Mastering Revit Shared Parameters

today you're watching the LCBO guru and today I'm going to be covering a topic that's quite popular and there's usually a lot of questions around it and that is shared parameters in Revit best practices and guidelines for users so this is a guide by user myself for other users in Revit from my experience there's a lot of complexities to come with share parameters and how to manage them so I thought I'd do a thorough guide on this so I'm going to go through a few things so I'm going to summarize what they are why they're important how they create have been managed how we can apply them to multiple elements some limitations challenges and workarounds that come with them and my recommendations on how you manage them in your company or your business so I think first we need to start by looking at types of parameters in Revit they come in many types or many definitions shared parameters are just one type so we'll start with built-in parameters so built-in parameters are usually there by default in Revit in the templates and they come as standard they typically can't be removed either they're typically there to stay so I've highlighted some here for example in a family life type image keynote is a good example of a built-in manufacturer and model URL description some some families such as casework have built-in size parameters so it's just good to be aware of what these are family for amateurs so these are parameters that the user adds to a family one by one typically with this button down here however these won't actually be read at the project level in schedules and they can't be accessed by tags either because they exist only within the family itself so typically they're really acceptable for controls and fields that aren't really required for shelling or tagging but it may be inherent to how the family behaves so for example in this family here this is a vanity and there's a few tap locations and obviously we wouldn't real an inter scheduled which location this tap was and we wouldn't need to schedule the controls to turn on particular taps the next one is project parameters so these are user defined again but they're only relevant within the project in which they're created so they're basically family parameters but in the context of a project typically they used for isolated and project centric systems such as an asset management coding system that might have come in very late in a project and to the point where it's too late to add it to every family but maybe is a workaround they've added it on an instance basis and they're going to use something like dynamo to push the parameter into all the families based on some common formula or trait that the elements have even then most of the time we shared parameter is more acceptable than a project parameter I can't actually think off the top of my head of a good scenario where a project parameter is more appropriate than a shape parameter applied to a project to be honest and the one we're focusing on mostly today is chef rameters so the user defined and they're relevant across multiple files and families and they enable the sharing of data between linked files loadable families and other software which can pick up this parameter as well so some examples here you'll see from my company that I work with is a prefixed set of parameters one of them is saying whether it's a placeholder element so this can be really helpful for filtering multiple elements in views to say turn off all my placeholders that other companies are actually modeling but then things like coding systems and comments such as a basic description and a more detailed description to enable like a tea sheet style approach of coding and you can see here I'm still utilizing built in parameters as well for information see I mean they're always there so that's the types of parameters so but I just really quickly show you in a model sort of what I'm talking about so I'll just go to the Autodesk default model where I've made a couple of tweaks so I've just taken their windows as a case study so if I just open this window up and go to its type properties currently there's no shade for amethyst in this in this family but there's a lot of parameters in here so if I go to modify this parameter you see it's a family parameter so it's been added everything here is being taught custom default to go shared you'll see that it prompts me to go and actually find a shared parameter from a shared parameter file as a result this parameter is inaccessible at the project level by any schedules because even if I have a parameter called the exact same thing in another family Revit doesn't see the same parameter and that's why we need shared parameters and there's a lot of things that we actually probably would want to schedule if we were doing a window schedule such as casement sizes and frame sizes and particular types of swings a great example of something we would absolutely want to schedule is the materials and finishes in year so you can see we've got a frame material a blast material when they go well that's probably a primer too right surely you know it's a family Fram etre so if I go back to the project level and I take these two windows I've made a type 2 and just standard if I select these together you'll see suddenly a lot of information just disappeared so if I select one on its own I get a lot of information available frame glass casement etc as soon as I select more than two rivets immediately telling me these two parameters aren't the same so I can't let you see them at the same time in one selection and likewise you wouldn't be able to shuttle them either so that's a huge loss of data potentially and also a loss of control of elements on a larger scale I've taken two families here the original one and I've added some shared parameters like wise type to that added some shared parameters so if I go edit family back to my properties I've actually taken the material for the frame and the glazing and I've actually rerouted them to shared parameters instead and you'll see that it grates them out because I'm basically pointing to a specific parameter in the share parameters file so in this case I have a window category and I've point it to the frame and the glass material parameters in there likewise I've also taken some parameters or actually no I haven't yet that's right I've added a code field sorry and that's also common between the two families so if I go back to my project you'll see that if I select base two together these parameters hang around because they are the same parameter between two families so that's really the power of what