I use a number of 'standard details' which are Drafting Views (Detail) held in an Office Standards project. I then call the details, as required, into a new project. I also like to arrange my Project Browser by phase but when I bring my details views into the project they get assigned a phase labeled '???' when I would like to have then included in the phase where they belong but cannot find a way of doing this since the drafting views do not have the 'Phase' item in their property listing?
Not really anything you can do about that without using a Shared Parameter (assigned to Views) instead, which would defeat the automatic sorting of the Plan Views. For some resemblance of order, you can add a prefix to the Detail View's name which indicates the intended Phase.
If you are sorting your Views by a Parameter that does not exist or has a blank value in some Views, those Views will appear under a "???" heading. There is no way to escape this, so if you include the Phase as a sorting mechanism, you will have to live with the Drafting Views falling under "???". If you want to use a Project Parameter (Text) instead (removing the Phase Parameter from Sort), you will have to manually enter a value for this Parameter in all of your your Plan Views, too.
There's no reason for Drafting Views to not have Phasing as far as I understand. It is simply bad design and your are proposing extremely cumbersome workarounds that have no place in a BIM workflow. You may think this is fine on a small project, but it is innapropriate on a fully phased project and the fix seems extremely simple > add a Phase parameter to Drating Views.
Indeed - that would be the ideal solution, but alas, that is up to the software developers to incorporate that into Revit; I can merely provide answers/solutions/work-arounds that are available to the end user. There might be a better way to do this using API, but I am not knowledgeable in that field. I would suggest using the link below, which is frequently provided by Autodesk Support Personnel here, to provide feedback about such issues.
Autodesk Product Support
The following link is setup for you to submit feature requests, or feedback, directly to our Development group:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794
Regarding the cumbersome work-arounds, they are unfortunately a necessary evil of Revit, especially on the MEP side. I would not recommend the Shared Parameter work-around, but I provided that to present the OP (or others) with an option in case that worked for him.
As the originator of this post I am surprised that Autodesk does nothing about like issues raised in this forum, indeed they would go a long way to satisfying my criticism that annual Revit subscription update costs go nowhere near representing good value for the small update progress made each year.
However, this link is all that is availible, so I have followed it and expect that like all the other times I have used it nothing will be done and no response will be received. Thanks anyway Corey.
Sorry to drudge this up again but I wanted to confirm that if I want to order my views in the browser by phase, I have no choice but to live with those 3 question marks for Drafting Views.
I tried creating my own view organization and adding a parameter to change this but with no success.
Thanks,
Kevin
Hi there,
I have had the same issue, surprised that nobody has found a solution for this. Even if it is just to rename from the ??? it would make it more understandable.
Thanks
James
You could create a project parameter "phase_sorting" ie. and have the project browser sort by this parameter. Also for drafting views. You could arrange your view templates to set the right values for this 'phase' parameter and/or set it manually. edit: actually you (still) can't set phase in templates, just the filter. So it's not possible to set this up properly through the templates I suppose. edit2: same solution already given above by @CoreyDaun I noticed just now, it is the only possibility I think.
so... adjust your workflow to the software, don't try it the other way around. Do suggest it on idea forum.
Yes we are aware 🙂
More the point of an easy to use template for everyone in the company. It is not the easiest to find a drafting view, when it is labelled ???
I sort my project browser by phase for quality control. Adding a parameter that mimics that phase defeats the whole purpose.
Sure, but as you see you cannot assign that to a drafting view, thus your query. It's not difficult to check these however - in a schedule you can simultaneously apply the custom phase based on the phase. Although I haven't tried, it may be possible to assign custom phase to a real phase in the schedule automatically, besides the drafting views which will be assigned manually.
It is not possible to assign a fake phase to a real phase in the Project Browser AFAIK.
I think this query is more appropriate as an Idea "to be fixed" rather than a discussion, since there is no satisfactory answer. I did not start the query, but experience the same issue.
The schedule solution is not appropriate. I don't want to have to do quality control over such a trivial thing many time a day, it should be fully automatic. For example, I manage a large project (one of many) with 20-some users across offices in the same model (joint partnership projects) who will often move a view to another phase in error and not put it back. I need to know immediately if the view is in the wrong phase. If I use phases, it will disappear from the list and this will highlight the error.
I also use naming standards to emphasize this. For example, a construction plan view on the 4rd floor in Phase 3 would be named "P3-C-PLAN-4" and a construction plan view on the 4rd floor in the existing Phase would be called "EX-C-PLAN-4". So if I see a EX view in my P4 phase views, I will know there is an error immediately and that users have been mucking around with the phasing instead of going to the proper view.
Herein lies the value of using phasing in the project browser for quality control. With the being said, "???" just leads to confusion. If only they changed the terminology I would be satisfied. If they allowed us to actually assign a phase or a universal phase to these drawings, I would be even more satisfied.
Would be useful to have phase available in the view template as I mentioned 5 or so posts earlier, having only phase filter kind of defeats the purpose anyway tbh since you usually don't want to set one without the other really... But if it would be available, you could unify the fields there which could solve (part of the) the sorting question.
edit: In reply to above. The ??? is just a non existent value for the phase parameter, so a 'universal phase' parameter doesn't do you much good if it's not the same one... So the suggested project (or shared) parameter above is actually precisely that...
I would never use a phase in my view template.
Imagine a project where I have 30-50 view templates. If I have 5 phases, not I will have to manage 5 times more view templates. I always use the same view template for all phases. A demolition plan is always going to look the same no matter the phase and it`s less view templates to manage when there are changes.