Wish - Transfer Project Standards Organization

Whine Mode On

This is a minor thing but there are times I really wish that the Transfer Project Standards list was sorted by Discipline instead of alphabetically. When I want to transfer just electrical settings to another file it is tedious to have to be careful to parse the whole list for related items that start with C, E, D, V and W...

Whine Mode Off

Sorting Parameters - Shared Parameters and Projects

With 2015 it became possible to move parameters into more desirable positions within the properties of the family. In the family editor we see a Move Up and Move Down button to make this possible.

In projects however there are circumstances where taking the trouble to do this in the family doesn't have the same result in a project. A thread started at Autodesk's Revit Newsgroups where a product support specialist (Alaaeldin_Alsahil) responded with the following:

Shared parameters are shared between families in the project. The first family to load a shared parameter definition into the project defines the behavior of the parameter (in other words when loading a family into the project the description stored in the document is the one that is used). In this case, there was probably a family that was loaded with these parameters defined as "Other than the one from the family".

He then added:

The biggest problem is the shared parameter definition in the document cannot be edited (or deleted!) from the project. Purge unused also does not clear these definitions. There is no way for the customer to fix their file.

He suggested a workaround of creating a brand new shared parameter definition (new parameter in the shared parameter file), so that the definition in the project can be redefined. That's not always possible, in fact more than likely not acceptable either. For this project we'll have to live with the sorting condition as is. He did mention that loading content into project template files don't seem to suffer the same fate. That's good at least from a template standpoint.

Order of Nested Families in Drop Down Lists

When we use nested families and use the data type to switch between different nested families we often encounter the annoying sorting habits of Revit. For doors this can mean that we get a list of panel choices that could look like E,A,B,D,C,F, and G. For shared nested families it matters how they get loaded into a project.

I find I get predictable results if I load the nested panels into a project first and then load the host doors. I also need to load all the panels in together, at once, not a few at a time. If I don't I find they get jumbled in the list box. If I behave then Revit puts the panels in alphabetical order in the drop down list when I want to swap out a panel later. This is easy to sort out if we are starting a project. If we need a new panel type during a project then we'll probably have to live with the new panel ending up in a strange place in the list.

Fussy Fussy Revit.