Announcements
Attention for Customers without Multi-Factor Authentication or Single Sign-On - OTP Verification rolls out April 2025. Read all about it here.

Control Visibility of Parameter by Phase

DavidFrosch2443
Explorer

Control Visibility of Parameter by Phase

DavidFrosch2443
Explorer
Explorer

Possibly a dumb question...have always wondered this, but I have not had time to dig into it. I have a light fixture family with an annotation label to show if the light fixture is existing or not...(we designate existing light fixtures in our drawings with an "E".) I have a simple checkbox to drive this parameter to be either visible or hidden. If the light fixture is existing you must set it to the existing phase and then check the box to show the "E." Is there a way to drive this parameter based on the phase? I'd like the "E" to be visible on the drawing if the phase is existing...and vice versa not visible if the phase is set to "new"...or "proposed" or whatever the next phase may be. I have thought about this on and off for 10+ years and never had time to really dig into it.

0 Likes
Reply
378 Views
3 Replies
Replies (3)

GaryOrrMBI
Collaborator
Collaborator

Nope, can't do it.

Phasing is relative to a project and, further, to views within a project (in addition to being defined by the properties of the instance itself).

 

If you have Phase 1 and Phase 2 and you have an element created in Phase 1, that Element would be both new and existing, depending on the properties of the view that you are currently looking at.

View 1 may be set to Phase 1.

View 2 could be set to Phase 2.

 

You now have an element that would need to have two different appearances, in View 1 it should not show the E for Existing since it's new in that phase, yet, in view 2, it should show the E for Existing. But this one element instance can't exist in both forms in Revit at this time.

 

And I doubt they will ever do anything about that (even though it would be very similar to the graphic overrides that they employ now for phasing, only we would be defining a specific graphic override within the family...)

 

On a side note:

Autodesk's focus hasn't been on truly improving the documentation abilities of Revit for a very long time. They still believe that the industry will just flip a switch and work in a pure digital model across the industry and everyone will  have modelled everything perfectly so everything can be sent straight from the model to production, and because everyone will suddenly start trusting everyone else, and all those liability issues will just disappear overnight, and there won't be a need for any documentation features at all then, so why work on developing them any further now?

 

But, back to the point. No, what you're hoping for doesn't exist at this time. There is no way to directly tie the created phase of an element to another parameter of that element.

 

-G

Gary J. Orr
GaryOrrMBI (MBI Companies 2014-Current)
aka (past user names):
Gary_J_Orr (GOMO Stuff 2008-2014);
OrrG (Forum Studio 2005-2008);
Gary J. Orr (LHB Inc 2002-2005);
Orr, Gary J. (Gossen Livingston 1997-2002)
0 Likes

DavidFrosch2443
Explorer
Explorer

Thanks for the response...that's what I figured...no way to do it, but I probably should rephrase my question...I don't want to change the phase of the light fixture itself...it is what it is... I want to just drive the visibility of the "E." So if the light fixture is existing the "E" is displayed...if it is new then the "E" is not displayed...and well it gets maybe more complicated if there are multiple phases...but the fact that the end user isn't given the option to use this information is just crazy to me...It seems so basic and simple in the remodel world that I live in, that I'm shocked more people don't ask for this functionality. My projects are mostly renovation projects - and exposing the phasing information to be used to drive the appearance of the fixture just seems like such a huge oversight. It's like Autodesk doesn't understand there are billions of dollars a year spent on interior finish-out renovation projects...not all projects are all new....We also put an "E" next to existing electrical and data outlets...and make them smaller in the view than the new outlets...and it would just be so nice to be able to drive these graphical differences based on the phase. I wonder how others convey this information on their drawings.

0 Likes

SteveKStafford
Mentor
Mentor

You can use a type to define an existing version. Dynamo could be used (programming) to change a family's type based on its Phase Created parameter.


Steve Stafford
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
EESignature

0 Likes