we're dealing with here likewise if I swap one over to another so I'd take type one and make it tough too you see it holds on to that data as if I go from that so then shared parameter one it loses some of that data it actually revert some things back to default in that case you'll see that my blue glass doesn't maintain between it goes back to the default of the non-shared primitive version likewise I've got some tags that I've built that can actually source that shared parameter data so fayed of this tag and have a look at the label you'll see that I'm sourcing shared parameters to get that information but obviously there's no way in my label to access those non shared parameters they're not there they're not available because they only exist in the family environment so that's I guess at a high level he'll share parameters work you can also add parameters to the project on the manage project parameters and you can add parameters from there so you could do a project parameter and apply it to all windows and call it window right and make it instance based it's like the windows and all windows in my project would now gain this parameter you can see it doesn't do anything it doesn't exist in the project beyond actually being a piece of data attached through the element I could add a shared parameter instead so if I wanted to add a code parameter let's say I'll add a code parameter which I put under general add it to Windows let's put it under identity data instance based so it won't add a second code field to these windows instead it'll just keep the code field that the window already has because revered understands it already has that parameter but all my other windows that don't have that field now have it available so that's another way to manage information in this regard and this tags actually a multi category tag so I can excuse us to tag other things with the same shared parameters in them so for example this fireplace has been given the code parameter hence the tag can be used between multiple categories which has a lot of strengths as well and time-saving so a quick demonstration of how parameters work there's so many reasons share parameters are important if you're not aware of any of them I'm just going to go and give you the the biggest one in my opinion which is data uniformity so having a data structure that's common across multiple elements and multiple models and ideally across your entire company these can be things such as coding systems descriptions of elements dimensioning material management etc there's so many things that this can do this is just an example of three families that I built today at work and you can see just the uniformity of how data is structured across the three there are all different categories of element but you can still see that there's so much uniformity and how things not only in names it's very easy for me to tell straight away what this family has in it what size it is obviously if these are all family parameters you may not necessarily get a logical naming system or a logical sorting system and these can be templated as well you can modify your templates to have these aspects in them beyond that you can also schedule share parameters I believe since either 2018 or 2019 you can actually add shared parameters that are present in some families but not others to a schedule now which is an absolute game changer because originally used to have to add it to the whole projects and the ones that didn't have it would just report nil now you can add them even if some have them and some don't I believe at least in my test I could so you can see here I've added fields such as code comment with type in a multi category schedule so I'm crossing multiple categories here you'll see here I've got a plumbing fixture or a generic model and I'm still getting uniform output in schedules so you can see not only things like authoring data which I'll see isn't that useful or natural but family-type alongside codes comments with depth height material etc this is more powerful putting geometry together in a format where it all exists in the same environment is very powerful and can really help scheduling and fabrication out of Revit and you'll see here just one tag that's successfully tagging multiple categories of elements so especially equipment plumbing fixtures generic models all being tagged by one tag and again it's it's company uniformity so if you can use one tag to tag everything in your project it's much less chance you're going to end up going to scrapland and how things look on your project as well some other smaller reasons that some categories in Revit are quite discrepant and how their parameters are set up a good example is casework which by default has a width depth and height built-in parameter other categories don't have this built-in parameter so you can't schedule this in multi category schedules as the same parameter across multiple categories this is where a share parameter will be needed if you don't have to schedule say your casework alongside generic models you would need your share parameter at this point and you can't delete those parameters either no which is very important key noting is a very limited system in the way that it's been set up by default you can only access key value and key note text if you're going to do a keynote tag which is obviously a really limiting factor in tags which usually want to care about a lot more things such as fire ratings descriptions acoustic ratings etc one little trick I'll just show you really quickly which really helps me is that you still can access key notes if you so need in other tags you've just got to sneak them in it's a little bit sneaky so I'm just going to start with a keynote tag template and I'll place down a label and what's that key value and key note text so if I change this this over to another category such as full tags well let's just let's just get multi category tags can't sorry I'll just go floor tags and if I go to edit label you see that these have automatically just changed the two different parameters assembly name and assembly name because key note and key value don't exist in floor tags however if I undo that and I cut these parameters then I changed this paste that in they made it across and these will read the key note values and then from there you can start adding additional things to your tag so that's just a sneaky way to get those into your tags because a lot of people told me this isn't possible it is you can do the same thing with section marks in the section of section heads you can sneak parameters into those as well just a fun little trick but this