Thursday, September 10, 2015

Purge Unused - Categorical Wish and Dynamo

I wish we could choose a single category or several individual categories while using Purge Unused. The dialog defaults to selecting everything that is not used. It's normal to have things that just aren't used yet. That means a generic application of Purge Unused on everything will eliminate things we need, just haven't needed them yet.

I'd like to be able to click the Check None button and the check a box next to a category or categories.
I think the default presumption for Purge Unused should NOT be everything selected. We should have to deliberately do that using the Check All button instead.
It would be a lot faster than working through a long list of families and the unused types. Ideally (even ordinarily) the list wouldn't be long but I've seen some lists that go on and on...


For what it is worth, we can select a category and use NUM LOK + * to expand the whole branch of that category. Then we can select the first and last types in the branch followed by clicking OK to Purge Unused. It just takes a while for the list to respond when there are a few thousand types...yeah I know...that's a lot!

Regarding Dynamo

I pinged Julien Benoit about this and using Dynamo. In response he was kind enough to send me the graph below.


At the moment it leaves behind a Family with no types if the purging process eliminates types and there were no types in use. Given how quickly he responded to my question WITH an attachment, no complaints here! Thanks Julien! Check out Julien's blog while you are at it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve,

Can we get the .dyn file to explore on our own? Need to see what's written in the Python Script.

Steve said...

I'll ask if they mind me sharing it, they probably won't mind but I should ask first.

Tom K said...

Yes, we should get the dyn file - or at least tell us what node in the Clockwork package works in its place. It is frustrating for new users to see something cool, but then uses custom code that we can't see

Julien BENOIT said...

It is now shared as part of the package I maintain, Steamnodes.

Steve said...

Thanks Julien! Tom and Shrikant...have a look at Julien's Steamnodes package online.

RevitCat said...

I wish that we could choose to purge selected categories right at the beginning of the command, so that it does not waste time checking every category in the project when all we want to do is purge say furniture and casework. That could mean the difference between purge taking 10 minutes (for all categories) or say 30 seconds (for pre-selected).

Thanks for the Number lock trick.

In order to prevent company standards being purged, I usually create a "pre-existing" phase, place one of each of all the 'protected' elements (eg. mullions) in that phase, then demolish them so they never show in any view except my admin view (set to that phase); then I add one each of annotation like dimensions, spot heights, tags to that view.

MWO said...

Can anybody please let me know what the node is called within the SteamNodes that relates to the Python script in the image.