More naming conventions - text styles

[ron.sanpedro]

OOTB Revit names text by the font and size, which makes some sense, but I regularly see things like 'Arial - 3/32" ' and 'Arial - 3/32 ' and 'Arial 3/32" '. And sometimes one is actually using Arial Narrow!
My thought was to switch to the naming convention I used in Acad, namely things like 'Notes', and 'Titles'. Then if I want to change Titles to Arial Narrow I can and everything updates. Everything but a family that has a Title text style, which will use it's own even when the project uses a different definition. I consider this a bug personally.

Anyway, anyone made this adjustment? Any gotchas I am just not thinking of? Or does the way Revit works just not make it worth the effort?

Thanks,
Gordon

[Calvn_Swing]

I'm with you on this one, all the way.

I tell people never to name something for a value that they can set in a parameter. So, for text notes, you shouldn't ever call it Arial or the size since you can change those and the name won't update. It's just like people naming detail views by the Sheet number and detail number. Sounds great till you realize you can move the views around on a sheet without having to update anything - oh yeah, but now I have to update the name every time...Doh!

[aaronrumple]

I'm with you on this one, all the way.

I tell people never to name something for a value that they can set in a parameter. So, for text notes, you shouldn't ever call it Arial or the size since you can change those and the name won't update. It's just like people naming detail views by the Sheet number and detail number. Sounds great till you realize you can move the views around on a sheet without having to update anything - oh yeah, but now I have to update the name every time...Doh!
This is one of those areas for all families where some VB Scripting in formulats would be nice.
You could enter a formula "Text Font" & "-" & "Text Size" & (IF(Bold = 1, "-Bold")) Would also be realy handy for door families where users change the size but leave the name wrong.

[Calvn_Swing]

You nailed that one on the head. In general, I'm really itching for AutoDesk to give us users a lot more access to the database functionalities in Revit. This is just one of 1000 situations where some basic functionality I could set up in Microsoft Access from an ODBC export out of Revit just can't be done from inside Revit.

Sigh...

[Steve_Stafford]

I routinely suggest similar purpose specific naming versus detail specific. Word uses styles like Normal etc and users might find it more useful to place notes using the Notes text style, as opposed to the "arial 3/32" bold and italic with arrowhead" text style? Interesting ideas suggested here since a name is just a name and doesn't necessarily correctly align with the actual sizes implied, should be we can't assume can we :smile:

[twiceroadsfool]

I agree, and this is a bone of contention of mine as well. We had font listed in our template that was named "Swis721 md BT", and it NEVER exported properly to DWG. Furthermore, i came to find out while hunting around that it was actually ARIAL, because if you went IN to the type Swis721, there was no font selected in the parameter field, so Revit was defaulting to Arial.

Still the CAD export defaulted to simplex, lol. You shouldve seen the look on peoples faces when i actually loaded Swis721 on the systems. "What the heck happened to the titleblock???" "Isnt it supposed to look that way? thats what the font is called?" "NoOO!! Put it back! OMG!!" :lol:

[ron.sanpedro]

And a further clarification. If you have gone the route of a standard font name, what have you done with families? For example, a tag might use a style called 3/32 that is Arial at 3/32". And your template may have used a style called Arial 3/32 that is the same. Now in the template I would rename this as Notes or something. In the family, I am tempted to called it Mark or something similarly related to actual usage. Given that even if I call it Notes I have to manually coordinate all the families anyway, it buys me nothing to call it Notes.

And, does anyone consider that a bug? It seems to me that if the family uses a style called Notes, and it is placed in a project that has a style called Notes, then the family should use the project definition of Notes. As it is, I could have 20 families with 20 different variations of the Notes style, or for that matter the Arial 3/32 style! Seems like a huge potential for problems.

Best,
Gordon