Automatic Finish schedules

[jwilhelm]

Just curious if anyone has created room finish schedules automatically, is this even possible?

[beegee]

You can easily set up "automatic" door, window and room schedules by setting the schedules complete with fields in your template, so that they become populated when the relevant elements are added to the project.

For finishes, you could do the something similar by including a room schedule, but it would not automatically populate the finishes when the room tag was placed. An alternative might be to use wall, floor and ceiling schedules with a field added ( say description ) to pick up the finish for that element. You would need to create different wall types for each wall having a different finish though, and add the appropriate finish description to each type. You could use shared parameters.also.

[Tom Dorner]

What I have been using for adding finishes is a "schedule key" . If you are not familiar with schedule keys, they are very useful and powerful. If you start a new room schedule and pick "schedule key" you will start the process. The default that comes up is a "room style". You can then define room styles such as "Mgr. Office", "VP Office", "Conf. Rm." etc. and have the finishes predefined for these styles of rooms. When a key schedule is defined it will appear in the room tag properties. This in conjuntion with a template with your room finish schedule predefined is a very powerful use of Revit.

This can be somewhat confusing and I'm not sure I've explained it very well, so I would suggest just playing around with it in a test project to see the behavior for yourself. Perhaps if anyone is interested I can post a sample project when I get in the office (at home now).

Tom

[Paul P.]

Tom, I would interested in having a look at an example if you dont mind.

[PeterJ]

The svhedule key tool is very useful but I find that I end up defining a lot of styles, particularly for residential work, where I have things like "wall: Tile ABC to 1200 above FFL painted plaster to ceiling." and "wall: Tile ABC to 1200 above FFL (full height within 300 mm of bath) painted plaster to ceiling" in order to cover all the different eventualities.

Once yuo have these set up though it is pretty quick.

[sfaust]

I would also be interested in seeing this...

[Tom Dorner]

For those interested, this is a quick example of how schedule keys would work in a simple office project. I think that for those of you with a database background it would be best to think of schedule keys as a "lookup" table.

With a "room style" you can add as many fields as you want to the style. In my example I added the floor, base, wall and ceiling finish in addition to my own parameter called "space type". Note that you can have rooms in your project that don't have a style defined such as the server room in my sample. If you do apply a "room style" to a space, you will see that the fields you included in the key schedule are ghosted out as they are being looked up via the room style. If a finish in a defined room style changes lets say from CPT-1 to CPT-2, you just change it in the one place and it propigates everywhere that has that room style.

In a large project with a lot of repeated room styles, this technique can save tons of time. In a custom residential project it may not have as much value as one of the previous posts pointed out.

Tom

[Wes Macaulay]

This is a great topic, one that is not well understood by Revit users. Key schedules are very powerful, and it takes some thought to understand it. There is no way to make it easier to understand either -- it's a database-type concept, which many people struggle with anyway!

[Tom Dorner]

Wes,

I agree that understanding database concepts would go a long way toward a greater understanding of Revit. Before I became exposed to Revit about a year ago, I was taking database management classes at night hoping to get out of the architectural field and into being a database administrator. Little did I know how those database classes would mate up down the road with my use of Revit. Now with Revit, I'm excited about architecture again and plan on sticking around. I'm even considering sending any new Revit users in our office to a MS Access class first to get them to start thinking in database concepts before they take on Revit.

Tom

[Paul P.]

Thank's for posting that Tom. That's interesting about MS Access class giving you a better understanding, it's something I am going to look into as I dont have an understanding of database concepts. Look's like another thing to add on the list, now I just need to find the time.

If anyone has got some spare time they dont mind sharing could you post it here please.

Regard's, (not enough time) Paul.

[dbrady]

What I have been using for adding finishes is a "schedule key" . If you are not familiar with schedule keys, they are very useful and powerful. If you start a new room schedule and pick "schedule key" you will start the process. The default that comes up is a "room style". You can then define room styles such as "Mgr. Office", "VP Office", "Conf. Rm." etc. and have the finishes predefined for these styles of rooms. When a key schedule is defined it will appear in the room tag properties. This in conjuntion with a template with your room finish schedule predefined is a very powerful use of Revit.

This can be somewhat confusing and I'm not sure I've explained it very well, so I would suggest just playing around with it in a test project to see the behavior for yourself. Perhaps if anyone is interested I can post a sample project when I get in the office (at home now).

Tom
Tom-
I am trying to follow this example and have created a simple Room Schedule Key (is this the same thing as a schedule key?)- but I don't see that it has changed my room tag at all- what am i missing? And thanks by the way for all the good posts on this subject-

[Emily.Santilli]

I am having the same problem. I believe you that it is possible because I managed to make it work a year ago, but I haven't had to use keys since then and I don't remember what I did to make it work...

How does the tag family know my project has a key in it? Or how do I tell my tag that the project has a key in it?

And I agree, a basic knowledge of how a database functions makes Revit's logic easier to understand.

[aaronrumple]

How does the tag family know my project has a key in it? Or how do I tell my tag that the project has a key in it?

You have to add a label to the tag - or labels. The tag only displays what info you design it to display. It will display the fields held by the key - not the key itself.