Can a parameter in door family control the visibility of elements in tag family?

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What I need: our door tags have different symbols on them, depending on door material. One symbol if the door is made of wood, another for metal, third for plastic.

I want to create a single tag family that will "read" what material the door is made of, and change accordingly.

I started by creating a shared parameter (integer) which I inserted in door family. 1 would be wood, 2 metal, 3 for plastic.

Then I inserted the same parameter in tag family and set up formulas which drive symbols visibility. This work fine in tag family.

But when inserted in a project, tag doesn't read what is set for the door. I thought maybe tag parameter will automatically see the value of the door parameter, the same way labels do, but clearly they are not connected in any way.

Is there a way for doors to report a value to the tag family, and have the tag change automatically?

- Why don't you just create different tag types?

- Because our tags have to respect door directionality, and Revit doesn't recognise doors directionality. To clarify, looking at a plan view, if doors open up - tag must be placed up, if doors open down - tag must be down, if left, left... This way i'd have to have 4 families each with 3 types, basically 12 different tags in total which I'd have to manually set for each door! Keeping track of that when something changes in project would be difficult and, more importantly, very error prone.

Thanks in advance!

 

[barthbradley]

What about Tall All Selected Objects and chose the Tag manually. You could use Filter to select Multiple Doors meeting certain criteria.  

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Parameters in host family can only control LABELS in tag families.  Therefore, you can utilize formula in a calculated value Label to change the Label value.  The value can consist of a string of text, a blank space, special characters for custom shapes.

[barthbradley]

So, how would you do this?

[yes_and_no]

You must have worked for a nut firm. I never heard of such directional door tag, in any books/manuals. Besides the point here, perhaps you can suggest changing the door graphic instead, as shown.

 

[RDAOU]

One long writup which is so detailed that it  looks like a job order

You left out the part on how this should be billed? Hourly or lump sum for the family?

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@ToanDN

Parameters in host family can only control LABELS in tag families.  Therefore, you can utilize formula in a calculated value Label to change the Label value.  The value can consist of a string of text, a blank space, special characters for custom shapes.

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So theoretically, if I could create a custom font with only those three symbols, I could create such "door material dependent" tag? Although I don't know if creating font with such thin lines is even possible...

@barthbradley 

So, how would you do this?

 No idea, that's why I'm asking 😁

@RDAOU 

so detailed that it  looks like a job order

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It's not, explanation bellow.

@yes_and_no 

You must have worked for a nut firm. I never heard of such directional door tag, in any books/manuals. Besides the point here, perhaps you can suggest changing the door graphic instead, as shown.

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Nope, this is standard in my country. This is how it's done. This is how everybody is doing it. So suggesting some radically different way of tagging doors / windows wouldn't go over well. If there is no way of automating it I will have to create different families/types and do it manually, AutoCAD style.

Also, this was just a simplification of the tag, it actually holds 6 pieces of information:

- width

- height

- height of fanlight if it has it (or height of box for rolling shutters for windows)

- type mark

- parapet height for windows

- material (shape of symbol)

Since plans get quite busy all of those also must be movable and stretchable per instance. Here's a gif how that looks in AutoCAD.

[barthbradley]

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@blank... wrote:

@barthbradley 

So, how would you do this?

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Exactly like I told you in the beginning. Choose the Tag Type manually when tagging doors in Project.  That is, Filter-Select all like Door Types and use Tag All (on the Annotation tab) with the appropriate Tag Type (e.g. the Type with the square, circle or triangle).  

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@barthbradley wrote:

Exactly like I told you in the beginning. Choose the Tag Type manually when tagging doors in Project.  That is, Filter-Select all like Door Types and use Tag All (on the Annotation tab) with the appropriate Tag Type (e.g. the Type with the square, circle or triangle).  

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Right, manually, which is what I'm hoping to avoid:

- Why don't you just create different tag types?

- Because our tags have to respect door directionality, and Revit doesn't recognise doors directionality. To clarify, looking at a plan view, if doors open up - tag must be placed up, if doors open down - tag must be down, if left, left... This way i'd have to have 4 families each with 3 types, basically 12 different tags in total which I'd have to manually set for each door! Keeping track of that when something changes in project would be difficult and, more importantly, very error prone."

Anyway, I'll seem to be able to create custom font with those symbols, so I'll get back to this thread once I get into it, for now I can't figure out how to control which character labels show as suggested by @ToanDN.

[ryley.g.h]

What if you were to draw the tag in the door family with model lines, set them like 1" above the reference level so no floor finish covers them, and set their visibility to only show in plans/RCP's? You can then use the tag all by door type, with a door tag that is literally just the type mark & drag it into place. I find regardless of plan scale, you always have to move the door tag anyways because it never places in a great spot. Theoretically you're doing the same thing, with just 1 less step.

You can setup type-visibility parameters that you turn on/off by the different door types you have. If you want the tags to not show in an RCP, give them a custom object style that you can turn off in the RCP view template.

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@ryley.g.h wrote:

What if you were to draw the tag in the door family with model lines,

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This actually could work, thanks for the idea! But let's first see if I'll be able to create a more robust solution.

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@ToanDN wrote:

 Therefore, you can utilize formula in a calculated value Label to change the Label value.  The value can consist of a string of text, a blank space, special characters for custom shapes.

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Could you please point me in the right direction how to do this. Almost every tutorial I found deals with calculating actual values (areas, occupancy). If they do deal with text then the formula for the calculated value is IF(then, else) which allows only two values to be determined, and I need three.

[ToanDN]

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@blank... wrote:

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@ToanDN wrote:

 Therefore, you can utilize formula in a calculated value Label to change the Label value.  The value can consist of a string of text, a blank space, special characters for custom shapes.

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Could you please point me in the right direction how to do this. Almost every tutorial I found deals with calculating actual values (areas, occupancy). If they do deal with text then the formula for the calculated value is IF(then, else) which allows only two values to be determined, and I need three.

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if ( condition is met, "text string 1", "text string 2")

[barthbradley · Accepted solution]

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@blank... wrote:

IF(then, else) which allows only two values to be determined, and I need three.

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I think you want a nested IF statement.

IF (<condition>, <result-if-true>, IF (<condition>, <result-if-true>, <result-if-false>)) 

Revit Formulas for "everyday" usage - Revit Forum

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@barthbradley wrote:

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I think you want a nested IF statement.

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It works! I didn't know you can nest them, but you can even have multiple levels of nesting. This way I got four symbols, forth one being nothing i.e. an empty space, which is what we use for openings. Now to create custom font, I'll report back how well it worked out. Thank you!

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Works! Even better than expected because "lower/right" and "upper/left" can share a type, so I just need two, not four. Now to figure out if making everything movable and stretchable is at all possible, but that's another topic for another thread.

Thank everyone for helping!