Revit out of the box families/parameters are designed for electrical design, and therefore not useful for Technology design. Even though there exists a data connector there are no technology design parameters available from within the data connector and we’re unable add parameters to the data connector . Revit currently does not view Telecom as a separate discipline, and so there are currently no design tools available for automated cable tray pathway sizing.
We organized our Revit families by the following:
- Telecom (Data Category)
- Audiovisual (Communication Category)
- Security (Security Category)
Family:
- Floor Mounted Devices
- Wall Mounted Devices
- Ceiling Mounted Devices
- Furniture Mounted Devices
We’ve developed our own internal "shared" parameters file for our custom families. Once the shared parameters are added to the families, we can create various "types" within each system family, then have the ability to track and schedule the metadata information within each type. The list of shared parameters includes some of the following:
- Port Count #
- Port #1-6
- Pathway Feed
- Box Type
- Box Cover/Ring
- Tel Room #
- Workstation #
Additional parameters exist but this gives you an idea. What we seek is a proper data connector with design parameters that will allow us to assign a series of port count numbers to the data device also include the ability to identify the telecom room within the each data device. We can then track each device port count back to the assigned telecom room to achieve a total port count per each telecom room. This process would in turn provide us the info to design the cable tray size.
To verify which data device is serving which telecom room the users would have select the telecom room and the device serving that room would be highlighted by a certain color.
This is only one of several ideas, we would like to see introduce into Revit MEP for technology design.