Revit scheduling workflow - any 3rd party apps to address this issue?

[dtiemeyer]

So in SD phase of a project, I don't know which manufacturer will provide my AHU for the project, so we put in a simple generic 'AHU' mechanical equipment. And then I import our standard AHU schedule and fill in the basics, like capacity, name & number, etc.   Then, in DD and throughout CD, as the project evolves, we determine which manufacturer we will use. At this point I download their equipment family and import it into my project.

How can I copy the PARAMETERS and VALUES that are presently applied to the 'generic' AHU to the 'accurate' AHU so that my schedule information is not changed, and so that I do not have to re-type all the schedule information each time a different family is needed?

[CoreyDaun]

In all honesty, I don't see how it could be possible for any Add-In to accomplish this since the Shared Parameters used by different manufacturers are so wildly diverse (unless, of course, all of the equipment is from the same manufacturer). I imagine it would take a lot of manually work, anyway, because you'd have to "map out" which Shared Parameters to grab the values from. You can ask this question over in the Revit API Board to see if this is even possible.

As a more mundane solution, you could place an instance of the manufacterer's Families on top of your placeholders, and then create a Space Schedule with an embedded Mechanical Equipment Schedule. This will allow you to see yours and the manufacterer's elements side-by-side for the most part. Include in the Mechanical Equipment Schedule Family Name/Type Name, your Shared Parameters, and the various manufacterer's Shared Parameters (they should all be available as fields). You can then easily Copy/Paste the values while in the Schedule View. It might be a good idea to blank-out the value of your Parameters first so you can see which ones still need to be copied.

[dtiemeyer]

well, it's software, so theoretically anything is possible.  I'll toss out 2 ideas that think could benefit the Revit world, they somewhat overlap:

1) I guess as I don't see why it would be so difficult to write an app that could read all the Shared Parameters that a schedule has used to create its columns, then apply those to a piece of equipment (or whatever) that has been loaded in as a family. The only potential issue I see would be if you had an identically named parameter, but that could be easily remedied by naming all of 'your company' shared parameters with a prefix (we use PBA, for Peter Basso Assoc).

2) Similarly, Say you had a ANU placed, and all it's schedule data filled out (this is mostly design criteria, not model specific data). It is a Brand X with Model number XYZ.  It should be easy to import an AHU from Brand Y with Model number 123, then a little worksheet appears with a checkbox showing all the parameters AND values you want pushed onto that Brand Y family.

This would enable the design process to more fluidly flow from SD to DD to CD where we start with generic boxes, then 'approximate' equipment that looks right, then the exact equipment we are specifying. As it is right now, all that 'design data' you've input into the schedule gets lost each time you swap one family to another, even though it is still 'AHU-1' that you've determined the critera for.