Tagging all items inserted into the Revit model with individual reference numbers.

[adam.couch373245]

Not sure if anyone knows of a plug-in or a way/means of undertaking this however we have a requirement on a project to deliver our Revit models to the Main Contractor as a dgn. and with all items individually tagged. There are specific guidelines for how we tag each item and provide what they are terming the "member-mark". A basic summary is as follows: Zone_Axis_Curtain Wall Type_Component Type_Gridlines_ID number e.g. P01-F-01_NA_PT_PAN_E33-E45_0001. The issue for us is that we have over 50,000 items to tag and all need to follow a rigorous numbering and all must be individual tags. If we submit any model with duplicate tags then we will face rejection. Can anyone advise on any "short-cut" that may be able to assist us with this e.g. save the model files as per the zoning, save the families as per the wall type and element type, have an automated tagging system that provides the ID at the end? I am keen to avoid user input for this as we will more then likely end up with errors, rejections and a very time consuming exercise.

[Steve_Stafford]

They may be referring to you using Bentley's i-Model (http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Promo/Revit/i-model.htm) to export from Revit? According to that Bentley web page it is only compatible up to Revit 2012, so you'll have to make sure you don't do the work in a newer release. This PAGE (http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Free+Software/imodel+plugin+revit.htm) is newer and says 2013.

Revit families all have a Mark parameter that you can use to enter unique values. Those should be accessible if the Bentley user has a compatible product at their disposal. If you just export to 2D DGN files the data will be lost, not to mention being reduced to lines, circles, arcs, text and cells.

It sure sounds like the requirements have gotten lost in translation somehow.

[MikeJarosz]

Sounds to me like that requirement is a unique feature of one CAD system that whoever wrote the requirement expects to exist in all others. Years ago when Acad was in its infancy, I was working with a mature CAD system that had polygonal viewports. When we switched to Acad everyone wanted to know how we were supposed to draw irregular viewports. Even Revit has only just discovered them in R2014.

Adam is right to be wary of manual input. If he has a 64 bit machine and 64 bit Revit, he could download the free Revit Access DB application from the subscription site. The mark for each object could be auto-generated in Access, then loaded back into Revit. This might have to be an Access VBA script. Access tables can also be exported and imported to/from Excel. Everyone knows how to auto-number in Excel, so with some experimentation, I think this is a possibility, but you have to know Access and have the right hardware. Access isn't easy. It took me a while to learn it.

A native-Revit script is another possibility either in VB or C#, but he might have to hire a consultant for that approach.