Schedule Fields

[Martin Stone]

I am trying to create several Mechanical schedules in Revit to replace our standard Excel versions ie. Radiator Schedule, FCU Schedule, AHU Schedule etc. etc.. I assumed all manufacturers who created Revit families would use similarly named parameters in their families? It seems not.

Therefore, do I have to create our own set of parameters and add them to each family I insert into a Revit model? How do you guys do it? I'm in the UK btw.

[mhartmann]

Create a mechanical equipment schedule (preferably the one with the most, or the most common columns) and Add New Family Type parameters for each column you need to show. You can use the ones it comes with, manufacturer, model number, etc. but make your own for air flow, voltage, etc. These will be just text parameters that show in your schedule, not the real ones from the connectors. Add a filter to say Type Mark = EF, for your Exhaust Fan schedule. As long as you create Family parameters (you can do this before making your schedule) and select Mechanical Equipment as it's Category (and Plumbing Fixtures for water heaters or pumps) then those parameters will show for Any family that is set as a mechanical equipment or plumbing fixture. If you use Shared parameters, you have to set those up in Every family you download or create, that's the advantage to Family parameters. The note in the Create Parameter box is misleading, it makes it look like you have to use Shared parameters to show up in a schedule, this isn't true, Family ones will too.
Once you get your first one created, you can duplicate the view and change the filter to AHU, and so on for all your schedules, then switch out the parameters you need to see for that type of equipment. If you use the factory parameters for Manufacturer, you may have to fight with downloaded families, as some manufacturers try to lock their names in to these parameters, that's why i create my own for most...
hth,
mike

[nmulder]

Welcome to the world of Revit scheduling and mfr content! Autodesk did release a shared parameters document about 10 years that was a standard of sorts for mfr's to follow. And there have been pushes since to try to consolidate and standardize parameters across projects/models/mfrs, but in reality I think it is a hard sell as much as I would also prefer it.

mhartmann is correct but I would like to clarify a few things. A family parameter is available to the family only unless it is a shared parameter. A project parameter (which also can or cannot be a shared parameter) can be added to categories, making it a pretty quick way to add parameters to families in projects (this is the process he describes of adding parameters to already scheduled items in the schedule fields dialog; adding a parameter here is like adding it using the project parameters dialog box). A shared parameter would be used for any parameter you want to schedule and also tag somewhere in the model.

So, in a way, the short answer to your question is yes and the long answer is no. There are various tools and add-ins to help with this pain point; some free and some paid. A paid tool I use and recommend is called RFTools. Based on an already made schedule of parameters, you can easily and quickly add parameters to scheduled families that are missing those parameters. Another one of those 'why isn't this built into Revit?' questions.