How to create a North symbol that rotates with a parameter, with an N that rotates

Welcome to this Revit tutorial!

This post was originally published in 2012 in my old website, but it’s still very relevant today as a quick Revit tutorial. If you’d like to learn more about Revit, Level 1 of our Revit Families course is now available.

• You are going to need 2 generic annotation families:
• One family for the North symbol
• One family for the “N”.
• For the first family, you can start from scratch or you can open one of the existing annotation families for North, such as North Arrow1.rfa

• Save this family as… something else, such as “My North Arrow.rfa”
• Start a new generic annotation family.
• Place a text entity at the center of the cross of reference planes, with just “N”. Duplicate the default text type to make it a little bigger, i.e. 3/16″, and transparent.

• Save this family, for example “North N.rfa”. Load this family into “My North Arrow.rfa”, but don’t place it yet. After loading it, hit cancel. We will place it later.
• In “My North Arrow.rfa”, go to VG (Visibility Graphics) , Annotation Categories, and turn on Reference Planes.
• Create a Reference line from the intersection of the reference planes to a point outside of the circle, at an angle, i.e. 45 degrees, and with a length that is about the distance from the center of the intersection of planes to the center of the letter N that we will place later; i.e. 3/8″.
• Align and lock the origin of this reference planes to both the horizontal and the vertical reference planes. Use the Tab key to find the start point of the line.

• Create an angular dimension from the horizontal reference plane to the reference line.
• Select the dimension and convert it into a parameter with Add Label.
• Create a parameter, as shown:

• Select all the geometry: circles and lines that make up the North symbol, and rotate them to match the rotation of the reference line.
• After that, you will see a warning about “Constraints not satisfied”. Click on Remove constraints. We are removing existing constraints in the family, to create new ones.
• Having the geometry selected, from the ribbon select Edit Work Plane, select “Pick a plane” , OK, and select the reference line.
• Now go to Family Types, and change the value of the “Rotation angle from East” to 90, apply, and OK.

• Now, from the Project Browser, select the family that contains just the N, (My North N.rfa), right click, create instance, and place it somewhere.
• Now use the Align tool, from the upper endpoint of the reference line (use the Tab key to find it) to the horizontal reference plane in the N family, and lock.
• Use Align again, from the same upper endpoint of the reference line (use the Tab key to find it) to the vertical reference plane in the N family, and lock.

• Save this North family.
• Now your family can be loaded and used in a project, and will rotate with a parameter.

Note: it is not possible yet to link this rotation to a shared parameter, or to rotate it as per changes in the True North of the project. This has to be done manually.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short Revit tutorial.

If you’d like to learn more about our online Revit Families course, click here. 

© 2012 Planta1.com, inc. , Alfredo Medina | permission to reproduce this article is granted if the name of the author and the URL of this article receive proper credit.