More informative error messages

[Anonymous]

When using Revit a large amount of time is lost by trying to interpret uninformative and very general error messages.

In order to find out that something is wrong Revit obviously did the necessary processing to understand the causes.  But then, at least in a large number of cases, rather than providing this information, a very general error message is printed which does not help much to solve the problem.

More informative error messages, if possible even with links to help or internet pages going into more detail, would help to save a lot of time, money and frustration...

Example:

When, for example, calculating a distance using a formula like "Length / Number" the divisor might become 0.  Rather than complaining when this is the case, Revit generally does not allow this kind of formula and something like "Length / (Number + 1)" has to be written.  Obviously Revit did the necessary analysis to understand the origin of the problem.  However, the following very general error message is printed:

  Invalid formula found in the "Length" parameter in the "XXX" type.  You will need to import the correct table or edit the formula in order to continue.

The user then has to find the problem by himself, for example by randomly searching through all kind of internet pages relating to formulas until he finally might find a note like this:

  Arrays in a family can be controlled using an integer parameter. When the array is controlled with a formula, the formula must contain syntax to ensure the array value is always greater than one (an array value must always be greater than 1).

Obviously Revit had all necessary information for localizing the error - but did not go through the effort to print it.

There are plenty of other examples with general error messages not providing helpful information to locate the problem, like the messages concerning conflicting constraints, error messages after reimporting families etc.

[dgorsman]

I think you're given Revit a little too much credit.  Much more likely the formula execution is wrapped in a "try/catch", where it tries to run it as-is.  If an error is encountered ("throw") it is handled (by a "catch").  Those handlers rarely go into the kind of detail you are expecting, as the errors can come from many different levels of programming and have many different causes and solutions.  They only care that something went wrong, and are unaware of where or why it happened.

[Anonymous]

Hi dgorsman, 

Thank you, maybe you are right.  But in this case I would opt for doing some more research into better error analysis tools 🙂

I have the impression that the compilers of most programming languages generally generate better error messages, so there should be some margin and better methods than relying on try and catch.

Also, in the case of "Length / (Number + 1)", a try/catch approach would only work when the value of Number actually is 0 at the time the formula was added.  But an error is printed even if Number is different from 0 - and it is not printed when +1 is added.  

Actually, rather than speculation, it would be interesting to know what kind of procedure causes the error message in this case.

For the case that a try/catch approach was used with different values, the Number == 0 one of them, the reason of the error, however, is clear and a better error message simple to generate.

[rbarbosa8DQGJ]

vote for this:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/thumbnail-when-error-messages-appears/idi-p/9766554