Hello,
Would it be possible at some point to create Revit families like GH Styles in Visual ARQ?
This means creating GH definition of the family + some Revit parameters and then modifying instances of that families directly from Revit by changing parameters values.
Rhino and GH would run in the background to drive all operations but people who understand only Revit could still use families created this way.
There are some issues to solve, but is technically possible.
Ideally both should use same kind of definitions to maximize interoperability.
The first step I think should be using DirectShapes and DirectShapeTypes, and after that try with Families and Types.
The main problem may be the UI since Revit does not allow to register parameters by Family or Type, and having all those parameters per Category would be a mess.
I think the point here is how many people are we helping doing that now.
As you said to do any kind of change on those elements Rhino.Inside will be needed in the background.
I tried something probably silly - looping Family or DirectShape creation. It even worked sometimes for the Family (but as one Family per instance which would quickly bloat the file) and it wasn’t working for DirectShapeTypes.
revit family test.gh (12.3 KB)
I see the problem with the parameter list mess…
Sometimes I talk with my friend who creates Revit families for internal use in companies he works with and often I have an impression, that the results he achieves using solely Revit could be achieved in Rhino & Grasshopper way easier and more flexible.
Architects he is working with, even if they are familiar with Revit, do not really like to step into the realm of Revit family creation so these tasks are moved to him. For all those people, to learn how to deal with Rhino & Grasshopper just to change e.g. size of the window and every window having its own separate GH family file is in my opinion a really high entry threshold.
It would be cool to use Rhino running completely in the background (maybe with a different license?) to do tasks in Revit. I think something similar is provided by SideFX as Houdini Engine for some programs.
My natural habitat is Rhino and Grasshopper and I found myself producing many GH files that I need to constantly switch between and store somewhere. If I have e.g. 6 different window types in the Revit file and I need to change one of them I need to find and open the GH file which made them (or go to the place on the GH canvas where this part of the definition is stored).
This might seem not an overly complicated task but it scales in numbers very quickly.
If I work with Rhino, Grasshopper, Revit, and Unreal Engine (+ some digital sketching in Photoshop) and want to have streamlined exchange of data it takes a big portion of what I call my brains RAM. Even If I establish such a connection between programs I do a lot of sending of things back and forth and I have very little brain left to do design!
All that text leads to show how helpful it might be to embed GH definitions into easily accessible „containers” directly editable from the program of choice. - Exactly what Visual ARQ does with the GH Styles.
I might rely on a workflow as you or one of your colleagues showed in the video, but that’s still only for the Rhino&VA users and could be a bit uncomfortable sometimes. I need to experiment more with creating GH file which would automatically translate all project’s VA Objects into Revit families, but placement would be set from within Revit:
You know Visual ARQ and from what I saw you are also familiar with Unreal Engine’s Blueprints so I suppose you might share the same opinion with me about the benefits of embedding logic into objects and accessing them from the outside. I like how one can set everything up inside the actor editor window in Unreal.
With all that being said, if it’s something that with Revit might be hard to do, then it’s just a pity… but I had to write all that nonetheless. 
