Allow JOINED schedules
In the world of relational databases there is the idea of a join. A join is a way to combine data from two distinct sets into a third set that contains some data from both. Both sets must contain a common filed that is used to join them together. Examples are a little hard to replicate here so I urge you to look at the Wikipedia entry for joins.
In Revit I find myself quite often wishing that I could create a schedule based on two other schedules that contain a common field. Consider this situation:
I have a large multi-residential project where a number of host files, corresponding to different residential blocks, each contain links to standard apartment unit models. I have some schedules. Schedule A contains a list of all links in the host model. Each link has a unique name. Links that correspond to standard apartment units are named using a global apartment type naming convention.
Schedule B contains a list of all the rooms in the host model. Each room corresponds to a whole apartment. Each room has a Name property whose value is the apartment type (same as what's in Schedule A)
I want to, automatically, create a third schedule, C, that joins schedules A and B on the name property. That is, the resulting schedule will have rows with both the room and the corresponding link. I can then do counts of how many times a given unit is actually linked into the host file and used in my plans.
As I write this I feel like my example is perhaps not the best but I believe that experienced BIM users will see its potential. I believe that this idea is sound and if implemented would provide a new and powerful way to query the model.
cheers,
-tomek