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Allow text in formulas

Allow text parameters in formulas.
e.g Fire Rating = FireRating
(as in NBS BIM Object standard)
Comentarios
Anonymous

creating strings with formulas would also be good, we could populate the description field by combining the text contents of other fields for example

Formula

="CoreThickness" mm thick "Manufacturer" "Model" "Lay Direction" lay composite cladding "Panel Application" panel, colour"External Material" .

 

Would produce

 

80mm thick Kingspan KS1000RW left to right lay composite cladding roof panel, clolour Kingspan Spectrum Baltic Blue.

 

We currently do something similar with dynamo

Anonymous

You could simply follow the Excel syntax of = "some text" & ParamaterValue & "some other text"

 

How ever they choose to do it I hope it happens soon, I would use it in hundreds of models (no exaggeration either!).

Anonymous

Indeed, this would be really nice to have! Instead of comparing numbers in formulas etc.

Community Manager
Community Manager
El estado se ha cambiado a: Under Review

Thanks for your submission and votes on this idea!  We are evaluating where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision. 

 

The Factory

Advocate
Advocate

I would like to be able to reference text based parameters in conditional statements based on if they contain certain text. For example have a statement that says IF(Description=*TEXT*,"DESCRIPTION","NEED INPUT") where the asterisks are wildcards; this would search the parameter Description and if it contains the letter TEXT in that order at any point it would put "DESCRIPTION" as the response. If the Description does not contain the letters TEXT it would return "NEED INPUT". This does have the downside of returning false positives such as if Description contained "CONTEXT REQUIRED" it would return "DESCRIPTION". But it opens up a lot more doors than pit traps in my opinion.

Advocate
Advocate
Advocate
Advocate

Good call. I didn't see this older post when I searched. However it is currently under review. and thus ineligible for thumb-up. But hopefully that means it's moving on to the next stage of development.

Mentor
Mentor

@Anonymous wrote:

However it is currently under review. and thus ineligible for thumb-up.


Actually that's not the case.  I just voted for it myself.  If the vote button is greyed out for you, then you must've already voted for it (and likely forgot).

Advocate
Advocate

You are correct. I had realized the issue as to why it was grayed out and neglected to post my findings here. Thank you for reminding me.

 

 

Advocate
Advocate

It's surprising that this is still missing, this will be a powerful tools for automating schedules, especially when paired with Key Schedules.

Anonymous

Any expectation or estimation to which release this will be added? 

Anonymous

I would like to create text strings to poulate the description field as above but include a string conversion for number or unit based parameters. Perhaps string converters to keep the project units and string converters to strip them?

 

Description = STRINGU(Airflow) + " " + STRING(Capacity) + " direct fired make-up air unit" + IF(Curb, " w/ factory curb", "")

 

for example.

Advisor
Advisor

For me, this idea means two things

 

  1. being able to drive a text parameter based on a formula (for example creating a description field based on actual parameter values like dimensions, materials, yes/no parameters, ...)
  2. being able to use a text parameter inside a formula (if textfield="this text",...). Additional benefits would be if we have wildcard operators.
Anonymous

This idea is also related to my idea of being able to reference parameters pretty much anywhere where one can enter text:

 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/make-substitution-variables-available-everywhere-where-te...

 

As an aside, syntactically speaking using generic text in formulas is tricky. Text with spaces will have to be quoted. What about text with spaces and quote characters? It's not trivial. Certainly variable names should not be allowed to have spaces or any fruity characters in them. There is a reason why this convention is used by all programming languages that I know (Perl, Python. Ruby, C, C++, Javascript, Java, etc)

 

Convenience always has its price. I think that most people who use Revit are intelligent enough to be able to adapt to certain generally accepted conventions for dealing with formulas and code in general. And if they're not then they have no business using those features. They will just shoot themselves in the foot and then start requesting safety features etc.

 

-t

 

 

Advisor
Advisor

It would also be super helpful if we could subtract characters in addition to do concatenations.  

 

For example: I would like to subtract prefixes from my sheet numbers, (not showing the suffix, or only showing the suffix). In theory we could split these up in separate parameters but that's not always feasible (no duplicate sheet numbers allowed). 

 

If we could subtract characters we would do F1-A-100.00 as sheetnumber, but only show A-100 in the callouts/titleblock as the other stuff is not relevant in those scenarios.

 

Perhaps Revit could borrow the syntaxis from Excel? https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/560-excel-remove-character-from-string.html

 

Anonymous

To be honest, I basically expect most of the basic Excel formulas to be present in Revit. Anything else is disappointing.

Advocate
Advocate

We really need a way to concatenate string and values in formulas. For example, in HVAC, for diffuser/grille schedules, it is very common to have a column that lists the face dimension of the elements. However, in some cases, the face dimension is a diameter and in other cases it will be a rectangular dimension.

 

So we need a calculated field that does something like this:

 

if(Face Diameter=0,concatenate(Face Length,"×",Face Width),concatenate(Face Diameter,"Ø"))

 

We need this function everywhere that we can use formulas and not just in schedules.

 

This function has been requested for years. Other typical text handling functions are also needed, but I don't want to muck up the thread.

 

Frankly, AutoCAD MEP is superior in this regard because it allows for VBScript in their property set data which makes the data more usable and presentable.

Anonymous

It is not just the MEP modelers who want this.  There are lots of formula options that could be better but this is definitely at the top of the list.

Anonymous

Inventor had the ability to reverence VBA functions in their parameters to do cals like this. Some of these core concepts should really be leveraged across all the product lines.

