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Thread: How YOU use shared parameters

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    Question How YOU use shared parameters

    I've been through the Revit Model Content Style Guide on the Autodesk Seek website (http://seek.autodesk.com/revit.htm). It's really good information, and I'd like to follow these "standards" but I'm still a little confused about how we can use it on our office. We're an MEP consulting engineer firm.

    The Style Guide mentioned about comes with a "Revit_Master_Shared_Parameters_v2_1" text file that I linked to long ago. I like that it has most of the parameters you could need for equipment families, etc. I had to add some here and there to jive with how we do things.

    Do other people/offices use this file as their starting point?

    Do you share a single shared parameter file around your whole office or department?

    Any information about how YOU use shared parameters for your MEP projects is appreciated!

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    Quote Originally Posted by enerGwizz View Post
    I've been through the Revit Model Content Style Guide on the Autodesk Seek website (http://seek.autodesk.com/revit.htm). It's really good information, and I'd like to follow these "standards" but I'm still a little confused about how we can use it on our office. We're an MEP consulting engineer firm.

    The Style Guide mentioned about comes with a "Revit_Master_Shared_Parameters_v2_1" text file that I linked to long ago. I like that it has most of the parameters you could need for equipment families, etc. I had to add some here and there to jive with how we do things.

    Do other people/offices use this file as their starting point?

    Do you share a single shared parameter file around your whole office or department?

    Any information about how YOU use shared parameters for your MEP projects is appreciated!
    We did not use the Autodesk text file as a starting point. I didn't know about it when we started building out parameters. The shared parameter file we use is shared throughout the company, both disciplines (we only have 1 electrical job in revit, not sure if we'll want to change how we share as this changes). Our file is also a complete and total mess. If I had to do it over again, I would have put a lot more thought into what goes into it and how it should be organized. The biggest mistake I made in putting it together was with parameter types; temperature, airflow, text, etc. In setting it up I picked the parameter types that were actually appropriate (temperature for temperature parameters, etc), then later realized the glitch that nothing in a schedule can be left blank. This means that a cooling coil EAT, for example, has to have a temperature associated with it. If you don't know what it is yet and want to show it blank on the schedule to convey that you don't know that piece of information yet TOO BAD! Therefore for how we use parameters (not for calcs) we're better having everything on the schedule be text parameters, something I figured out after setting it all up. Now there are multiple copies of the same parameters in our shared file; some text and some temperature/airflow/etc. Avoid making the same mistake I did.

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    Great input, thanks.

    I personally like associating the proper units to parameters in my schedule, in case I want to use formulas for something. One used frequently is for VAV box airflows. Min airflow = 25% x Max airflow. You can even set this up in the VAV box family once, let it do the calculation to the boxes in your project, and then change it back. The Min airflow values will remain, but it will let you override if you want to.

    One suggestion I have for your situation... Since you can change the column heading of a parameter in your schedule to whatever you like, I'd create a few text parameters called "Blank1," "Blank2," etc. If you have a column you want to leave blank, hide the actual parameter column and put in a blank one. Rename the column heading to say whatever it is your other parameter says, and leave them blank. Then, when you have the values, delete the Blank parameter from the schedule, unhide the proper one and show your values.

    What do you think?

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    Quote Originally Posted by enerGwizz View Post
    Great input, thanks.

    I personally like associating the proper units to parameters in my schedule, in case I want to use formulas for something. One used frequently is for VAV box airflows. Min airflow = 25% x Max airflow. You can even set this up in the VAV box family once, let it do the calculation to the boxes in your project, and then change it back. The Min airflow values will remain, but it will let you override if you want to.

    One suggestion I have for your situation... Since you can change the column heading of a parameter in your schedule to whatever you like, I'd create a few text parameters called "Blank1," "Blank2," etc. If you have a column you want to leave blank, hide the actual parameter column and put in a blank one. Rename the column heading to say whatever it is your other parameter says, and leave them blank. Then, when you have the values, delete the Blank parameter from the schedule, unhide the proper one and show your values.

    What do you think?
    Do you know of a way to blank out individual elements and not the whole column? For example you have 3 VAVs but you only know the CFM of 2 of them. The only way I could figure out to show the CFM parameter for 2 and leave the other one blank was with text.

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    Quote Originally Posted by timsea81 View Post
    Do you know of a way to blank out individual elements and not the whole column? For example you have 3 VAVs but you only know the CFM of 2 of them. The only way I could figure out to show the CFM parameter for 2 and leave the other one blank was with text.
    In that case, I would leave the regular numeric parameter in there, and just enter zero for CFM. At the bottom of the schedule, I would put a note that says something like, "boxes with 0 airflow are unknown because..." or whatever. It doesn't look as good (or look as "CAD") but it lets you use the tools in Revit without screwing around with tons of parameters.

    And again, if you use text for a few different schedule columns, you could still name them something generic so you don't clutter your shared parameter file with 300 placeholder text parameters when you could have 10-20 basic, generic ones.

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    The 2 main errors i made with shared parameters when I set them up are:

    1. Just as timsea81 states, the parameters are useless if you cant put "N/A" or "-" or leave it empty, so every parameter has to be text based.

    2. You cant put hyphens in parameter names, sounds simple, but i used them to deliniate the names into groups, I then couldnt use them for calculations as the software thinks it is a subtract operator.

    While simple errors on my part, they cost me many hours to fix as I have 100's of shared parameters for schedules which I had to TOTALLY recreate not just modify, I hated Revit that week more than any other!! ;o)

    as a side note regarding comments above, putting 0 into a cell entry looks terrible in certain circumstances, for example, if you have a mixture of heat/cool, heat and cool units in the same schedule then putting 0 in heating values for a unit that doesnt heat just looks like you dont know what you are doing. Autodesk should give the option to blank out the cell or similar I think....
    Last edited by drewj; 2011-06-23 at 07:13 PM. Reason: 0 in cell comment

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    Quote Originally Posted by timsea81 View Post
    The shared parameter file we use is shared throughout the company, both disciplines (we only have 1 electrical job in revit, not sure if we'll want to change how we share as this changes). Our file is also a complete and total mess.
    So, is the shared parameter file saved somewhere centrally and everyone just links to it? If so, that means anyone can add parameters to it and it will show up in everybody's list, correct?

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    Quote Originally Posted by enerGwizz View Post
    So, is the shared parameter file saved somewhere centrally and everyone just links to it? If so, that means anyone can add parameters to it and it will show up in everybody's list, correct?
    That is correct.

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    Default Re: How YOU use shared parameters

    It's VERY important that you have only one Shared Parameter file for your office, and the everyone uses the same one.
    If you make multiple files, it is very easy you will end up with two different parameters by the same name. Then you'll be in a world of hurt trying to figure out which one is which.

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