Searching from Revit

Modified on Thu, 19 Oct, 2023 at 4:37 PM

The Kinship add-in gives you access to all your content from within Revit. You can search, browse and load families directly into your active model.

You can search all of content stored on your Kinship site, as well as content in your current model, directly from Revit by using the Kinship add-in. The add-in is available from the Add-Ins tab in the ribbon.

'Kinship Panel' button


  • To start a search click on the Search icon in the Kinship panel or use the keyboard shortcut KL. This brings up the search box.

'Kinship search box' button

  • As soon as you start typing in the box Kinship will begin to search.


  • You can use the up arrow on your keyboard to scroll through previous searches.


  • If you are in a model with one element selected, the family type of that element will be automatically entered into the search box.


  • Kinship indexes a wide variety of data from the family including
    • Family name
    • Version of Revit
    • Category


  • Kinship also indexes the parameters of the family and the following can be searched on directly:

    • Projectname
    • Typecomments
    • Description
    • Manufacturer
    • Model
    • Omniclasstitle
    • Hosted
    • Unitsystem


  • Other parameters need to be searched along with the expected value separated by a colon. For example if you want to find office equipment (assembly code E1010800) you could use search for assemblycode:E1010800

  • This can be combined with other terms to narrow the search. In example below the search is for a fax machine which has an office equipment assembly code.'Kinship parameter search example

  • There are two other operators which can be used to further refine your search:

    • + results must contain the word immediately following the + symbol.
    • ! results that contain the word immediately following the ! symbol are excluded.


  • In the example below the results must contain masonry but must not contain the word generic:'Kinship parameter search operators

  • Kinship uses the location of a family to determine the order in which the results are presented but also takes into account other factors such as how frequently a family is used and how many warnings it has. In terms of location Kinship orders searches as follows:

  1. The current open model, other models in the same project and collections assigned to this project (see Assigning Collections to Projects).
  2. Approved families in the library.
  3. Other projects or collections that are managed by Kinship.


  • You may have to wait a few minutes for Kinship to access content that has been newly updated into the website. If you do need immediate access to new content typing #index into the search bar will force Kinship to update itself. Do note that restarting Revit is not necessary and has no effect on when the index is updated.Revit search results

  • The i information panel provides context sensitive hints as to the options that you have at any time.

  • If you are looking for something that can be spelled as one word or two, use Camel Case. This tells Kinship to try both. For example use ArmChair to find both Arm Chair and Armchair.




Browsing the Results

When showing results in the panel there are a couple of options to further refine the results.


  • Relevant filters are dynamically created which are displayed in blue below the search box.
    • Selecting one of these will apply that filter to the results.
    • When active a filter is displayed in green and the other filters are hidden.
    • Clicking on the filter again will deactivate it and display the other filters.


  • The More button on the right of the screen allows filtering on the type of hosting requirements that the family has. Clicking on it will display a dropdown menu of possible hosting options.

Search FiltersFor each result there is:


  • A thumbnail image of the family (generated by Kinship).
  • The family name.
  • The category.
  • An icon showing the source of the family:
    • A blue cube for this model, another model in this project or a collection assigned to this project.
    • A green book for the library.
    • No icon if the family is in neither of the above. This means it is in a collection or model which is not assigned to the current project.

Revit search result icons


Viewing family details

Hovering your mouse over one of the families will show a chevron at the right end of the row indicating that there is more information available.


If there are multiple types associated with this family then clicking on the chevron will take you to a list of the types.

Revit search result icons

For each of the types there is again a chevron that will take you to a detail screen for that type. If the family only has one type, clicking on the right chevron will bring you directly to the family detail page.


Revit search result types

The details page shows:


  • The source of the family. If the family is a collection or a model the name of the model or collection will be displayed. This is an active link to the model or collection on the website.
  • The Revit version for which the model is built
  • The unit system
  • The size of the .rfa file
  • The parameters
    • Parameters in black can be edited, while those in grey are read only.
    • Builtin Revit parameters are preceded with an R icon.
    • Shared parameters are preceded with a sharing icon.


Revit search result detail

You can use the back arrow at the top right to return to the previous screen at any point while hitting return will load the selected type into the model and place it on the end of your cursor.

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