Anonymous

There's 3 functions I would like to use often:

 

- concatenate: fill in a text parameter based on other parameters (text, numbers, lengths, ...)

- equality check: drive another parameter (text, numbers, lengths, ...) based on an quality check of a text field (is empty or equals a specific value)

- extract characters (from position X to position Y) This will help with accommodating numbering standards etc (being able to have one field and pull it apart in prefix+middle+suffix.

Advisor
Advisor

The proper implementation of this idea would also be a solution for the problem in this one: Sort/Group by a Combined Parameter (R2017+)

Advisor
Advisor

Perhaps Revit can take a page from Archicad's book on this one. Since Archicad 22, the expressions in Archicad are blowing Revit's out of the water:

 

https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/user-guide/76913/

 

 

I wish we had some of those text operators!

 

 

 

Advocate
Advocate

Any updates on this. How is this not done yet? It's 2019.

Would be great if we could even just parse text parameters to see whats in them, sort of like you can with FILTER RULES in Visibilty/Graphics overrides - in that area, you can check if a Parameter "contains" specific text. I think that should be an available option in formulas as well as just in things like "conditional formatting" in schedules. 

Participant
Participant

Please Autodesk this will be such a usefull thing in family creation. 

Add text capibility in your formulas 

Advocate
Advocate

Very specifically, I want to be able to use text (strings) in If Then statements.

 

If(Fire Rating = "1 HR",Do_This, Else_Do_That)

 

Also note, Filters already allow dissection of strings such as contains, begins with, does not equal, etc.  It would be of great benefit to have all those string manipulation tools available in Revit formulas.

Enthusiast
Enthusiast

string / text functions are very basic stuff. Should be a must in Revit.

Anonymous

Is there any update on this functionality? It would be very very helpful if we have a built-in function that compares string and output boolean values. I know that as of now we cannot compare strings because of the apostrophes in English units so a built-in function would be great. Something like StringCompare("string", "string"). 

Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Any update?  This is a MUST have!

Anonymous

I'd love this feature.  I'd like to be able to combine "Room: Number" & "Room: Name" into one calculated field that can act as a header in schedules.  I would use this primarily for equipment schedules. 

El estado se ha cambiado a: Gathering Support

Congratulations! We are updating this thread to Gathering Support. We are continuing to evaluate where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision. 

 

The Factory

Advocate
Advocate

目前文字类型的参数不能作为IF公式的判断条件,这很遗憾,

目前也不支持将两个参数的值转换为文本,并将其合并,

希望能支持更多这样的功能,就像Excel一样

At present, the parameters of text type can not be used as the judgment condition of if formula, which is a pity,
Currently, it is not supported to convert the values of two parameters into text and merge them,
Hope to support more such functions, just like excel

El estado se ha cambiado a: Gathering Support

Hi, @TOM` 

 

Here is a similar Idea:

Allow text in formulas - Autodesk Community

 

I would like to combine your post with this one.

Thank you for your submission!

-Kimberly

Advocate
Advocate

how to use REVIT like Excel?

Anonymous

I guessed this was a basic option, how something like this takes 5 years to finish is beyond me.

Advocate
Advocate

@Anonymous It is not taking 5 years to finish, they haven't even started because they don't deem it worthy of work. They recently upgraded it to "gathering support" so they will likely start working on it in the year 2026.

Advocate
Advocate

"Gathering Support" means squat. I've seen plenty of items "gathering support" then fizzle. The Idea's station is functionally broken. Who is going to find this particular FIVE YEAR OLD idea and up vote it? How many other nearly identical ideas are out there? I recently lambasted Autodesk in a survey about the Idea's page and how it doesn't work. It just makes us users feel like we aren't being heard even more. If text in formulas EVER come to fruition, it might possibly be minorly influenced by this Idea page. But more likely it's because they finally figured it out, or its because someone else within the Revit programmers needed it for something. I'll post to the ideas. I'll vote for ideas. But I have no delusion that anything will ever come out of these. If they can't do a simple thing like create a Navisworks Ideas page (an idea which has been "gathering support" for 6+ years) and that only takes some minor copy/paste work from the web team; there is no chance that we will see text in formulas any time soon.

 

Just my pessimistic opinion. I'll get off my soapbox now.

@RobertAGlover  I certainly hope I can change your mind at least a little! Allow me to introduce myself as the new Revit Community Manager. Part of my job is to monitor, review and "organize" the Revit Ideas. Yes, there are thousands of Ideas. Yes, some of them are many years old and may or may not ever come to fruition, however, we will never delete an Idea. All Ideas are under review by myself and our Product Managers and Product Owners.  Almost half of the improvements to the upcoming release came from Revit Ideas. I would encourage you to check out this Inside the Factory session to learn more about how teams determine what improvements are included. You can also see what the teams are working on in the Revit Public Roadmap  and add your votes there as well. You can also join the Revit Preview Release and interact directly with the developers on features and improvements in development.

 

Bottom line...I'm here. We're listening. Honest! :cara_con_una_leve_sonrisa:

-Kimberly

Great @kimberly_fuhrman-jones I look forward to your new role and Revit improving based on users' needs

Advocate
Advocate

Agreed with @Samuel.Arsenault-Brassard!

