Keynotes V9

[sjsl]

As much as I Like the new Keynote feature, I must be missing something. It looks like you have to "manually" select the material or element you want in a wall section. If this is the case, why?

You should be able to place a keynote and it shjould know what the material or assembly or element you are pointing to is and not have to tediously dig down thru the keynote table to find the item. It is so un-Revit -ilke. I understand A2007 does this automatically.

Any thoughts here.

[Steve_Stafford]

Each material has a new keynote parameter. If you assign a keynote value to your materials then tagging will show the value automatically. Same is true for elements like walls, doors etc.

[sjsl]

It does not work on walls with many components. It only gives you one item to call a wall with brick, cmu drywall etc. I found the "Tag" tool identifies the actual material but the "Keynote" will not find all of the wall pieces.

[Steve_Stafford]

Are you using Keynote > Material? If it isn't supplying a value for the material of the wall layer then the material doesn't have a keynote parameter yet. Tag > Material displays the Description parameter. Also you have to be able to see the layers, if you are in coarse detail level it won't tag them.

[greg.mcdowell]

I think that makes some sense... a wall is composed of several components each with it's own CSI numbers... UniFormat, on the other hand, is used to describe the entire wall assembly. I guess it would be nice if the tool would query the wall and give you the option of selecting all associated CSI numbers and then list them in some order (for me it would be exterior to interior). Maybe that's one for the next wish list...

[sjsl]

Yeah I guess I didn't dig down enough. Thanks.

It still does not make any sense. If you use a default wall from the pull down and it has brick and cmu on it Revit should know what to assign it automatically and when I'm ready I can get more specific.

[neb1998]

The material library would have to be linked to the keynote file to this to be possible.

It really doesnt work that bad, you can manually go into your detail components or walls and update the files once and then never have to do it again...sure i wish the detail components were already linked to the keynote file...but its a first release of keynotes...not going to be perfect!

[archjake]

I just started playing with this new feature as well. Has anyone taken the time to develop a methodology of when to use what type of keynote or to just default to a tag? Using the material keynote is quite obvious, but then I begin to have questions about when to use the other types of keynotes. Perhaps its because 9 only ships with CSI like material keynotes.

In a wall assembly I'm inclined to just tag it and run. I guess the other option would be to create my own assembly key notes. On the surface it appears that a tag would be quicker when working on the fly.

Ramblings, but has anyone had time to develop the rules / methodology?

[Steve_Stafford]

...The material library would have to be linked to the keynote file to this to be possible...When you assign a material to a keynote value in the keynote table it IS linked. Changes to the keynote table will be propagate to any project/family that uses values from that table.

[Steve_Stafford]

It still does not make any sense. If you use a default wall from the pull down and it has brick and cmu on it Revit should know what to assign it automatically and when I'm ready I can get more specific.The default materials are not assigned a keynote value in the template. That's why it isn't...I guess you're saying they should have done that eh? :smile:

[neb1998]

My bad! I didnt dig that deep, material library allows keynote assignment of materials...very nice. This is going to be quite useful.

[neb1998]

A question arrises from this discussion....How have you guys used materials in the past? I have always thought of them as useful for rendering and not for the purpose of always assinging to building components. Now it seems that we will have to greatly expand our materials libraries to become much more precise...Instead of Metal - Stud layer, we will have to change the name to 3 5/8" metal stud and so on, so now we have a materials library and a wall component that each have their own distinct name...

Perhaps in the future there will be a way to combine these 2 so that when we select the component we are actually selecting the real material which contains the size as well as the keynote designation.

Any insight?

[Steve_Stafford]

...Instead of Metal - Stud layer, we will have to change the name to 3 5/8" metal stud and so on, so now we have a materials library and a wall component that each have their own distinct name...The wall component/layer is defined by the material, one keynote value. When you Keynote an Element you are dealing with the assembly, therefore a wall style has a type parameter for Keynote.

Yes you'll need to be more specific about materials when you have the same size product but available in different types such as 5/8" GWB and 5/8" GWB Type "X"...if you use Keynoting based on CSI.

You can also assign a description parameter to the material that is more generic and use Tag > Material.

The more you assign in advance in your project template the less you'll have to do when you get to keynoting in the project later.

[neb1998]

Agreed.....My point was that we are essentially having to specify the size of the wall component once and then again in the materials library..it would be nice if someday they were linked...less errors, less typing perhaps and perhaps the identify data of a material someday could be linked to the wall structure dialog.

But either way it works, i have always needed to expand the material library as it is...a great template file is great except that brings me to another question...

When are we going to be able to use worksets within a template file?
(perhaps this should be a new post, but since i have Steves attention i am sure he knows the answer)

Thanks in advance

[Steve_Stafford]

...When are we going to be able to use worksets within a template file?
(perhaps this should be a new post, but since i have Steves attention i am sure he knows the answer)...There has never been any real momentum to do this. I believe the assumption is that most projects ought to start as standalone and eventually activate worksharing. Personally, I've seldom used the exact same workset naming strategy that taking the time to do in a template would make much difference. Definitely a different strategy than layers.

In the meantime, there is nothing to prevent you from having a Standard project setup as a central file that you open and saveas instead of starting with a project template file.

[neb1998]

But yes, i just rename the central file now and it works pretty well.

[cjohnsos.107841]

Are you using Keynote > Material? If it isn't supplying a value for the material of the wall layer then the material doesn't have a keynote parameter yet. Tag > Material displays the Description parameter. Also you have to be able to see the layers, if you are in coarse detail level it won't tag them.


Steve,

What I like about what you are showing me here is the 'display" of the "key Value" text.

When I create a "keynote legend" I can only get the keynote number (meaningless.. sequential value that does not tell me the CSI information).. How do i display the KEY Value? Like your wall example?

[davidcobi]

We would use the new Keynote feature if we could filter keynotes by the view that the annotation resides on. The way it functions now it appears that we would have to put the whole keynote list on one sheet (or in a spec book). The contractor would then have to shuffle between the keynote sheet and the plans to figure out what a particular keynote means.

[Steve_Stafford]

Would filter by sheet work for you? You'll only see the keynotes that appear on the views on the sheet. Check the box Filter by Sheet.

[davidcobi]

Thanks Steve. I also just discovered the Keynote User function.