Open Sheet - Equal Rights for Panel Schedules

This new right-click choice exists, within the Project Browser, for views that are on sheets. Views that are real that is. Schedules are special views, they can be placed on more than one sheet (like Legends). Electrical Panel Schedules share this distinction but unlike other schedules they are not nearly as likely to require being placed on more than one sheet. Their schedule-ness makes this right click option invalid for them too.

I realize it probably isn't easy or perhaps even possible to segregate this schedule-ness from Panel Schedules but I would have found it very handy to be able to use the Open Sheet concept for them several times today. In this instance it would have been faster than navigating through a very long list of sheets. I suppose it is also possible that some firms do need to be able to put Panel Schedules on more than one sheet, in which case...bummer for me and my wish...

Revit 2015 R2 - MEP Move To for Circuits

Here's a subtle one for Revit mEp users, a new button shows up in Panel Schedules when you select a circuit.

Move To begins by selecting a circuit. You can choose another eligible slot in the schedule. You'll see the "No You Can't" icon at your cursor when you hover over ineligible locations in the schedule.

Revit will highlight eligible slots in the schedule by turning the cells green. If your schedule has a fixed number of slots and they are all filled up you'll have to reconsider the panel loads. You also need to move circuits up or down to create an open location. The Move To feature doesn't shift existing circuits around, it just moves a circuit a bit easier than using up or down when a slot exists for it to move to.

Revit MEP - Panel Schedules "Location"

[EDIT: This issue has been fixed in new versions of Revit MEP]

The graphic issues related with panel schedules and the needs of electrical engineers has been pretty well documented in various discussions at AUGI so I won't pick on them too. This issue however I don't recall seeing brought up yet.

We now have Spaces instead of Rooms so "we" have more flexibility over where and how they are used, not to mention that Zones are aware of Spaces too (the subject of another post). Panel schedules (Distribution Board Schedules to others) however do not derive their location from Spaces rather they only derive this information from a Room. This seems an oversight to me since otherwise I have no reason to create any actual rooms in the RME model. Especially since the Heating and Cooling Loads tool only detects Spaces now and that Copy/Monitor no longer includes Rooms.

Here's what I'm referring to on a panel schedule.

Speaking graphically, I think that I can get a panel schedule looking "decent" now apart from some more information that most engineers indicate they want included (conduit size, wire size specifics etc.). The width of the overall schedule is controlled by one important grip.

This grip will adjust all the columns together and keep things more or less orderly. It would be good if this width was easily defined so each schedule could be consistent as well as snapping to each other like other schedules do. View templates don't extend to them either. Of course we can sketch some detail lines to use as a guide to get them "close enough" but it would be nice not to have to jump to so many little hoops. All right I did say I wasn't going to pick on them...but it is sooo easy. *-)

Revit MEP - Panel Schedule Export

Panel schedules are a very special schedule. It is really multiple "schedules" compiled into one. In fact they aren't even called or located with schedules, they are Reports. These reports and their data are pretty well "trapped" in Revit. Thus far I know that you can:

Export to a cad file (from a sheet)
Publish to a 2D DWF (from a sheet)
Print to a PDF (if you have a pdf driver)
Capture an image (if you have software or just print screen)

A cad file format will result in a 2D lines and text.

A 2D DWF will...well, be in dwf or dwfx format. It doesn't offer much from this point unless another application can do "something" with the DWFx format.

Printing to a PDF will result in a pdf but you may also find that Revit stores an html formatted version first in this folder location:

C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Local Settings\Temp

Here's where it might get interesting. I was able to open this html file in the Open Office Writer application and it looked like this.

It is a table of data. Fwiw, I'm not currently using Office applications so I couldn't test bringing it into Excel or Word but I imagine you could have some success getting the data from the temp html file into them. When I tried to open the html file in Open Office Calc I got this.

You might also have some data extraction options if you use Adobe products but I'm not familiar with which one you'd need for the best options. I use Snag IT and there are some nice text capture add-ins for it that will permit you to select a panel view to extract the text but then you've got to spend some time reformatting.

They could make this easier?