 

@kimberly_fuhrman-jones The fact that you responded, and as quickly as you did already speaks volumes. I stand corrected and look forward to working with you. :cara_con_una_leve_sonrisa:

Advocate
Advocate

@kimberly_fuhrman-jones this is my issue right here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/obj-file-support/idi-p/9202039 13 votes (including my own AFTER it was already part of the roadmap), 2 comments (one is yours) and only a year and half old. It's on the roadmap. This issue however, 686 votes, 5+ years, and pages of comments and it's still "gathering support"????? This is what's wrong with the Idea page and why I don't feel like we are being listened to. It's doesn't seem to be that Autodesk is implementing ideas based on user input, you are just farming us for ideas, not priority. If you cared about priority than this would be on your roadmap, somewhere, ANYWHERE! 

 

While you did respond quickly to my post, upon further reflection, I realize this isn't so worthy of praise. No doubt that Autodesk has automated search algorithms and the like to help find potentially inflammatory posts like mine, and route them to be addressed ASAP. It's standard practice for even small companies with a social media presence, so why not here as well. So I will lay the quick response aside as probably automated assistance, though appreciated none-the-less. That however is entirely unrelated to the feeling of uselessness I (and I'm pretty sure other users) feel. At least make it seem like you are implementing ideas based on our input and votes. That's all I'm asking.

 

Lastly, let me add another thing I noticed when looking back through the comments of this Idea; almost every person who has commented on this post has been a level 4 or above, most people in the 8-10 range. That should also tell Autodesk something VERY important, power users, longtime users, are asking for this. And if long time power users are asking for this, how many daily-users would love to have this but don't know how/want to make a request? If i was you @kimberly_fuhrman-jones I would suggest looking for ideas that have not only the greatest number of votes, but the greatest average of user level as well. If you did that, I'm sure this issue would be much higher on the priority list than  anything on the roadmap currently. As it is only 1 of the 12 items on the roadmap for coordination are even from the Ideas page. And that one idea was from 2018 and has 112 votes (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/c4r-ability-to-download-previous-version-without-rolling-...). Also 2 of 8 structural, and 0 of 13 systems roadmaps items, are even related to ideas. Architecture, and Everyone is much more Ideas based though.

Advisor
Advisor

Weird. My reply to a different thread posted here, too. Let's try again:

 

Poor @kimberly_fuhrman-jones now has to bear the brunt of our frustration due Revit's years of neglect by Autodesk. She used to be "one of us", but now she has the job of cleaning up the forums and listening to us rant... with not much ability to change things.

 

That said, I've seen more ideas being implemented in the beta for the next version than I have in several previous versions combined (though we can't discuss specifics here). They're small changes that will make big impacts ("low hanging fruit" that we've been asking for for years). Hopefully they keep it up (because there are many more minor changes that need to be made, such as this idea). It's amazing how bad & crazy it needs to get before Autodesk wakes up and starts solving OUR problems (instead of THEIR problems - i.e. cash flow).

 

@RobertAGlover Essentially votes and status mean nothing - a highly-voted idea MIGHT get their attention, but if they think it's "too hard" they'll just ignore it. I recently had a 3.5-year-old ARCHIVED idea with 4 votes get "accepted" (though it still hasn't shown up in the roadmap).

 

Advocate
Advocate

Turns out that major clients writting open letters about their frustrations is paying off? Time will tell

Collaborator
Collaborator

Just came across this idea while trying to figure out how to work through a similar situation. I have a string parameter I want to check in another parameter's conditional statement. I assumed this functionality was already there until I couldn't get it to work. Here's to hoping they implement this.

@kimberly_fuhrman-jones I've seen Autodesk implement all kinds of things that have complexity to them.  Accepting a string datatype in formulas seems like something that would take maybe a couple of days for the development team to implement.  You can already accept and process various forms of lengths and turn them into feet/inches, so why can't you read a string when I explicitly tell you in the formula editor that it's a string.  The fact that 700 people have taken the time to find this idea and vote on it means that there are about 7,000 more who find out they can't do it, get frustrated, and move on.  There's no math or other complex processing to be done on strings - just comparison (and I know I'm crazy for asking this, but strlen and strcat would be great too).  Generally speaking, if I can make a formula in Excel, I want to make it in Revit too.  You can't call Revit a database if you can't do simple operations on data.

 

Out of all the low-hanging fruit, this is probably the closest to eye-level.  Of course, at this point four years later, the apple is sitting on the branch rotting.

Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @aaron.jonesSAP83 , thanks for your feedback. While many things may seem like really low hanging fruit, it's really difficult (read: impossible) to tell from the outside. Even with many years of experience and having been a Revit developer, I cannot necessarily tell the difficulty of an project until I ask the developers who actually know that particular part of the code. In this case, I can tell you that if this were indeed as low hanging as you suggest, we wouldn't be having this conversation :cara_con_una_leve_sonrisa:

As to @lionel.kai's comment about votes not mattering, I can state that that's not the case. We absolutely take votes into account. Votes are very helpful as a rough measure of value. I can also say that they are not the only measure of a project's importance. The other thing to consider is that importance is only one of the factors that plays into roadmap selection. Other factors (not exhaustive) include: effort, team availability (not all dev teams are created equal), alignment with strategic focus or future direction, adjacency to other work being done, discussions/research with customers, etc. Decisions to add something to the roadmap aren't formulaic and they are hardly ever straightforward. If they were my job would a lot easier. One thing I've said on a few occasions - if an idea has a lot of votes and it's not on the roadmap, you can draw a reasonable conclusion that it's not easy to address. That also doesn't mean that we wont pick it - it's just harder to fit it in.

Advocate
Advocate

So, has it gathered enough support after half a year or should support be gathered for atleast another 5 years before this gets implemented?

Would love to use this function before i retire in 2055.