this is a limitation I guess out of the box with keynoting obviously scheduling some categories of elements have nowhere near enough parameters out of the box to show children properly a great example is doors and there's so many parameters you can see here that just don't come out of the box ready to be scheduled for example a double or a one and a half door you might need to schedule both leaves of the door but all I have is width I don't know if width one with two so they're just limitations and what we have available out of the box and another really big one is just retainment of information as you still want to swap that window out before I lost data because they weren't the same parameter you can just see it happening here when I swap a door that I built to a order desk door the information is lost if I go between two doors to the shown so parameters I maintain my information and that could also be dimensional as well which is very critical when you might be swapping out a room family for another room family and you just want the layout to change you don't want the overall size to change very useful in the health planning project for example so how they managed so in principle they managed with share parameter files they're typically txt files but they must not be edited in notepad this is the number one rule of share parameters don't edit the share parameter file locally it even says in the shed frame and a file not to do it but I constantly see people time and time again do it don't do it just a summary of how the the file is structured at the top you have the group's after your little full warning and each group has an ID or a number and then these parameters are basically broken into rows and that group is called out first they're their ideas called out this is a GU ID which is unique and is the hinge point for share parameters from there the name of the parameter the type of the parameter the group and visible description so the key thing here is just the GU ID it's so critical so every share parameter has a unique ID and the chances of these being the same is almost impossible if not I believe that there's probably counter measures within the way that order ask assigns a shape parameter numbers that would prevent this from happening but the sheer amount of possibilities available in a GU idea of this length is is quite long so that that's how share parameters are actually being read by rabbit in the background as that number the GU ID is determined by a lot more than just their name it's basically determined when the parameter is made beyond that point you can't really do a lot to change that and I never recommend modifying this either because you can break your shape parameter file very quickly so that's very important so I thought I'd just demonstrate how I create a fresh shape parameter file add some shadow meters group them and then paths a user to that document so I'm just going to make a new share parameter file obstacle I'm sorry manage share parameters and I'll go create it'll prompt me to save it somewhere I'll just call it demo shape on your phone doesn't matter too much what you call this phone you can't change it later without damaging the file so immediately I've got an empty share parameter files you notice I've got parameter groups and I've got parameters I need to make some groups so let's just make a few common groups dimensions they always walls and you can see I'm just starting the groups that I can put parameters into it doesn't matter what you call these too much you can change these later again without damaging the share parameters themselves believe it or not so I'll just add a new parameter so I'll go new parameter now this is important this is where you need to name it properly because you won't get a chance to rename this parameter so I'll talk about naming conventions later but for now just use a very generic generic convention it's important to get your discipline right typically I just recommend doing common as your discipline just in case you ever share these parameters with other companies that might not be of your discipline there's not usually a reason I can think to limit your discipline from there the type of the parameter is very important to get right so this is a code parameter I probably don't want to use lengths a properties text so I have to make sure they get that right and you can add tooltips if you want this well like this is standard rating field there you go I've made the parameter and you'll notice that everything is locked off after that point the only thing I can do is move it to somewhere else so I can move that to dimensions for example and that is pretty much how you set up the infrastructure of a shared parameter file I'll just read path to another one so we'll save the share parameter file so this is a share parameter file that I built for personal use a long way back and you can sort of see the general structure you can end up with in such a file so you can see the uniformity of having a naming convention and how good it can be for sorting the file so if you need to path to another one you just browse to it open it and this is the the session this is the share from the file your session will point to until you change to another shared parameter file even if you close Revit and reopen it it remembers the last one that you pointed to so very important to note so I'll demonstrate how to apply shared parameters so how to add them to families projects build tags that can read them and also schedule them very briefly so if I go back to that a Revit project that I had before let's just say I want to add I want to add material parameters to these families here so if I edit the family let's say I've already got some parameters in place and I just want to make them shared so I'd go here modify parameter you could also go create if it was new if you select shared and go select it'll go to the shape parameter file that you're currently path to if you need to repass just go edit browse so if I go to Windows and scroll down to Windows material material frame and okay that you'll see immediately this is updated and any formulas there cross-reference those parameters will also update straightaway so it's quite straightforward really and then I'll just go to windows material blazing there we go so this family if I reload into the sample projects should now have material parameters so if I select these two at the same time so now I have access to that parameter between the families so it's quite easy likewise I don't add any project parameters that are shared let's say I always want them to have materials regardless of