R-MEP 2011 Shared Parameter Files: Combining?

[ameador]

Does anyone know how to combine multiple separate Shared Parameter files for R-MEP 2011?

I have some shared parameters that the Arch's and Structure Dept's have in their own shared parameter .txt file and I want to get them pushed into my MEP shared parameter file.

Any assistance would be appreciated!

Thank you!

A.Meador

[embolisim]

You can just opn the txt files and copy/paste, I've done it successfully in the past.

Just watch that you don't duplicate any parameters.... if you have the same parameter name but different GUID revit will treat them as different parameters & you will tie yourself in knots.

Best way to check for this kind of thing is import everything into excel as delimited text & use the sorting functions to check for duplicates.

Cheers.

[ameador]

Since there are a ton of warnings about not "hand" modifying Shared Parameter files I was a bit leary of trying "ye ole" copy/paste.

Glad to hear it worked for you!

I will keep an eye out for the matching name issue.

Thank you for replying!

Have a good day! 🙂

[davidvs]

I would DEFINITELY recommend against copy-and-paste.  Many things can go wrong, including group definitions or group definition usages.

There is a free tool available to do this, which works quite well and watches out for all potential conflicts.  It does other things, too (comparing shared parameters files, etc.)

http://www.biggestbrains.com/revit/

[embolisim]

You do have to apply some intelligence and make sure you actually understand what you are pasting in. But there is actually not very much that can go wrong.

This is quite different to 'hand modifying' a parameter by opening the file and making alterations to existing parameters... which could make them incompaitble with the unmodified versions already used in existing families.

Interesting sounding tool though, I'll look into it.

[davidvs]

Here's just one use case example where editing a shared parameter file manually and pasting in from another shared parameter file can go wrong:

SP file 1 has the "Mechanical" group ID set to 12

SP file 2 has the "Mechanical" group ID set to 7

SP file 2 has no group 12

Copy parameters from SP file 1 that are of the Mechanical group into SP file 2

Now you have parameters in SP file 2 whose group number is set to 12 when no group 12 has been defined in SP file 2

Or...

if SP file 2 has the "Plumbing" group set to 12, your new Mechanical parameters won't be in the Mechanical group, they'll be in the Plumbing group.

And I'm not sure what Revit will do if you paste in a parameter with the same name as an existing one, but that has a different GUID (unique ID)

If you are REALLY careful and have a deep understanding of the data and relationships in the SP file structure, you can get away with hand editing, but there are many subtle ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you do that.  Thus the warnings about not doing that.

The free Revit Family Tools utility watches out for pretty much all of that, including updating the group ID if needed to match that of the destination file that has a group with the same name defined as the source file, or (I think) creating a new group in the destination SP file if needed.

[ameador]

So can I renumber the groups without causing an issue?

Say group 12 didn't exist in the file I am pasting into.

Can I add it? Or does the GUID code have part of that hardpathed into it?

From the look of things it's just at the end w/ the number designation for the "Group #".

I'd like to renumber the groups and make them make sense.

I have had a little programming in my past so I am aware of the dangers of modifying, adding spaces, tabs, etc that can throw off what it is processing.

i downloaded the program, but I have to wait for my IT guys to "bless" it before I can use it.

Again, thank you all for your input!!!

[davidvs]

The GUID code does not have any group number information in it.  It's just a randomly generated unique identifier.

You should be able to add new groups and assign them numbers if you want.

If you change a group number at the top, you have to go through each parameter and change their group numbers to match as well.  If you have a lot of parameters, this would be a nontrivial effort to do manually, and fairly easy to make a mistake with.

I believe the shared parameter files are TAB delimited, which can also be a bit tricky to get right in a Notepad-like environment.

The shared parameter files *can* be edited manually, but you really do have to be very careful.

After each significant change, re-test the shared parameters file in Revit.  Always make backups periodically, too, so you can "step back in time to what last worked" easily.

Best of luck.

[ameador]

So it looks like I was able to copy/paste them across carefully.

i also modified the Group names, created a few new Groups, and associated the parameter w/ the Group number.

It all looks very clean and *much* better than what we had before.

So here's a follow up question, where it has the "DATATYPE" and "DATACATEGORY" can I change these if one of the parameters were created incorrectly. Say one was created as a "TEXT" type, but really should have been "NUMBER". Would changing it in here modify that? Then I could reload the shared parameter into the model and it would override/fix it?

What are your thoughts?

[davidvs]

If you've already used the shared parameter in any projects or family files you can NOT do that.  In older versions of Revit playing those kinds of games would cause Revit to crash.  Hard.  I don't know if that stability issue has been improved in 2011 or not.

But once a shared parameter has been used, don't change anything about the GUID, name or data type.

Further, Revit will not let you substitute a shared parameter for any existing parameter on your family unless the data types are identical.

So you can't replace a Text parameter with a Number shared parameter under any circumstances.  Revit simply won't allow that.

[ameador]

That makes sense.

I was just being hopeful.

Thank you for all of your assistance on this!

[smbrennan]

I realize it's been 2 years, but I'm about 4 years behind on the Revit Bandwagon.

Prior to reading this post, I was able to succesfully rename a group and regroup my SP file (made a copy just to be safe, but it still worked). 

My question is regarding the NAME. Has anyone confirmed whether or not simply renaming a parameter works?

I would imagine that the GUID is what's unique here, as it was assigned by Revit in a hex format (similar to AutoCAD's handle), whereas the Name is the user-defined name, something that humans can read.

[CoreyDaun]

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smbrennan85 wrote:

"My question is regarding the NAME. Has anyone confirmed whether or not simply renaming a parameter works?"

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I'm not 100% on what you're looking for, but I performed a test. I create a Family and included a specific Shared Parameter and loaded it into a Project. Then I opened the Shared Parameter .txt file and changed the Parameter name to something else. I Created a new Family, included the renamed Shared Parameter in it, and loaded it into the Family.

Once in the Family, there were no immediate errors. However, when I created a Schedule, only the original Shared Parameter appeared in the list of Fields. When I attempted to add that Parameter to the Schedule using the "Add Parameter..." button, Revit reported that the parameter was already scheduled. This is a result of identical GUIDs.

Edit: And for the record, you can export Shared Parameters from a Family in the newer versions of Revit, which seems a safer (although more tedious) method of combining Shared Parameter files.