Contributor
Contributor

@aaron.jonesSAP83 I feel you man. As far as i can tell from my experience as a developer the Revit codebase must simply be so loaded with technical debt that they just can't fix a lot of these basic issues without effectively starting again and coding it correctly.
Off the top of my head things that bug me:
constraints (ESPECIALLY in families) being horribly implemented. If you have used Inventor you know what you are missing out on.
Not being able to lock a family parameter so it can't be edited once loaded.

Not being able to change formulas based on family type.

Not being able to set options for a parameter using a basic dropdown box.

Align tool not aligning my purlins correctly when they are on a sloped roof (always slightly offset based on zoom level).

Windows and doors on schedules looking like they are snapping but then placing pre-snap so nothing lines up.

For topology, the section cut material (and ONLY the cut material) being overwritten by an option in site settings. (WHY?????)

And of course not being able to use strings in formulas.

 

It's a really shame Autodesk can't/won't fix basic issues like these because then they would have a truly incredible product.

Advocate
Advocate

We've been waiting for this feature forever, it's a natural addition to Revit. We understand that it has not been done, but..... when can we expect it?

 

There's generally this question: Will I see this basic Revit feature in Revit before I die or retire?

 

This question is asked by both 20 year olds and 65 year olds. Will we get Revit formulas before 2100?

Advocate
Advocate

@SamuelAB you're funny! At this point its been over 5 years since the original post. With regular activity and commenting from higher tear users (like yourself). So I'm gonna guess it will take a fundamental rebuild of Revit to build in this functionality. As such I wouldn't expect it anytime soon. Autodesk appears too keen on their shinny "new" tools like BIM360/Build and getting more customers, not making their existing customers more productive and happy. They have a virtual monopoly on the BIM game and they know it.

 

If Navisworks, which is broken in ways that cause crashed on every system when doing something as simple as repeated scrolling in the sets window (an issue I discussed with their lead Navis developer years ago), and they haven't fixed that, adding significantly different coding function to the program is clearly just too difficult for them.

 

@sasha.crotty I know you'll reply to this too. I appreciate your role in keeping us disgruntled users in line. But come on! The lack of responsiveness from Autodesk on fixing issues is getting ridiculous. Its clear to every power user of Autodesk products that the company is more interested in broadening their customer base and income and less on improving the functionality and reliability for existing customers. But then again, when a company gets to the size of Autodesk its much more economical and practical to let some startup develop a better product then buy it and incorporate or squash it. That is after all how Autodesk got Revit and Navisworks after all. 

Advocate
Advocate

I believe Sasha is also in the uncomfortable position of not having much budget or power from her higher ups :cara_asombrada: They are the ones who are likely truly screwing us over by not allowing budget to fix Revit's fundamental workflow flaws

 

They want a shiny new feature every year to put on the website, without having the time to improve or fix the core product. It's easier for the marketing department to sell generative designs to business owners than to say "We fixed our schedules, legends and MEP phasing", which does not sound as exciting to shareholders

 

Now that they are focusing on "listening to customers" because of that big scary letter, it will be interesting to see how they do it since they've done a stellar job at not listening to us in the past, year over year.

Participant
Participant

so this topic is important since at least 2016... when will it come into revit?

@sasha.crottywe talked several times at bilt/rtc about this topic,the connector on/off trouble and connectors in nested families.

 

i understand, that it is not easy to shedule big development tasks, but the connector problems are known for nearly a decade now and the combine text thing is nearly as old.

i know not a single office working with revit, that would NOT need this feature of combining text and every mep office is desireing some addidinonal features of connectors.  these are essentiel function that is still missing.

the only remedy is to use huge lookuptables with every combination in it, but it shouldn't be like this or should it?

 

btw. i fixed the problem of hiding and showing connectors some years ago for myself. can it really be so hard for autodesk to implement the feature if I found a working workaround? my families work flawless with connector on/off feature since 2017 !

 

some positive words at the end:  i am glad, that the filter function was updated in that way wo spoke about at porto :cara_con_una_leve_sonrisa:

Explorer
Explorer

We also see this as something that should be a basic and fundamental feature in a modern 3D modelling / BIM software. The possibility to combine text and number into a string in a formula has been possible to do in for example Excel for quite some time now. We also find it hard to understand why it cant be implemented in Revit? I agree that fixing these basic everyday used features in Revit would turn this great program into being an amazing one. Is there any development work being done at Autodesk on this issue currently?    

PLEASE get this to happen. This is such a frustration to go from AutoCAD with intelligent text fields attached to parameters and object data for so much of my text notes, commit to Revit, only to realize text can't be intelligently compiled. The hoops you have to go through like Dynamo just to achieve what took 10 seconds in AutoCAD is disappointing and has me questioning whether Revit is a good tool to use.

Text annotations are such a fundamental part of design, yet Revit feels like the text tools were stolen out of a leftover Power Point box.

Advocate
Advocate

If this is very difficult to implement I would be willing to accept a freeze on all other update until this is implemented. There are so many things being added to Revit that affect a small amount of users. This change would affect everyone.

Advocate
Advocate

I for one, would love to see this change implemented. I read a lot of the comments on this idea and I really hope that Revit has time to pick this idea up!

Contributor
Contributor

@aaron.jonesSAP83 @sasha.crotty I'd have to agree with Aaron on the implementation time likely only requiring a few days. I think there are many Revit users who are knowledgeable about software programming that can probably see that. Granted, after implementation it might need a week or two of testing and review before it's pushed out but as everyone in the comments has been saying, this is basic functionality.

 

Revit has the ability to parse the formulas as strings and return strings because writing if([condition],"text1","text2") will work. And it also has the ability to do arbitrary length function calls like and([condition1],[condition2],...].

