Despite being in version 2013, Revit still carries within it some quite unbelievably weak features (or lack of functional ones). Classic examples of these quirks with schedules are:
Once again, if you know of any work around, or if you have any philosophical take on these which to me appear to be inexplicable limitations of the software, by all means, please comment away.
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I have to work on a casework schedule to extract some information about cabinets and the rooms in which they are placed. If creating a new schedule and performing such task should be pretty straightforward, the team is now working on a half gig (yes GIG) model, and we have one hundred schedules in the browser. This dictates that before we create any new views, we should scavenge the (huge) model for already existing ones.
And here is the problem, because I did find a casework schedule (thanks also to the new search browser feature), but I do not know if it is placed on any sheet, or if it is a working schedule that can be modified without any existing sheet being modified. And no, "go check" is not a viable answer, because the browser also contains hundreds of sheets, grouped in dozen custom groups. So looking for the sheet where a particular schedule might have been placed is simply not feasible. Organizing the browser to filter out the "not on sheets" parameter works only on regular views, which is bad because Revit thought us that schedules are actually like any other graphic view of the data-set, that is, like floor plans or elevations, they are "sections" cut out of the same database of the 3D model. Yet, they are listed outside the "views" browser item and they seems to have less "rights" than other views. By the way, Legends seem to have similar limitations, in the sense that they cannot be screened out by "Not on sheet" and if you right click on a legend name, the menu item "Select all instances in view / entire project" is always grayed out. Why can't we at least know how many instances of a particular legend or schedule exist in the project is not clear at this point. This seems to be just an oversight. If anyone has any idea how to achieve this, please do post a reply. In the meanwhile, not to take any chance, I will have to create a new schedule. One really cool feature of the schedule editor is the capability to cross-reference parameters from other categories than the one you are scheduling. For example, if you are doing a door schedule, you can click on the "Select available fields from:" pull-down menu, in the "Fields" tab, and chose "From Room" or "To Room". For other type of schedules, you can access the material parameters of the scheduled elements in the same way. Now, wouldn't it be absolutely wonderful if the Factory would expand on that principle, and make, I don't know, the door HOST category available? That would be Walls, would it not? Then, we could include in the door schedule partition types, thickness, wall rating (!), wall function (interior/exterior), etc., etc. Interestingly enough, I just find this post on the Revit Clinic blog, which at least addresses how you can schedule the thickness of the host wall in a door schedule, using a reporting parameter. But it needs to be a shared parameter... I believe most Revit users must know that by clicking inside a schedule's cell, then "touching" another view, will basically select that scheduled element, in the model. For example, you click inside a door width field, in a door schedule, and that door will be selected in the model. You can also click on "Show", in the schedule's option bar. However, what if you would like to select several elements, that is, several rows in the schedule? The SHIFT or CTRL clicking does not work, like it would in Explorer, for example. However, quite incredibly, click / hold / & drag, does indeed select multiple rows: Switching to a model view, then, will select the elements, and will allow you to edit their parameters, at once: We are using a door schedule which filters doors by Level. We have several linked files, which have some doors as well. Once you click in the "Include elements in linked files", in the Fields Tab of the Schedule Properties, the Level parameter disappears from the list of available parameters in the Filter Tab.... This means that you cannot filter by Level if you are trying to schedule elements in linked files.
Most likely, there is a way to use some other parameter by which you can filter your doors, but this introduces a new item in the list of human-driven errors that your project will have. The reason why Revit behaves in this way (at least in Revit 2009), quite obviously, is that Levels in linked models may not match Levels in the host model, even if they are called in the same way. In other words, two models with the same identical set of levels, may still be nested in a way that make the levels not match. Still, one would have hoped that Revit would allow you to "calibrate", or "register", the levels of nested models, so that scheduling elements by Level would be possible. In a similar way in which you can map phases, actually. I will check on 2010 and 2011, but if someone has some good workaround, or suggestions on this topic, please, feel free to comment... |
About the AuthorGiovanni Succi is a project designer living and working in San Francisco. He is a LEED AP, and for the last twenty years he has been researching the field of computer graphics, 3D modeling, rendering, and architectural design. More Revit BlogsRevit blog (By David Light) Useful LinksAutodesk Labs Posts Keywords
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