Historic Revision Schedule

[Anonymous]

Recently while working on a project with various consultants in Revit I came up with what I thought was a pretty intuitive method for creating/managing a sheet index that "automatically" (with minimal input) upodated over the course of a project.  It worked really well, but as I sit back and watch the project shift from CD release to Addendum to Bulletin I find myself wondering why the underlying systems I used to drive this method weren't already interrelated within Revit to begin with.  After all, when does an architecture firm formally release full drawings without a sheet index or without an associated revision?

Now that I’ve established the premise I’ll describe the process I created.  It’s going to sound convoluted and complicated but that’s only because it’s not built in to the software to begin with.  It functions very efficiently after its setup.  The end result is a sheet index that includes sheets from linked sheets from every discipline’s model that populate the index automatically and correctly display the drawing release (the revision) each sheet is associated with by displaying a bullet in a particular revisions column.  Some sheets were there from the very beginning, some sheets came in later in the production process.  Image 1 below shows a clip of the end result of this system; a highly commonarrangement of the index of drawings that Revit is incapable of creating without the setup described below.

• Each bullet is essentially driven by two parameters; a YES/NO project parameter named for a revision and associated with “SHEETS” and a formulated parameter that actually creates the bullet.  For example, for a revision called “BID/PERMIT” I’ve got a YES/NO parameter called “Submittal – Permit” and a formulated parameter called “Permit Set Date” named to be generic and to provide a prompt to the user to rename it with the actual release date.  In this case “Permit Set Date” gets renamed to “08/24/2014 - BID/PERMIT” to show correctly on the cover sheet. 

• When a sheet is deemed to be in a “revision” (in the Revit sense) release the checkbox is checked in that sheet’s properties.  Each sheet to be shown on the index is also told to “Appear in sheet list” which is also a Y/N built in to each sheet in Revit, although I actually created an additional Y/N parameter to drive this called, “Appears in Schedule”.  The sheet index is then filtered by “Appears in Schedule” equals “Yes.”

• Now, of course each release also has to appear on the titleblock of each sheet.  This is where the actual revisions come in to play.  Each release gets a formal Revit revision that is then added to the sheet either via the “Revisions on Sheet” edit window (or in this case via a great Xrev Freebies product Xrev UpRev) if the release happens before revision clouds are necessary, or directly driven by revision clouds if they exist.

Do you see my issue here?  These two things, the Revisions and the sheet index/the parameters that drive it are all separate even though they are inherently interrelated.  To do one release that automatically schedules in this common form of sheet index I have to create 2 parameters and a revision and then I have to go to a sheet and add the revision to it and check the box to include it in that revision.

I’m suggesting that these two systems be inherently linked inside Revit.  When I create a revision in Revit the program should automatically create: a Yes/No parameter as a sheet instance property and a formulated schedule parameter driven by that Y/N that shows up as an addable field in any “Sheet List” schedule.  Everything should be driven by the revisions window (Image 2 below).

In writing this I found an even easier software tweak that would allow this to happen. The previously mentioned “Revisions on Sheet” button that each sheet has (under Identity Data on the properties pallet) is a way to add revisions to a sheet without having a revisions cloud on that sheet. These for some reason cannot be accessed as fields in the Sheet Index.  Simply allowing these to be scheduled would be half of the change I’m suggesting.  Image 3 below shows the “Revisions on Sheet” window next to the custom Y/N parameters I created for this project.  After that the formulated parameter would still need to be created.

If the Sheet Issues/Revisions system currently in Revit could drive all of this (Image 2 below) it would also solve the issue I had of moving these custom parameters between files (I had to use an empty project with only these parameters in them to transfer project parameters to my consultant/engineers files).  All you’d have to do is link a consultant’s file, or conversely all a consultant would have to do is link your file into theirs, and go to manage, transfer project standards, and select “Revision Settings” since you can transfer project standards of linked files without actually opening said linked files.

This feels very straight forward to me, but I’ve been dealing with it for a while.   I’d love to see Sheet Issues/Revisions and Sheet Lists synchronized in Revit. Thoughts?