 

So whatever parser takes the text entered in the formula column and decides what function to pass the parameters too just needs to be told to look for a concat([string1],[string2],...) signature, pass the parameters, and return the concatenated value as a string.

 

In fact, I really don't even think it would be too much harder to allow users to define custom methods in the macro manager that can be used in the formula column which would be HUGE. Clearly that would be a little bit of a lift just because of the potential for users to write code with errors which need to be handled safely but if that's the cool new feature they need to pitch to shareholders to get this basic functionality added, feel free to use it.

Community Manager
Community Manager

@mwagnerfrey6 , I appreciate your feedback, but having directly discussed this idea with the team who owns this specific code as well as having, in a past life, been a developer working in Revit, I stand by my statement.

bool stringIf(string userInput1, string userInput2) {

     if(userInput1 == userInput2) {

          return true;

     }

     else {

          return false;

     }

     return false;

}

 

I wrote the code for what happens if a user inputs two strings and an equals sign into the first parameter of an if function.  Done.  You may use the code I just wrote royalty-free.

 

All joking aside, the fact that we're still talking about this shows just how out-of-touch the Revit developers are with what Revit needs to do, which is generate drawings.  The modelling aspect is a huge advancement in that it allows us to find issues with design much sooner than during construction, but we still have to document what we model.  The information aspect of the database is just as important (if not more) than the 3D geometry aspect.  We can't give a contractor a 3D model and say, "build this."  We can only give them drawings.  This involves text.  I understand that coding is more complex than the C++ I wrote up there after ten years of not touching the language, but the fact that Autodesk doesn't care about providing simple functionality and only cares about the flashy new features is really telling of the kind of company it is.  In my field, we like the big flashy projects that get our firm on the cover of a magazine, but we also do the boring small projects because it's just part of the industry.  I wish Autodesk would understand they can't just do the fun stuff.

Advocate
Advocate

I will disagree with  @aaron.jonesSAP83 that the model is very much a deliverable, at least on commercial and governmental projects, despite what the AIA has you believe. They are used and required by the GC as well as structural, MEP and Fire all RELY on the base design architectural model at least. And most of them start with a copy of the rest of the content as well. Having worked for a major A/E design firm then major subcontractor, and now a major GC over the past 15 years; it is, and has been a deliverable just like any document. HOWEVER, just as a detail supersedes a section, and a section supersedes and plan, the drawings supersede the model. :cara_con_una_leve_sonrisa:

 

I've tried getting onto the AIA board that is currently reviewing the decade old BIM documents, but alas they don't let anyone but licensed architects. Given those two points (10 year review, and only architects) I've come to the conclusion that all AIA cares about is covering the architect's liability, and not what is the best, easiest and most useful to the project as a whole. Designers need to get with the 21st century. I don't know of a single subtractor that uses black and white drawings any more. Between color screens and the even cost and ease of color prints now, there is no reason to restrict yourself to black lines. Yet Other than renderings (that are mostly useless and dramatically bloat the file size) there is almost never color on design drawings. Just my opinion. Hate me if you want. :0)

 

But this is all off topic. We need text parameters BUILT in to formulas. PERIOD.

Contributor
Contributor

@sasha.crotty Our statements can both be correct. I think it should be fairly easy to implement and you're saying it's not as easy as it seems. What that would mean is probably that the module responsible for this is an old piece of legacy code that no one wants to touch, or it was coded in such a way that gave no thought to future modification. But if that's the case, it should probably be refactored anyway, which would be more difficult. Would you be able to ask exactly why the code owners think it would be difficult. In general terms obviously, I'm not looking for proprietary information haha.

 

@RobertAGlover I work for a contractor and we do design-builds so I use Revit to create documents as an engineer and installer. 100% agree that 3D models are becoming more important and being provided along with contract documents more often. Some engineers don't like to share the models sometimes because the models make everything clear. Especially how you can tell they gave no thought to fitting everything above the ceiling. When I get models (for reference only) and find problems, 99% of the time I can show that the problems exist in the documents too, because they were generated from the model. So I mark them up there and send in RFIs.

 

Color is a powerful tool, although I typically use it more when creating documents for the guys in the field because those drawings are usually more detailed.

While I understand that it is complex feature, I think that most non-noob users expect this feature in the next 5-10 years. Realistically, we expected it in the last 5-10 years and are visibly disappointed and perhaps even confused.

 

We know what we can do with Excel, and now PowerBI. BIM is all about data. It would follow that BIM is able to do intelligent things with this data, beyond taking a lot of manual data entry from users or having to export and import the data to modify it through 3rd party apps.

 

I see the 10 years anniversary of this issue arriving very quickly in three years and here were are saying it will never happen.

 

Meanwhile I look at the roadmap for Revit 2024 and I see only a few things that are worth it: 3D topography, (buying and integrating UNIFI?) and what seems like minor bug fixes or aesthetic changes like the dark theme. There's no talk of fixing Legends or adding more intelligent parameter formulas.

 

We'll continue to wait for this feature :reloj_de_arena_sin_tiempo:

Community Manager
Community Manager

>> here were are saying it will never happen

I'm not aware of anyone suggesting this. This idea's status would be set to "Archived" if it was not being considered for the roadmap. Larger things are harder to get on the roadmap, but that doesn't make them less important. This is why your votes here are so important - it helps reinforce the value. I get why this is important, but there's also a value to having data to back up assumptions.

Advocate
Advocate

How could we convince the development team that this is important? In my opinion, all of the features presented in the 2024 new feature presentation do not collectively add up to the impact that this one feature would.

