Project/shared Paramaters

[Martin P]

I am doing schedules for the first real time with Revit, and have had to add some project paramaters and shared paramaters to get certain things to appear in my schedules. It has worked very well, but I am afraid I dont think I am really grasping them too well and the ins and outs of how they work and which I ought to be using (and why) - and worryingly for me the pitfalls, which I will only discover later I know nothing about!! How does Revit know to add these paramaters to a file? Once I create some are they there for good in Revit, in any file I open until I move or delete the .txt file created - they just seem to be there in any file I open??. What happens to these things in 2 years when everything has moved etc, will the schedules no longer work? do I have to export them to keep permantent records of them?? Could I end with huge lists of paramters in 5 years that are left overs from old projects..... can anyone explain how this all works, hope I am making sense??

most if all when do I use project params / shared params? what is the main difference between them?

[aaronrumple]

They are a bit confusing and I hope that down the road they can be eliminated from Revit. In my opinion, everything should be store in the project or families. Project parameters are not a real issue. They are in the project. Simple enough. Good idea to put those that you use all the time in your template. These are automatically attached to families as they are loaded.

The biggest problem in my opinion is planning. Do you want shared parameters per project? Company wide? Or some of each?

Unfortunately you just can't go back and delete and rearrange the parameters at a later date. If you've embedded some in a family, these will be needed at a later date. There is no real way to search down all the locations you might have used a shared parameter.

The real function of the shared parameter is to link families information to tag information as they are imported into a project. Once inside the project - the shared parameter information is project based and won't prompt you if the shared parameter file comes up missing. This is true for families too. Once the shared parameter is in the family, it isn't dependent on the shared parameter file.

However what you can't do is set up a family with a "My Info" parameter. Then delete the shared parameter file and make a new "My Info" parameter in a new shared parameter file. These will be two completely different parameters.

So in short - shared parameters allow you to seed families with information. They also allow the same data to be attached to diffeent family types. Shared parameters can be in both schedules and tags. Project parameters - only in schedules.

[Martin P]

It sounds like I only really need to use project paramaters then - I dont really want any data in the tags other than the marks.. Unfortunately I have added some shared parameters I dont think I need.

Many thanks Aaron, I think I wiil steer clear of shared parametes as I am still a little foggy about it all.

[Gadget Man]

I prefer to use shared parameters - for no any other reason than just to keep their names always the same for every family using them, just for consistency, but I too can't see much reason to have two kinds of parameters available. IMHO it just adds to the general confusion (but I am easy confused anyway...;) ).


Jerry

[SCShell]

Great post Aaron. Very nicely written.
Steve