Image 1: 

Image 2:

Image 3:

Footnote:

I posted this under the title, "Sheet Indexes and Revision Schedules - Why are they disconnected?," a few years here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-architecture/sheet-indexes-and-revision-schedules-why-are-they-d...

[Anonymous]

Now that I’ve established the premise I’ll describe the process I created.  It’s going to sound convoluted and complicated but that’s only because it’s not built in to the software to begin with.  It functions very efficiently after its setup.  The end result is a sheet index that includes sheets from linked sheets from every discipline’s model that populate the index automatically and correctly display the drawing release (the revision) each sheet is associated with by displaying a bullet in a particular revisions column.  Some sheets were there from the very beginning, some sheets came in later in the production process.  Image 1 below shows a clip of the end result of this system; a highly commonarrangement of the index of drawings that Revit is incapable of creating without the setup described below.

• Each bullet is essentially driven by two parameters; a YES/NO project parameter named for a revision and associated with “SHEETS” and a formulated parameter that actually creates the bullet.  For example, for a revision called “BID/PERMIT” I’ve got a YES/NO parameter called “Submittal – Permit” and a formulated parameter called “Permit Set Date” named to be generic and to provide a prompt to the user to rename it with the actual release date.  In this case “Permit Set Date” gets renamed to “08/24/2014 - BID/PERMIT” to show correctly on the cover sheet. 

• When a sheet is deemed to be in a “revision” (in the Revit sense) release the checkbox is checked in that sheet’s properties.  Each sheet to be shown on the index is also told to “Appear in sheet list” which is also a Y/N built in to each sheet in Revit, although I actually created an additional Y/N parameter to drive this called, “Appears in Schedule”.  The sheet index is then filtered by “Appears in Schedule” equals “Yes.”

• Now, of course each release also has to appear on the titleblock of each sheet.  This is where the actual revisions come in to play.  Each release gets a formal Revit revision that is then added to the sheet either via the “Revisions on Sheet” edit window (or in this case via a great Xrev Freebies product Xrev UpRev) if the release happens before revision clouds are necessary, or directly driven by revision clouds if they exist.

Do you see my issue here?  These two things, the Revisions and the sheet index/the parameters that drive it are all separate even though they are inherently interrelated.  To do one release that automatically schedules in this common form of sheet index I have to create 2 parameters and a revision and then I have to go to a sheet and add the revision to it and check the box to include it in that revision.

I’m suggesting that these two systems be inherently linked inside Revit.  When I create a revision in Revit the program should automatically create: a Yes/No parameter as a sheet instance property and a formulated schedule parameter driven by that Y/N that shows up as an addable field in any “Sheet List” schedule.  Everything should be driven by the revisions window (Image 2 below).

In writing this I found an even easier software tweak that would allow this to happen. The previously mentioned “Revisions on Sheet” button that each sheet has (under Identity Data on the properties pallet) is a way to add revisions to a sheet without having a revisions cloud on that sheet. These for some reason cannot be accessed as fields in the Sheet Index.  Simply allowing these to be scheduled would be half of the change I’m suggesting.  Image 3 below shows the “Revisions on Sheet” window next to the custom Y/N parameters I created for this project.  After that the formulated parameter would still need to be created.

If the Sheet Issues/Revisions system currently in Revit could drive all of this (Image 2 below) it would also solve the issue I had of moving these custom parameters between files (I had to use an empty project with only these parameters in them to transfer project parameters to my consultant/engineers files).  All you’d have to do is link a consultant’s file, or conversely all a consultant would have to do is link your file into theirs, and go to manage, transfer project standards, and select “Revision Settings” since you can transfer project standards of linked files without actually opening said linked files.

This feels very straight forward to me, but I’ve been dealing with it for a while.   I’d love to see Sheet Issues/Revisions and Sheet Lists synchronized in Revit. Thoughts?

Image 1: 

Image 2:

Image 3:

Footnote:

I posted this under the title, "Sheet Indexes and Revision Schedules - Why are they disconnected?," a few years here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-architecture/sheet-indexes-and-revision-schedules-why-are-they-d...