"How could we convince the development team that this is important?"

 

With over 10,000 Ideas here on the Revit Ideas, we are working on better ways to manage and find topics that are important to our customers. 10,000+ Ideas = 10,000+ customers who are passionate about each of their Ideas and feel that their Ideas are the most valuable, and we get that. Our product team members, including myself, Sasha, Harlan and others are constantly combing through the Ideas for possible selection and potential, but not always guaranteed, implementation. I suggest watching this YouTube video where Sasha explains the process of choosing what is added to our roadmaps. 

 

We certainly value your feedback. If you would like to have more direct input concerning features in development, we encourage you to join our Revit Preview Release and follow our new Revit Public Roadmaps.

I mean, you are asking for votes, but this is the 23rd idea with the most votes, it's #17  if we don't consider ideas that have been implemented already.

 

It's been active for ~7 years, so it was identified early as being important.

 

846 votes is pretty high considering that the most votes a Revit idea has ever had is 2604.

 

You can imagine that a few of us have kind of given up on voting after seeing results like these on some core obvious missing features. Also, the usual thing that happens is that an office of 300 people will all want the same Revit feature (like proper Legends), but only one or two of the BIM nerds will actually take the time to vote. Most regular people don't spend their time participating in the social activity of trying to discuss and improve the software they use every day, especially if they see the effort as futile.

Advocate
Advocate

@Samuel.Arsenault-Brassard I totally agree with you! Votes, conversations, none of it APPEARS to matter. I've had that argument with the Autodesk Moderator team before. The Ideas station is a crowd source for ideas at this point and not actually how they determine what will be done. As stated above, this topic is heavily voted, highly active, long lasting, and STILL not implemented. Meanwhile things that have almost no votes get done. 

 

Barton Malow has a dedicated account rep at Autodesk and I'll be passing this along that chain as well. Maybe that will help push it more than the useless (IMHO) Ideas page.

Contributor
Contributor
@RobertAGlover wrote:
Barton Malow has a dedicated account rep at Autodesk

Oh boy, he name dropping! Haha. But you raise a good point. Even if the voting does matter, the fact that it appears not to matter is a problem in itself and probably why @Samuel.Arsenault-Brassard speculates that many people are skeptical of the voting system.

 

@sasha.crotty  wrote:
This idea's status would be set to "Archived" if it was not being considered for the roadmap

I'm not saying this is the case, but it's entirely possible Autodesk leaves them open even though they aren't considering them in a sort of "pocket-veto" fashion.

Advocate
Advocate

This is not about text in formulas specifically, but about the Ideas station as a whole.

 

@kimberly_fuhrman-jones and @sasha.crotty 

I watched the video Kimberly posted and here are my comments:

1) The video is 2 years old, so keep that in mind. It doesn't seem like much has changed though.

2) "I think we lurk a little too much and we can be more in there to actually, tell people just "hey, we hear you, we've seen this idea." (from Harlan) and "Even if I'm not looking at Revit Ideas it is absolutely something that we, look at and review." (from Sasha) and yet ideas that have been around since the start and are highly voted and active aren't being commented on until there are issues. 

3) What are you using to determine what ideas are reviewed (as in your regular reviews mentioned in the interview)? Is it just the new ideas? Is it the issues with the most votes? Perhaps the issues with the highest average "rank" (ex: 3 votes, a level 8, and level 6, and a level 4 = a score of 18 with an average grade of 6.). The only other thing I can figure is that you use a magic 8 ball. Since there are so many issues you must have some way of prioritizing them. Just curious what those factors are, because we (the user base) don't see it. Sasha even said in the video: "My job as a project manager is to look for kind of repetition or consistency. ... I say, okay, there's a kernel there, there is something we can do because now all of a sudden we have a broad applicability to a lot of people." is this idea not broadly applicable enough? 

4) Programs like the Beta program and related feedback, only provide feedback on the new features or otherwise what is being worked on. It is not a great venue for suggesting whole new features or functionality, as that train has already the station.

5) Will Navisworks ever see any development... like at all? It doesn't even have an Idea station, so that's another reason I don't feel like Ideas is actually being worked on.

6) Providing a response like "we heard you" is not nearly as useful as actually seeing things done. The nearly canned response from Kimberly earlier is another reason the Ideas are useless. When we do get a response, it's usually some pretty generic. I'd rather see something like "We understand this is an important issue to many users. We are currently discussing formulas with the development team and hope to have an update _____." Then actually have an update then. Right now communicating with Autodesk by any means is like yelling at a black hole. You feel like you did something, but there is no visible difference. Even things like closing a 7 year old idea that you didn't know about, merging similar ideas, etc. I get that its a full time job, but it seems like it's only a couple peoples' part time responsibility. This feeds right into Jeff's closing comments about transparency and "letting the customers know the why".

 

FYI I'm not just some random user:

Architectural and construction expert technologist with almost 23 of industry experience

Have taught and used Revit and Navisworks professionally for 15+ years

Revit 2012 Certified Professional

3ds Max 2011 Certified Professional

Board Member Charlottesville Revit Users Group

Board Member of the National BIM Standards US v3 and v4

Member of Autodesk Beta program

Member of Mensa

Advocate
Advocate

OH!!! I Should have read the old comments earlier, @sasha.crotty you can't say you didn't know about this issue (see comment from earlier today) when you commented on it repeatedly last year. 

 

mic drop...

Community Manager
Community Manager

entirely possible Autodesk leaves them open even though they aren't considering them in a sort of "pocket-veto" fashion
This implies some sort of sinister intent (I think?). That would require a lot of mental energy that is better spent on building product.

