Built-in parameters are not showing on schedule

[james.levieux]

Hi All,

I'm finding that some built-in parameters are not appearing on my schedules.  My understanding is that built-in parameters are schedulable, so I'm wondering what is going wrong.

Also, I've been involved in an effort to clean up unwanted parameters from our generic family library because I've noticed there are multiple instances of dimensional parameters like Length, Width, Height, etc.  I've purged most of them, but I'm still left with one duplicate of each dimension that is always empty and that I can't get rid of.  I was thinking it may have something to do with the built-in parameters in the casework families....

In the screenshot below you can see a casework family type that has two instances of Height that contain nothing, yet, if I open that family and inspect the Height parameter, it is indeed a built-in parameter that should(?) be showing on the schedule.

I’ve confirmed that the dimension columns that do contain values are my shared parameters.  I’ve also confirmed that there are no duplicate project parameters. 

Where are those empty columns coming from and how can I get rid of them?

Why are the built-in parameters not appearing?

Regards,

James

[ennujozlagam]

have you select shared parameters and see if helps?

[se.ha]

Hello @james.levieux

It appears that this is a Multi-Category Schedule. In such schedules, there are limitations on the use of certain parameters.

[hmunsell]

"Multi Category" schedule does not show you all the category specific parameters, it mostly shows Project/Shared Parameters (Manage ribbon > Project Parameters) that are in the project model. That "Height" parameter in the schedule may not necessarily be the Built In parameter in the Casework family. It could be a Project Parameter in your Project that is not associated with the Casework, which is why its blank. 

[barthbradley]

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[james.levieux]

Hi Howard,

Yes, that explains the casework issue.  I created a casework schedule and it looks perfect, only showing the built-in parameters and no duplicates.

I still want to clean the redundant Length, Width, Height, Depth parameters.  I've been able to eliminate MANY unwanted parameters by opening certain (downloaded third party) families and removing the shared parameters, but several parameters persist.  How can I find the families that contain these parameters?  I think that many of the offending families will probably not even appear on my multi-category schedule since they may be non-shared families and invisible when nested inside another family.

[barthbradley]

What's this 3rd Party Add-In doing precisely? Removing Shared Parameters from the Shared Parameter Text File or removing the Shared Parameters from Families in the Project? Removing Shared Parameter from the Text File wouldn't really do anything or affect the Families that are using them.  Shared Parameters are simply Parameters that have identical GUIDs.  There is no Link maintained with the Shared Parameter File once they are pulled into a Family/Project. In order to remove them from the Families, you would need to change the Shared Parameter in each Family to a standard Family Parameter - or to a different Shared Parameter.  Is that what the Add-In does?  

[ToanDN]

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@james.levieux wrote:

I still want to clean the redundant Length, Width, Height, Depth parameters.  I've been able to eliminate MANY unwanted parameters by opening certain (downloaded third party) families and removing the shared parameters, but several parameters persist.  How can I find the families that contain these parameters?  I think that many of the offending families will probably not even appear on my multi-category schedule since they may be non-shared families and invisible when nested inside another family.

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- You cannot delete any built-in parameters

- Built-in parameters of different categories are not the same albeit sharing the same name, for example: Width and Height of Doors category are not the same Width and Height of Casework category.

- To 'merge' parameters across categories, you can add shared parameters to the families and use formula to get the value from the built-in parameters

[james.levieux]

Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse.  I'm not using an add-in.  I'm literally editing each individual family in the family editor and deleting the shared parameters.  I've discovered that third party content (like from BIM Object)  always contain a multitude of shared parameters that flood the parameter list.  This is safe to do if the family has no separate types with different values.

I've been able to find many of the offending families because values for their parameters are visible on my multi-category schedule and I can find the family/type name.  The problem I have now is that there seem to be several parameters that have values that do not appear in my schedule so I can't track down the family name.  My guess is that these families don't report values because they are nested and not shared.

I tried to use Revit Lookup to see if I could use it to find the families that contain these few stray parameters.  Looking at Snoop DB, then SharedParameterElement, gave me the horror show below.  It's making my brain hurt.  I couldn't find a way to track these parameters back to the families that contain them.

[hmunsell]

In order for them to be in a schedule, they need to be Project Parameters in your model. When making a Project Parameter you can select Shared Parameter to base it on. to do that though, you need the Shared Parameter file to load them from. as @barthbradley mentioned, you can make one by exporting the shard parameters from the family and adding them to a shared parameter file. This will maintain the GUID number and allow you to make a Project Parameter based on it and use it in a schedule. 

As far as identifying them.... looks like you have Snoop, that a start. There may be some 3rd party apps like (pyRevit, DiRoots, etc....) that may have a tool to do that? otherwise its very much a manual process. 

[james.levieux]

I found that you can find all the orphaned parameters by

1. starting with a clean project
2. create a multi-category schedule and add all the fields to the schedule
3. insert a component family
4. look to see if any new fields are added to the schedule field list

Naturally this would take a very long time if you have hundreds of families to check, so I wrote a rough C# program that

1. gets all the shared GUIDs from the clean project.
2. inserts a new family and then gets all the new GUIDs after insertion.
3. compares the difference in GUID lists and logs the family name with it's list of orphaned parameters.
4. roll-back the insertion
5. insert the next family and append log results, etc.

The resulting log file beautifully exposed all the orphaned parameters.

After some thinking,  I think I can vastly improve the program to eliminate the need to start from a clean project and the need to export all the families to external files because I can probably:

1. Get all the "good" GUIDs directly from the shared parameter text file.
2. I can probably cycle through each family in the "dirty" project and get their shared parameter directly.
3. Use those lists to get the exact same results AND, optionally, covert the orphaned shared parameters to family parameters.

I'll post the code when I'm done.  Also, since I'm getting into Dynamo, I'm planning to produce a .dll so it's more accessible to y'all.

[james.levieux]

If anyone is interested, I've posted an update to my CADdaddy Tools (www.caddaddy.com) that contains the program "Clean Parameters" as I've previously described in my last post on this thread.  I have not used this in production yet so save your work before using. 

James