Room Tag Question Mark

[Live2Dive]

Hello all.

I am trying to get my room tag to show room finishes on my finish plan. I created a room tag that includes Floor, Wall, Base, Ceiling and Rail finishes. All were already in the room tag family I was using but the rail finish. I created a shared parameter in the family and loaded it into my project. I then loaded the shared parameter into my project and am able to see Rail Finish in the room properties.

Here's the problem... Obviously not all rooms will have a rail, so it will be blank. When I don't give it a value in the room properties, I get a question mark. I don't want a question mark. I want it blank. How can I get it to be blank. I don't want a lot..

I have used the same process on a different project for a VARY complicated room tag, and it all worked fine. I even went back to that old project and looked at the shared parameters and room tags, and I apear to have done this new project the same way, but I cannot get rid of the question mark.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for all wise Reviteers that can help.

[sbrown]

Input a dash or dot.

[Live2Dive]

Input a dash or dot.

That will be my "band-aid" approach if I cannot figure out "the why" it is doing that. I would rather correct the problem.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[sbrown]

Any field that isn't filled out does that. I think its just hard coded that way.

[Live2Dive]

I don't think so. I've got another project (Revit 2008) that has a room tag that works with a blank. If I cannot get a reply from someone that knows why one works and one doesn't, I'll just edit that one to fit my current project. I have "outs" with my situation, just trying to see if anyone knows why.

See attached images. I've attached a screen shot of the old (very full) room tag, one filled out, and one with blanks. I also attached a screen shot of the new room tag with the ? mark.

[Live2Dive]

Ok, here's what happened. I cannot explain it, but it works.

I took the family that worked (ie: not showing a question mark when the field was left blank) and modified it to fit my new project. At first, I deleted all the non-needed text and labels, but the minute I reloaded it into my project, the question marks appeared. I spent about an hour and a half deleting one item at a time and reloading the family until the question mark appeared. I reversed that last change and the family is fine. Blank field with no question mark.

Here's the strange thing. The one item that keeps the blank fields without a question mark is having plain text in the family. I do not want plain text in the family, so I changed the text string in the family to a period and buried it in the room name, so it will never be seen when plotted. But that's still the question - Why does an ambiguous text string keep the question marks from appearing when the field is blank?

Here's the family if any of you want to take a look at it.

[sbrown]

thats the diff. actual parameters will show ? just text can be blank.

[Live2Dive]

No, parameters are blank too, IMHO is the way they should be.

Actually, I think it is a program glitch.

[tomnewsom]

This has just cropped up for me too. VERY annoying.
I added a 'Comment' label to my window tag, and now all the tags have ? for the Comment field. See attached tag family and screengrab.

[jbaumann]

Live2Dive,

The problem you are having is apparently a bug across all Revit Platforms. The attached project and the tags were built from scratch using the latest templates for Revit MEP. The exact same outcome of question marks displaying occurs when a label parameter is empty. However if you build a tag with ANY plain text (i.e. not a label) visible, the question marks do not appear for empty parameters. Particularly annoying! Why would we be forced to have some sort of text in our tag family, just so that question marks do not appear for empty label parameters?

Is this really supposed to happen? Someone from Autodesk please HELP!

[jontramos]

So I just had this same problem (RAC 2009) and I used a simple "almost" white period (color 251,251,251) to resolve the problem.

It kinda makes sense that Revit NEEDS something in the tag family to be always on. If all of your text and/or lines within a tag family are associated with a visibility parameter (on/off switch) you could potentially try to tag something with all of your visibility parameters set to off...

I imagine users accidentally tagging stuff dozens of times and not be able to figure out why the tag wont display.

Thanks for the tips on this issue everyone!