Creating a custom plot stamp and personal rant

[jorgeseptien]

I am familiar with the "date/Time Stamp" parameter that is available in Revit, however I am trying to create a custom one.  I am trying to make it so that the date present in the title sheet is a cryptic date.  Even if someone were to point out how to add just the year to a plot stamp, that would be great.  

I have finally sat down and have begun trying to set up some standards for our office and it has not been a fun experience.  And to all those who answer "stop trying to make it do what CAD does" I say, enough.  I understand that Revit far exceeds the abilities of AutoCAD, but I feel as though there are rules that must be followed and too bad if you do not like them.  As architects, I feel that every office has a style and Revit somewhat limits the way things are represented.  From the date stamp, to the inability of adding a model pattern type on a material's cut pattern, to the inabilty to snap to the corner of a view title, these obstacles make it impossible to make the drawings look like they did in CAD.  There, I said it.  I just do not understand what the big secret is.  If you are as frustrated as I am, please reply.  If you do not agree, please reply as well.

Don't get me wrong.  It is a great tool, but it is not as customizable as AutoCAD. 

[Anonymous]

1. Jorge, THANKS for your not-really-a-rant-rant, too many have drunk the koolaid here, and will NOT admit to ANY Revit shortcomings, period.  THAT is what is most disturbing: their 'answer' is, 'it is YOUR fault for not buying into the Revit-way, not the fault of perfect Revit for conforming to how architects ACTUALLY do their projects.'  BS.

2. Revit: the most expensive beta software evah!  C'mon, there are issues with this software which would NOT be acceptable for shareware from the 80's, but Revit acolytes will NEVER admit to it.  Can't show trailing spaces ?  Oh, well what software can, except ALL OF IT in the world.  Has the gronkiest user interface with stupid conventions: e.g. just pull down the list of choices instead of making me smoosh an invisible flyspeck at the end of the line.  In fact, that is way too common: teeny tiny pixel-sized hot spots I have to zero in on, instead of making the whole line just drop down to a list of choices.  Not to mention, limiting a lot of them to a ridiculously short list (yes, I am aware some can be changed from a ridiculously short list, to a slightly longer not quite as ridiculous short list.)

3. The plotting mess of Revit just makes me mad.  Oddly enough, we are MOSTLY NOT plotting complete sheets all the time, but portions of sheets, or portions of views/plans/etc.  Sometimes we actually want them 'to scale', imagine that !   Revit just plain sucks for plotting.  Hey, want a nice background image in your 3D perspective !  Great, just hope you don't have to plot it out (we're all just screen-based companies, now, right ?)  THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IT.  Freeware from the 80's has better plot capabilities.

4. I *guess* Autodesk is pushing their useless version of PDF's (because that must be what WE WANT), but that is no excuse for Revit not being able to deal with them as drawing pieces/parts.  THE WHOLE WORLD IS USING PDFs, EXCEPT Autodesk.  Thanks again.

5. I could go on, but it is pointless: Autodesk will do what they will do IN SPITE of their CUSTOMER's preferences.  Same ole, same ole.

(PS I have NO DOUBT that BIM is where it is at, it is just a shame that Autodesk had to be the 900lb gorilla to dominate the market with their half-baked beta software.  I mean, its only been owned by them since 2002 or something, only been 12 years of 'development', so we should just accept it has some 'rough edges' still. Right, fan bois ?  *snort*)

[Anonymous]

Sure would be nice if Revit had Fields...but, the list of my Annotation items would have a LOT more on it than Fields to start with!!!

[David_W_Koch]

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@jorgeseptien wrote:

I am familiar with the "date/Time Stamp" parameter that is available in Revit, however I am trying to create a custom one.  I am trying to make it so that the date present in the title sheet is a cryptic date.  Even if someone were to point out how to add just the year to a plot stamp, that would be great.  

I have finally sat down and have begun trying to set up some standards for our office and it has not been a fun experience.  And to all those who answer "stop trying to make it do what CAD does" I say, enough.  I understand that Revit far exceeds the abilities of AutoCAD, but I feel as though there are rules that must be followed and too bad if you do not like them.  As architects, I feel that every office has a style and Revit somewhat limits the way things are represented.  From the date stamp, to the inability of adding a model pattern type on a material's cut pattern, to the inabilty to snap to the corner of a view title, these obstacles make it impossible to make the drawings look like they did in CAD.  There, I said it.  I just do not understand what the big secret is.  If you are as frustrated as I am, please reply.  If you do not agree, please reply as well.

Don't get me wrong.  It is a great tool, but it is not as customizable as AutoCAD. 

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You can do something similar to what you want with Dynamo.  It will not automatically update the value; you would have to open the Dynamo file and select the Run button in Dynamo each time before you plot.  The Dynamo file can generate a random number for the prefix, the date string and a random number for the suffix, and then push it onto a Project Parameter that is tied to a Shared Parameter that is also used by a Label in your title block family.

Not as slick as a field that automatically updates, but slightly cooler than having to manually edit the value of the Project Parameter in the Project Properties dialog.  Using the API, you could probably get something more automatic, but that is beyond my current skill set.

[SteveKStafford]

I realize this is an old thread and its meandered a bit.

Regarding a plot stamp, I didn't notice if anyone mentioned that plotters can often add one during printing. If plotting to PDF first, like a lot of firms do these days, it is also easy to add one with Bluebeam or software like it.

[Alfredo_Medina]

Yup, not a big deal, is it? At least not a reason for long rants against the whole software, because the user does not have a tool to make a plot stamp with just the date and not the time.

[David_W_Koch]

The attached ZIP file contains three files, Coded Date Parameter.dyn, Coded Date Test Parameter.txt and Coded Date Test Project_Purged.rvt.  The RVT file is a test project file.  The DYN file is the Dynamo file that generates and pushes a coded date string to a custom Project Parameter called DateCode.  The TXT file is a shared parameter file that contains the DateCode parameter definition.

A detailed description of the Dynamo file can be found in this blog post, if you are interested.