Titleblock Key Plan Parametric Visibility

[david.fannon]

I want to have the keyplan in a titleblock automatically update: shading in the correct building based on a shared parameter that "knows" what building I'm working on.

I have a site with 9 buildings (each in it's own file, linked to a site file) and my titleblock (used in all the files) includes a keyplan for the site. In the keyplan, each building has filled region which I'd like to turn on or off to identify which building is described in that particular file. I've got yes/no parameters in the titleblock that control the visibility of each region (e.g. "Building 1 On" "Building 2 On" etc). So I could just have users check the right box, but where's the fun in that? Based on Steve's excellent tip at http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2005/11/make-up-my-mind.html
I know I can use a "choose" parameter to pick which one (very nice tip, Steve) which is also very good, but I want to take this one more step, I want it to be automatic.

Right now I have a shared parameter driving a label for the "Building Number" (ie "1") since this is in the project information, as far as I'm concerned Revit "knows" what the building is. Now I'd like to have the parameter "Choose One" = "Building Number" so that if I have building number 1, it automatically "chooses" building one, and sets "Building 1 On" as "YES" thus turning on my filled region. A little Rube Goldberg, but I cannot seem to use the "Building Number" parameter in a formula. What am I missing?

Final caveat: My buildings are not actually numbered, they are identified by a 2-letter text suffix (like HT, LV etc) so what I REALLY want is to have the "choose one" be a TEXT parameter, and have each YES/NO parameter read something like:
Building 1 ON = Choose One =HT
But I'm pretty sure from the help that conditionals don't support text, so this whole mess might be wishlist.

[Melarch]

I do not know that what you ultimately want is achieveable, since a) The building projects are all linked into the master site plan file and b) I presume you are making multiple copies of the same site plan view, then cropping each to their respective campus building for displaying on each individual sheet. As all of thebuildings are attached to the site and all buildings are present as links in every sheet you would have to create a series of parameters using conditional statements to somehow display the specific building footprint. Time to read up on working with conditional statements in your paramters.

But I am not sure this can be done even with some complex parameterized conditional statements. Good luck and report back on your success or even lack of so that we know what is possible and what needs to be on the wish list.

Mel Persin, AIA

[david.fannon]

Mel,

Thanks for the response.


a) The building projects are all linked into the master site plan file and b) I presume you are making multiple copies of the same site plan view, then cropping each to their respective campus building for displaying on each individual sheet.

Actually, I don't think either of these things is an issue. I may not have been clear in my initial post, but the key plan is located IN the titleblock family, it consists entirely of drafted lines, (it is not a view of the site model, it is just dumb geometry.) This key-plan view is identical for all the buildings, not cropped, since its sole purpose is to identify and generally locate the building graphically on the site and relative to all the other buildings. The site and civil drawings will obviously be much more detailed about all this.

Of course the unfortunate consequence of working this way is that the key plan will not update automatically if there are changes in layout, but to the best of my knowledge, it is not currently possible to link views across linked projects (I would love to be wrong about that.)

As an update: For now I decided to eliminate the "choose one" parameter. Since the parameters for filling in each respective building are type parameters, they can be set once per building project and left alone, the extra parameter and formulas seemed like a lot of overhead for something that would not change much. All that said, I'd still be curious to hear any thoughts or other approaches.
~DJF