Family Drop Down List Parameters

[aclarke]

Hi all,

I am looking at the Door Family and noticed that there is a drop down for 'Function' and 'Wall Closure'.  I am interested in creating this style of parameter that has a drop down list.  Can this be done?

I have a way to make a drop down using nested dummy families and some formulas and this works fine, I just don't like the weight of the nested families and if I can avoid the juggling of parameters and formulas to make it work this would be awesome.

Thanks

[ToanDN]

Depends on what the dropdown is for.  For example, you can create a dropdown by adding a Family Type parameter to select Type of nested families but I think you already know this.

[aclarke]

yeah, I know the nested family trick.  I work in MEP so I never noticed the door family had a built in drop down list and thought I have been missing something all these years.

Two things I really want:

1.) to add my own 'Edit' button to open dialog boxes relative to the family

     - which I can mimic with a checkbox parameter and an updater event, but it feel hokey and not very intuitive to the user             

2.) a drop down list parameter to drive other parameters

     - which I can mimic with nested families and formulas, but this add unnecessary weight to the family and extra parameters

[Nathan.HilsonN67V6]

I would recommend looking into lookup tables. I just got into these myself and you can do tons of stuff with them. 

Lookup Tables | Revit | Autodesk Knowledge Network

How To Use Lookup Table In Revit? | TutoCAD

[aclarke]

funny you mention this, I was watching a demo on this today and this is how I noticed the 'Function' drop down, I have no experience with lookup tables, and agree this is something I want to know more about but I am a bit short on imagination on what I can do with them short of MEP fittings.

[ToanDN]

So what applications are you thinking to use the drop-downs for?  If they are purely for data management (a list of pre-entered values) then you can create Key Schedules in the project.

[aclarke]

I want to use a drop down to drive other family parameters.  So as a designer selects a family they can choose an option from the drop down list that is fixed and this will drive the value of other parameters in the family.  Currently I use a nested family to do this but I have to lock and hide shared parameters add formulas and such.  not complicated just bulky and family category specific so I see other family of category.  It's just not clean.

[ToanDN]

Here is an example of using a Key schedule to assign hardware groups to doors in project.

Key schedule:

Drop-down list:

[aclarke]

Is this what you are doing?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXfe22WwLZY 

Lookup tables

Type Catalogs

and now key schedules....  this is great stuff!

I always associated key schedule with Key notes, that's what I thought it was and I never expanded my knowledge into this...  Now I am wondering what other 'nugget' I have been missing out on...

Thank you for sharing this with me!

[ToanDN]

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@aclarke wrote:

Is this what you are doing?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXfe22WwLZY 

Lookup tables

Type Catalogs

and now key schedules....  this is great stuff!

I always associated key schedule with Key notes, that's what I thought it was and I never expanded my knowledge into this...  Now I am wondering what other 'nugget' I have been missing out on...

Thank you for sharing this with me!

---

Key schedule is a great tool to populate predefined information in a project.  It has gotten a huge improvement in Revit 2022 with the ability to add shared parameters to the schedule, meaning those populated data can be tagged if needed.  Prior to Revit it was a hassle to workaround tagging using key schedule data.