Leaded Windows Family with random coloured glass

[Simon_Weel]

I want to apply a random colour pattern to the pieces of glass in a leaded window. Three colours, to be precise. Created three Materials and applied them to the glass pieces and as a result, all placed Windows look the same. That's bit boring, so I set out on how to randomize the colours. I've seen some posts on how to get Dynamo to do this with panels in a Curtain Wall. But I don't know anything about Dynamo? So I wonder how to get this done, one way or the other... 

[barthbradley]

I don't think dynamo would be of help to you anyways.  A window family with a bunch of polygonal pieces of geometry representing glass?  Do all these geometries (e.g. "glass pieces") have a material parameter associated to it, or are you painting the material onto the geometries in the family?  

...am I understanding you correctly? This is what I'm envisioning you are doing:

[Simon_Weel]

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@barthbradley wrote:

A window family with a bunch of polygonal pieces of geometry representing glass?

 Do all these geometries (e.g. "glass pieces") have a material parameter associated to it,

...am I understanding you correctly? This is what I'm envisioning you are doing:

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Yes, yes and yes.

One alternative is using instance parameters for the glass Material, but this means a truck load of parameters in the Family....

[barthbradley]

Truck-load of Parameters? Why? I thought you said only 3 materials were being "randomized".  That's 3 Parameters. But, still, every piece of geometry will need to have its Material Parameter associated to one of those 3.  

[Simon_Weel]

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@barthbradley wrote:

Truck-load of Parameters? Why?

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Exactly. There are three colors and some 60 pieces of glass. Each piece of glass needs a Material. So if I where to use instance parameters for the material, then each piece of glass needs a parameter. Pretty cumbersome, and that's why I was hoping for a different solution like Dynamo...

[Anonymous]

No it's not that complicated.  Create 3 materials in your project, such as Green glass, Blue glass and red glass.  Each pane of glass will have a material parameter, which will be either Colour 1, Colour 2 or Colour 3 (for example).  Apply these randomly and associate with the coloured glass materials in your project.

[Mirko.Jurcevic]

I am afraid it's more complicated than that.

If I got it right, he wants to randomize both: material AND glass associated with it.

If he do it as you suggested, he will get the same patterns where colors just switched places.

[Mirko.Jurcevic]

Can you upload image of the front view of the window geometry?

Are those rectangles, or some curved glass geometries?

[Simon_Weel]

This is one of the windows. In this one, I created a family for each shape of glass. In those glass-families, I created three types for each colour. After placing all the pieces of glass, I changed the types to get a more or less random colour pattern.

In the mean time, I tried another solution. My idea was to gather all glass panels in a schedule, export the schedule to Excel, let a formula do the randomization and import the Excel file back into the schedule. But alas....

I assigned a shared (instance) parameter for the glass material. Made the pieces of glass a shared family, so I could gather all instances in a schedule. Exported the schedule to Excel and then found out the value for instance parameters are not exported, nor can they be modified...

At least I can now assign colors in the schedule rather then selecting each piece of glass... 

[barthbradley]

.

[Mirko.Jurcevic]

I must admit that the "problem" you have is quite interesting.

I have an idea, I did not test it, it's just a concept for now, but I think it will work.

First, let's ignore top row for now and think as all of the rows are the same.

1. Create single ROW of glass as a separate family (Generic Model for example)
2. Assign each glass with (type) material parameter (7 material parameters in total since there are 7 glass in a row).
3. Create multiple types having different sets of materials, for example, create 10 types, each having different order of the given three materials (put those manually and randomly in each type).
4. In window family, load this "row glass" family, and place it into the window 8 times on the right places.
5. Assign each instance of "glass row family" (their Label instance parameter) to it's own instance <Family Type...> parameter (you will have 8 label parameters since there are 8 rows).
6. Load the window family into the project, place windows, then go from window to window and in each window instance randomly select in each <Family Type...> parameter one of the 10 types you created.
7. If that works well, upgrade nested family so it's also suitable for top row too (with visibility or in some other way).

This way, with only 8 parameters you can get millions of combinations.

If you create <Family Type...> parameters as shared parameters, you will be able to schedule it and randomize everything in the schedule which is much faster.

[Simon_Weel]

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If you create <Family Type...> parameters as shared parameters, you will be able to schedule it and randomize everything in the schedule which is much faster.

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I gave it a try, but unfortunately - after exporting the schedule, the column with the <Family Type> is read-only. Unlocked it, randomized the content and imported it back into Revit. And as you may have guessed - it doesn't import the modified values for the <Family Type> column.

But the idea of putting the glass in rows to randomize is a pretty good work-around....

[ToanDN]

You could just play with a material.