 

I work for Autodesk, was a Revit PM for many years, so I know how it works. If you've ever met me you'll know that I do my best to be as transparent as possible because I believe you, our customers, deserve that. So I will tell you a few things. You may choose not to believe me, but please note that I am here because I am trying to help you since I actually believe in your cause. 

So, here goes:

1. yes the votes do matter (!)

2. no, the votes are not the only factors taken into consideration (please watch above linked video or read some of my previous posts if you're interested)
3. This is not easy much like hard tradeoffs when creating a building aren't easy
4. The commentary here explaining why this is important is already helping your cause
5. The people posting here want to help you (really!), making it personal doesn't help anyone

>you can't say you didn't know about this issue 
I didn't? I said I stood by my earlier statement, which implies I agreed with my earlier post and therefore acknowledged having posted previously. What I said last year was, if this was as easy as some people believe this to be, it would have been done already (additional info: because I would have made it happen). I too wish it was easy.

Contributor
Contributor

@sasha.crotty wrote:
This implies some sort of sinister intent (I think?).

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting this is what is going on, but I also didn't mean for it to sound as it implied sinister intent, because I don't think it has to. In my opinion, if this was the case, it'd be more likely to be apathy rather than sinister intent. Like "Oh this idea is popular, but I cant really be bothered right now. Keep it open just in case".

 

A sinister viewpoint in my mind would be: "We aren't interested in ever doing this, but this idea is popular and archiving it may upset a lot of users"

 

Again, I am not saying either of these are the case because I do not know, I'm just saying I doubt there is any real obligation to archive ideas where there is not an intent to ever implement them.

 

I will however stand by my opinion that 7 years is more that enough time to implement this feature. 7 years is enough time for a team of 3 programmers to create a Revit-like application from scratch and implement every feature on the ideas page.

 "years is enough time for a team of 3 programmers to create a Revit-like application from scratch and implement every feature on the ideas page"

 

LOL no, that is (unfortunately) delusional. Perhaps GPT3 will be able to code that someday.

 

---

 

It's a tricky situation, we appreciate a lot of the work that Sasha and other members of the AD staff does, but there are these major things missing for multiple years with seemingly no solution in sight, so there's a major issue somewhere between all these frustrated users and the end product that is not changing to satisfy that over so many years.

 

It's like we need an updated angry letter from the industry every year to get things moving beyond a shock reaction to protect stock prices for investors.

 

-

 

Thanks for being the BIM psychologist and politely listening and replying to us Sasha. I know there are widely varying levels of politeness, insanity, experience and knowledge across the users. Please light up a candle and pray to the Revit gods that we get some sort of text formulas in Revit at some point in the next century :manos_unidas_para_la_oración:

Contributor
Contributor

@Samuel.Arsenault-Brassard wrote:
LOL no, that is (unfortunately) delusional. Perhaps GPT3 will be able to code that someday.

Maybe a team of 3 is a little small, but I do not think it reaches the level of delusional haha. 7 years is a long time. Plus there's GPT4 now :cara_revolviéndose_de_la_risa:.

Advocate
Advocate

YES PLEASE!  We had an issue recently where we needed to sort by a 5th field in a Feeder Wire Size Schedule that we've created, combining 2 of the fields would have given us the proper look, but only if we could then sort by that combined parameter in the schedule, which is not available.  Having a way to concatenate the 2 text parameters into one from inside the family and then being able to sort by that (concatenated) parameter value in the schedule would have fixed our issue.  Instead we are forced to have schedule notes to call out what is going on with the funky looking scheduled fields.

Participant
Participant

This is a real bug bear, I can't believe Autodesk just ignores us user for so long but are happy to introduce "new features" such as User Interface Modernization which apparently was introduced in the Ideas Forum.. what a joke.

Enthusiast
Enthusiast

(Note this forum post was merged to this thread)

 

As the saying goes: "In my utopian world, I wish Revit includes this feature"

The title says it all, it removes an unnecessary extra layer of type naming for families and removes user error if they don't match.

Type Name = Type Mark : Type Description

 

Example Scenario:

Let's pretend we have a furniture family that's parametric with 12 family types in the one family). Your interior designer consultant places their scheduled codes on a markup sheet such as CH.01, (Chair Type 1). My workflow is to always put the type mark in the type name property so it can easily and quickly be searched within the project browser or by placing a component. Imagine having your Type Name property parameter read the Type Mark and the Description Parameter. It kills 2 birds with one stone and removes user error and automates our workflow just that little bit more.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

Advisor
Advisor

This has been requested many times.

Essentially, we would like to have the ability to reference a parameter in the name by calling it.

An option would be when naming a your family type you can enclose a parameter name with {} to reference the type parameter.

You would then end up with something like this as the name you type,

 

{Type Mark} - Chair Type 1 - Office Chair w Armrests

 

and you would see this as in the browser,

 

CH.01 - Chair Type 1 - Office Chair w Armrests

Advisor
Advisor

I think I like the idea more with Mike's modification. Allow us to choose how the name is generated. The process could look similar to putting a label together or combining parameters on a schedule.

 

This would make finding families in the browser soooo much easier.

Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Agreed, I prefer your method Mike, sounds like a great idea.

Advisor
Advisor

I don't seem to be able to upload files here. But i have a dynamo script that renames my type mark to what the type is called.

 

For type-mark I also created a shared parameter. Because the oob type mark parameter isn't fixed and changes per project. but i want them be the same all the time. So my above script is only needed once really. 