[SeanSpence]

I found your old post. glad you posted it here. 

We've done what you explain on jobs but its extra steps that aren't automatic that can fall out of sync with the revisions due to user error. As you say,it should be native.

[jweiler]

Need a way to display all revision for each sheet on a sheet list. The most recent revision is not adequate for many clients which forces tedious manual tracking in Excel. All the information is in the Revit model so it should be schedulable.

[Anonymous]

This is possible with NTI Tools add-in, and we use it all the time. 

[jweiler]

Thanks!  I will look into it.  Does it make a live schedule or just export to Excel and require manual updating?  I really need it to be live.  I forgot to mention in the original post that this tool needs to be able to pull from other Revit files as well like the standard sheet list.

[Anonymous]

It all stays in Revit (although they also have som sort of export to excel, but I will also rather keep it in Revit).

The revision sequences is displayed in the columns, and all the drawings in the rows. They have opportunity to sort the drawings in various ways. Is this what you looked for? 

[jweiler]

That looks promising but I am not finding it on their web page http://www.ntitools.dk/en/portfolio/nti-tools-for-the-building-industry/.  I'm still not clear why Revit does not have this natively.  It feels like I need to pay extra for something Revit should already be able to do.

[jweiler]

As I think more about it since revisions are a large part of the industry.  I think the whole revision process could be streamlined.  Both eh representation as mentioned above but also the maintenance of the list as well.  When you have a large multi building project with multiple consultants both in and out of house with some on Revit and some not it takes a significant portion of our time to do very repetitive takes just to keep the data up to date.

[Anonymous]

I want Revit to automatically pull revision information from sheets and produce a Drawing Issue Register/schedule like the image below.

[ElrinaM]

I would like to see the option to add ALL revisions as part of the sheet list. Currently you are only able to view the current revision of each sheet in the Sheet list. As a result we have to manually keep track of our drawings outside of a Revit environment, and this is not ideal. 

Example attached.

[pieter1]

I agree, but there's already an idea dedicated to this: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/schedule-revisions-on-sheet/idi-p/6326483

[pieter1]

This is a duplicate topic to https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/schedule-revisions-on-sheet/idi-p/6326483

[Anonymous]

Yes please! I use the exact same workaround as the OP, and it's tedious at best, massively error-prone at worst.

This should be so much easier to do...yet another example of how different parts of the program don't seem to be able to talk to each other (i'm looking at you, room finish schedules). 

[Anonymous]

Exactly. It occurs to me that a dedicated shared parameter file could be
used to accomplish this task as well, rather than a shell file.

[Anonymous]

Actually, now that you mention it- I did use shared parameters for this on my most recent project! Worked similarly, and just as effectively, but still a lot of steps, since I had to create a new shared parameter and add it to the project parameters each time we did a revision and then go back through and check the boxes on each sheet... and this particular project has 9 buildings. In 9 files. So repeat the process for each...Sigh.

[Anonymous]

This is very tedious to manage, and I can't believe developers haven't tackled it yet.....

BIMLink it is.....      😞

[jan]

Yes please make this happen! Totally agree with beno.

[eli.wolpin]

Ability to separate revisions from issuances. We made a workaround. It's not ideal.

[Anonymous]

Similar to Revision Schedules, instead of creating shared parameters with labels in titleblocks, we should be able to make an Issue Schedule to indicate 75% Review Set, 95% Review Set, Permit Set, Construction Set, etc. (Without having to actually place a revision cloud or anything)

[pieter1]

Ideally we would be able to change revisions from within this schedule. That would immediately solve this idea: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/change-revision-on-multiple-sheets/idi-p/6380877 

[Anonymous]

@jweiler "I'm still not clear why Revit does not have this natively.  It feels like I need to pay extra for something Revit should already be able to do."

It is absurdly crazy how much money is given to Autodesk by companies and they (we) still have to go to third party to get features that should be native or Incorporated into the software. In Revit 2017 we got an updated text editor that no longer messes up the formatting. It took 8 years. That was one hell of an expensive text editor!