reviting

Now, of course we want our new structural beam to be under the correct category (It is currently a Generic Model), for ease of scheduling and Visibilty/Graphics and Object Styles. To do this we simply change it's category under Settings -> Family Category and Parameters...

We should set our beam material to wood, for good measure, as these material types have slightly different behaviours.

Now we can save our Family and Load it into a project. It will behave much more favourably, and will even schedule correctly for your cutting lists!

Conclusion:

We have set up instance parameters for our widths and heights. You may want to set up a type catalogue by changing the Width and Height parameters to "Type" parameters, and create the types of beams you commonly use. You can do this by clicking the "Family Types..." button on the Design bar.

For example, I would save the family as "LVL" and have several Types (150x36, 170x36, etc)

Our new beams will now behave as we expect (much like walls) as we have removed some of the 'intelligence' that is inherent in Structural Beams by using the Generic Model line based template.