whether the family does or not like a Windows material frame instance based materials and finishes it already knows all these properties based on the shape parameter file and the windows apply it to Windows and even the ones that don't have the parameter will now be given it by that action on the file keep in mind that obviously if I populate this and the family isn't using the parameter in any way it won't actually do anything to the family itself because this isn't nested into the family properties and then from there once I have these parameters available if I go to a schedule and I just create a multi category schedule you see that I now have the ability to add some of these parameters to the schedule that I didn't have before it's like a dad and family and taught and we're just sort by family on top or just the autumn eyes every instance you see majorities don't have the share parameters but there we go we can see some of those parameters showing up there you are so these ones don't actually have the shared parameters applied to them so that's why it's empty I think these ones you can't even edit them because they don't technically have it but if I come here you can see I can edit these parameters this is basically like an empty so in principle so that's how you can Adam manage them so it's quite straightforward and I guess you can also access them in dynamo very easily as well so sorry if I just go here and I just open up dynamo stay with me I might move forward while I wait for dynamo so a limitation to be aware of once the shape parameter has made certain things are uneditable the parameters name its type its tooltip cannot be edited beyond the point they're created as well as the discipline so you want to get this right when you create the parameter and the GU idea is determined when it's created this well so you're not going to get a chance to go back and fix these things so you can see here these are grayed out when I go to edit them so it's very important to think very hard about how you want to name these parameters and categorize them and what you want to apply them to every common error that I see is that people will either do a bad tooltip well they'll associate a parameter to the wrong type and they'll start using it until they realize it's too late for example someone might use text instead of length and then they actually want to go and use it in a formula that means numbers and this no longer will do what it needs to do so be very careful and do not edit the text file I cannot accentuate this enough I've been in the scenario too many times where someone has tried and it causes a lot of problems so do not edit the file to fix any of these limitations because chances are it won't work I've seen some add-ins say that they can do these things they have ways to change these that in principle what they're really doing is almost creating a new parameter with the same geo ID which Revit can't see has the same parameter for the most part so just plan your file very carefully you might only get one shot or an opportunity to really get this file right and chances are your company's probably not going to want to pay for this more than once as well because you're using up company time to generate this file and it's not necessarily something that your managers might understand the merit of in project aspect terms if I go back to Revit I'll just show you how I can access this really quickly so of the select model element and I'll just select one of those windows with a shift parameter in them right manual mode and let's just get its parameters okay for those that don't know this know the base it just gives you a full list of all the parameters that that element can have and we just expand this and there you go there's our share parameters and we could get those based on a get parameter by name node so these get added basically to what dynamo has access to so very powerful for data management it's obviously great too if you have standardized share parameters your scripts can be built to work across multiple projects based on the common naming of parameters to expect so another thing for a limitation back to limitations is when if you're mindful of how these could be used in formulas a common issue ICN share promoted naming is that people put a lot of funky characters in their names such as dashes pluses asterixis basically things that imply mathematics or something that Revit would see as a formula so these sort of characters and this is the sort of warning that you'll keep seeing every time you try to refer to your shared parameters you can't put square brackets around your shared parameters but you may find that actor slows down your workflow too much so just be mindful if you use underscores dashes etc and that you understand all the implications that that could mean from a formula perspective in Revit because Revit will sort of break the text at the point where it sees a dash because it almost wants to say R in a formula this is a parameter this is a parameter this is a parameter etc it's also been it's good to be mindful that the built in parameters aren't necessarily useless it is good to make sure that if they're there it's good to use share emitters in most cases so even in case work for example where you have built-ins for depth height and width I always recommend still using shared parameters to drive the family but connect them up to a formula at least so these are correct so if someone looked at these in an IFC viewer or something that they would still see the correct number if they tried to look at the height of it or AK us or someone like that and use model and manufacturer assembly code those sort of fields because they are common to all families so you may as well use those rather than reinvent the wheel and make a new parameter to do the same thing a really common issue with shared parameters that I need to work around for is oh I've deleted a shared parameter from the share parameter file it happens mistakes happen even BIM managers will do this so step one is not to panic step two is to find a family or a project with this shape parameter so I'm just going to go back into Revit and I'm just gonna give it and delete a shared parameter for my shape parameter file so I'll just sorry I'll just go to my shared forever to file and I will go down to Windows material frame and I'm just gonna delete that parameter and you get one saying that this is something that is hard to get back potentially so it's gone it's no longer in my share I'm gonna fall oh no how do I add this two more parameters after this the short answer is I can't the long answer is I can go to