General Notes/ Plan Notes/ Sheet Notes
I am interested in knowing how to link between MSWord file to a Revit Structure model. We have general notes that we engineers tend to edit and modify in MS Word, which needs to be linked and updated in the Revit Sheets. Neither do we want to nor expect all of us to use Revit and or disrupt the model by opening it for editing General Notes or Plan Notes. Instead of copy-pasting and or using the Text Generator Add-in Extension, what is a work around for this? Both these methods mean loss of formatting.
I recently came across a paper Titled - Advanced Documentation Techniques for the Autodesk Revit Platform, by T. J. Meehan (AB218-3). This paper describes using "Key Schedules" in Revit, but no dynamic link to a word document, and for me the cons outweighs the pros.
I learn that there are a few third party plugins that somewhat achieve this, few of them go about inserting an AutoCAD file. I wonder why in spite of several years in the making, Revit cannot smoothly tie with MS Office applications - particularly Word and Excel, or can it. I understand that Revit is a big RDBMS, but the word/ excel file that gets linked could be labeled to maintain this relationship.
Could this be made possible by using XML or other formats and a higher level of collaboration using Sharepoint or such platforms?
How easy or difficult is it to write a small script to accomplish this using the API of the programs in question?
Any leads or half done project or code samples in this regard, which I could take to the next level is appreciated.
Regards,
Vish
Re: General Notes/ Plan Notes/ Sheet Notes
As far as I know, there is no way to do what you're looking for.
We recently went through this in our office, and ended up with the keynote schedules method. They look pretty good, but editing is a pain in the neck. It is possible that using the DB Link for revit you could use your general notes keynote schedule and export it to MS Access or Excel, and then edit it there, and import it again. This would make the editing and formating much easier, but I don't know if it's actually possible.
Re: General Notes/ Plan Notes/ Sheet Notes
We've been using the keynote manager add-in. It sets up a link between the .txt keynote file and the keynote file in Revit.
Works very slick. Works for both element and user keynotes. Add the keynote schedule to the sheet and anything that was tagged in the view that is on that sheet, is added to the schedule.