Combine Text and Dimensions in Conditional Statements

[fputnam]

So first some background. My company manufactures a modular wall panel system. Our wall panels can be field cut but only at the end of a run otherwise we schedule our panels by width. the widths are not normally consistent along the whole wall run.

So in our conversion to revit alot of errors have been creeping into our drawings. As I said above we schedule our panels by their manufactured width not necessarily of the width of the geometry so I have a manually entered parameter called Factory Width [FW] and a default parameter called Width [W]. The problem occurs when the Width exceeds the Factory Width. In AutoCAD I have our system set up with logic statements to kinda self check this with formulas like: =IF [W]>[FW] THEN "ERROR" ELSE [FW] (to make it easier I abbreviated but you should get the point).

So revit has a similar function but will not allow you to enter error text in. It will not even allow you to insert a text parameter in there it keeps giving the "inconsistent units" error. The stupid thing is that the help documentation here is WRONG! It says you can insert text into these conditional statements by putting "quotes" around the text you want to display.

Further more I also have autoCAD set up with fomulas to display the tag to indicate if the panel is cut, whole or an error (See attached PDF) I am not going to go through the syntax there are a bunch of different fomulas at work here with multiple embedded statements, but the three panels all have the same tag on them in the example.

So without the ERROR popping up when my designers make a panel too long we have been getting alot of errors that are not being caught where designers are creating panels that are slightly too long or scheduled at the wrong length. and it has lead to some wasted and restocked material and extra RFMs from the field.

So my question is... Is there any way around these issues that the hive mind can think of?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[marmiketin]

You cannot convert text parameters to number parameters in Revit. The HELP is not wrong, it is talking about using conditional formulas to check for text values and give outputs.
Example:
Text parameter: Text = ERROR
Integer parameter: IF(Text = "ERROR", 0, 5)
This conditional is checking a different parameter type but still outputs the correct units.
The only way to do what you want is to use labels and shared parameters.

[fputnam]

So... basically... Revit doesn't do that?

I can't make a tag display "error" or a length depending on the geometry.

Well THAT needs to be fixed...

[marmiketin]

What I said is that you cannot have a parameter that is using integers spit out a value that is text. Read the last line in my post where I state this needs to be done using labels and shared parameters. I would suggest reading the help some more and playing around with parameters and labels to get a better understanding of why errors happen.