Obviously your tags and schedules also need to use that shared parameter. 

Enthusiast
Enthusiast

@HVAC-Novice - Are you able to upload to an external source and share the link (e.g. google drive, dropbox mega etc)

 

Would love that script in the meantime.  

 

I wouldn't mind doing what you do in reverse, Type Mark to Type Name even.

Advocate
Advocate

Would have been nice to have this today, only been a request for 7 years.

Advocate
Advocate
Don't worry, its gathering support!
Advocate
Advocate

@crapai It's been a lot longer than 7 years, this discussion is from 15 years ago: https://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?92465-text-parameter-in-IF-STATEMENTS

 

At the current rate of what Autodesk call 'development', I'll have retired (another 15 years away) before anything users really want and have been repeatedly asked for is implemented by Autodesk.

Advisor
Advisor

Let's celebrate the tenth anniversary of this idea 🥳

:billete_con_alas::tarta_de_cumpleaños::x_de_multiplicación:10🟰:cara_con_lágrimas_de_alegría::gráfica_de_evolución_ascendente:🧓

Advocate
Advocate

How many years does an idea have to be 'gathering support' before it ends up on some youtube channel as a 'greatest ideas that never made it'?

Maybe they are waiting for another shame letter from the industry? :sobre_entrante:

Advocate
Advocate

Periodic bump from myself, that my team would benefit from this functionality.

Bump

 

Would be a great feature to combine two or more text parameters in Schedules like this:


nikolamarkovictermovent_0-1703589439457.png

 

Advocate
Advocate
Hey now, easy with the bumps. Let this Garner support for at least another
decade before we start bumping these kinds of implementations

If there are things about formulas that are difficult to implement, then perhaps the problem isn't the features being requested, but the underlying code base for formulas itself. Many more people are savvy enough today to understand data structures and type casting. A good chunk of people running software today are coding in Python and C#. We get that things can be difficult. It's really hard to imagine something like this feature not being implemented. This is Autodesk. It isn't a startup with 10 people working out of a garage. There's no reason Revit should have issues AutoCAD had solved 25 years ago.

 

To be honest –and I realize this is extreme– but I think Revit itself could use a ground-up rewrite that goes off a new spec. There's some really dumb limitations with Revit that infuriate users. Small lines, can't do that. PDFs linked, can't do that. Formulas that work with common units, doesn't work. Labels with text formatting, can't do that. Concatenating of text? Really? There is clearly something wrong with the underlying code base. Autodesk is making new software left and right, but I think it's time one of those new products be a new BIM app that puts Revit on a shelf.

If Autodesk doesn't do it, someone else will.

Momentan arbeiten wir an einem Addin, welches genau dies ermöglichen soll.

Hier ein kleiner Vorgeschmack:

Wir benötigen noch freiwillige Tester, um ein optimales Produkt liefern zu können. Falls Sie Interesse haben, melden Sie sich gerne unter fabian.oswald@pid-projektmanagement.com 

Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I was going to post my own use case here, but Revit develoment team: aren't there enough reasons listed here already? How much support needs to be gathered for something so critical with no real workarounds? Basic string formulas, for all the reasons mentioned above, are not just bells and whistles, they are a core part to decent inside-Revit data management that should not take 7+ years to implement.

 

jan_0-1711643448126.png

 

Advocate
Advocate

@Anonymous

 

Look on the bright side, every dollar saved on not developing software that corporate and other users will still buy, despite the now very noticeable lack of any development, every year, is a dollar free to go towards the ludicrous 'compensation' that Autodesk's management get each year for explaining away why they are not providing any meaningful updates.

That kind of chutzpa takes 'talent' that we mere mortals obviously don't have, or we wouldn't be using the software, we'd be making 7 or 8 figure incomes (plus stock options, bonuses etc etc) in what is really charging rent (hard to tell if this is /s or not?).

 

https://www.salary.com/tools/executive-compensation-calculator/autodesk-inc-executive-salaries?year=2023 

Advocate
Advocate

Starting to think Autodesk is run by Kang & Kodos (hideous space reptiles), what with the approach it takes to ideas.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7NeRiNefO0 

Participant
Participant

Can't believe an 8 year old thread asking for the feature is the top google result for this issue. Eight years! It can't be that hard surely!

@t_newsom 

According to Autodesk, it is that hard apparently.  Evidently, they don't hire developers that are capable of basic programming tasks.  Instead, they hire PR people with little to no programming experience to make the case to the community that "it's hard, so we won't do it."  I'm just waiting for another company to figure out the potential market in a competitor to Autodesk that actually listens to its user base, and I'd gladly switch our whole company away from Autodesk.

Advocate
Advocate

 

I think they hire the marketing people to try and convince us that things like Creating, or Voting in favour of, an Idea will actually result in Autodesk doing anything that users would find useful.

 

As opposed to, say, Autodesk doing very little, that they can still spin as a 'Brand New Feature', to hike the price of the latest release that everyone has to buy, at an above inflation rate, again.

 

It's only a matter of time before Autodesk get a dishonorable mention on this Wikipedia  Page , along with the other 'usual suspects'.

Since they'll never do it, why not export all your Revit model data to PowerBI where you can have formulas and analysis to your heart's content?

Participant
Participant

I note that this idea is indicated by many users. After almost 10 years, nothing is yet available in Revit.
My request: enable a text parameter to be controlled by a formula where text values and/or integers, numbers, length can be concatenated. This should not be difficult to achieve, but it offers many possibilities to establish relationships between elements via coding / labels. This is really a shortcoming in Revit.