family is checked against the original before it is kept, and one Undo takes a conversion back.

When to use it

• A model full of furniture, casework or fittings drawn as Model In-Place, so nothing can be scheduled by type, reused in another project or swapped.
• Copy-pasted in-place elements ("Desk", "Desk 2", "Desk 3"...), each secretly its own family: they become one family with several instances.
• One piece of a larger in-place element - the basin of a counter, a shelf, a light - that should be a family of its own.

How to use

1. Open Model In-Place to Family from BimCode's plugin list inside Revit, with your project open.
2. Add the elements. Click Pick in-place elements and click them in Revit, or take the current Selection, All in view or All in model. For part of an element, use Part by face, or select the forms inside Edit In-Place and click Capture selected forms.
3. Check what each one becomes. Click a row: the 3D preview shows the solids, and the right panel shows the Category and Family template chosen for it - the same category as the original, with the best matching template from Revit's own template folder. Change either if you want.
4. Choose Keep the original or Delete the original.
5. Click Convert. Each family is made, saved as an .rfa file, loaded, placed where the original was, checked, and selected in Revit. A result card says how close the match is and lets you select the family, open it, or show the file.

The window's Help tab has the full guide, and Open the full guide opens a printable copy in your browser.

Good to know

• The real forms, copied. For each element the plugin opens Edit In-Place in the background, copies its forms into the new family and leaves without changing anything - don't click in Revit while it works. When Revit refuses that, the shape is rebuilt from the geometry instead: editable extrusions where exact, exact free-form elsewhere. The card says which was used, and why.
• Checked, or undone. A placed family that does not match the original in volume and position is undone automatically, and the card says why.
• Categories that cannot be families - walls, floors, roofs, doors, windows and other system or hosted categories - become the fallback category (Generic Models unless you change it), and the plugin says so.
• Your setup - template folders, a template per category, names, the output folder, geometry and placement options - is saved automatically and can be exported and imported as a file.
• The .rfa files go to Documents\Model In-Place to Family\<project> unless you choose another folder.
• One build runs in Revit 2025, 2026 and 2027. A family saved by a newer Revit cannot be opened by an older one, so convert in the oldest version you need.

The full walk-through is in docs/USER-GUIDE.md. Build and maintenance notes are in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.