a family that had this parameter originally for example this one here has material frame still edit the parameter and do what's called export and this is going to save it under a group in the share parameter file called exported parameters I can go to shared parameters exported parameters and there is the parameter and it's back and it's the same parameter so we could move it at that point to the right group this is also the workflow you can use if you're working with say an engineer who is the lead coordinator on a project and there's given you something like an asset ID that you need to use for your codes so that everyone has one code across the whole project source and say something like novice works you could request those shared parameters to be sent to you in a smaller share parameter file and then you could export them into your share parameter file for use that's a very common workflow as well so I guess I'm almost at the end but I just thought I'd go through my recommendation Sheridan naming and management so how I do it because I feel like my system is probably one that's worked quite well for me so far so as you use big break of data with underscores and small breaks with dashes and yes I'm aware that those dashes are formulas I've committed to square brackets in my parameters and I actually prefer it because it makes it even more obvious when you're referencing a shared parameter pick a prefix is one of the biggest things to do I've worked at companies where they didn't have a prefix and they ended up in horrible scenarios where they had some share parameters called width for example and then you go onto a case work frenemy and you go to add width and you can't because it's already a built-in called width so I think it prefixes always the best way and it makes it really obvious one to share parameter is a share parameter users want to stand straight away or I'm looking at a share parameter because here's the prefix and only very occasionally will someone named a family parameter with the prefix just to try and get around the issue and not understand share parameters in principle so you can see the naming convention down here prefix underscore category underscore descriptives similar to how I name families just some examples of what they could look like so data parameters dimensions walls one in one critical takeoff here is that I think it's always good to use numbers on the end of your shape numbers for future proofing unless it doesn't need it so for example fire fire resistance level there's only ever one fire resistance level for a particular element to call out but with you may have more than one width in a family you might have a bench with a return so it has two widths and one depth technically so it's good to put one after it so that you can have a width two with three with four so you don't end up bookending yourself in a coding system so that's why I put numbers after these I'm typical groups for parameters I've seen people go very overboard with grouping and make one group category in Revit which i think is the wrong move so here's an example of the groups that I use in my share for eMeter files and this is typically been enough for me to cover my categories as I need an interesting one that some people notice is areas and rooms I actually use the same share emitters between these two Goods it makes it a lot easier for me to push data between my areas and my rooms when I need things like authoring I like to stamp all my families with who made them when they made them which version etc it makes it easier for me to order in the model when things are out of date or in the wrong version of Revit data and dimensions so qualitative and quantitative they're quite important and then there's a lot of ones that relate to complex systems like doors windows facades etc and there's some that I call cover all categories so these are things like the authoring ones data dimensions materials and browser organization they cover multiple categories they're not intended just to go towards say just generic models they all apply to many categories at the same time so I try to use one coding field so don't use door code wall code etc just use code that way it's one field and the multi category tag can source this information the same way and a workflow for the chef's parameter file I recommend that it's read only controlled by the BIM manager all the model managers and then users copy this file to their project folder for editing if they need to add share parameters and all templates and family should come with the right level of share parameters in order to function with the companies tags etc and in any new additions always discuss them with their managers or model managers that's the best way to I guess get your smarts into the main system for later and into templates and I guess prepare so plan ahead make sure that you build enough parameters to cover what you need because again you might not get more than one chance to do this for your company while you work there communicate with everyone make sure the data structure you're setting up works for the company and works for other software such as Rhino I'm actually you roll it out don't get halfway and roll it out and finish it you need this to be a full data structure you don't want people to have to invent things after you've got halfway and commit to it make sure that what you set up everyone is on board everyone uses it and everyone sticks to it make sure that people don't manage multiple shared parameter files to achieve different coding systems just use one is my advice and to all the BIM managers just keep it backup or two because there's some funny things that can happen on servers things can go missing things can go corrupt and you wouldn't want to lose your share parameter file it's very pivotal to your company so thanks for listening today hopefully that helps and give you a better idea of how you can manage share reminisce on your project and with your company and hopefully that helps some other aspiring BIM managers out there as well to follow a system that I think works there's any questions you have feel free to leave them down below thanks for listening and feel free to follow unsubscribe if you're interested in seeing more thanks thank you

Channel: Aussie BIM Guru

Views: 23,508

Rating: 4.9427404 out of 5

Keywords: aussie, bim, guru, cad, revit, dynamo, computational, tutorial, demonstration, how to, educational, shared, parameters, data, standards, best, practices, coding, code, shared parameter, guid

Id: ORUJqpIGkIU

Length: 33min 21sec (2001 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2019