schedule type mark of nested components

[bimovation]

It would be great to be able to schedule parameters from nested components such as nested door type marks and other information.

[jkidder]

Right now a parent family can't report data controlled by a nested family. For rows to appear correct in the schedule we then have a parameter which must be manually entered for every item to match data that they could ideally pull from other families.  Parent families should have to link a parameter to a nested shared family's type parameters to report all needed data in a single schedule.  

Example:

Families

• Parent Door A
• Parent Door B
• Door Panel 1 (shared, selected from a family type parameter in the main family)
• Door Panel 2 (shared, selected from a family type parameter in the main family)

Goal: For each Door in the schedule to report the Door Panel's Type Mark.  When changed in the project update in all doors with that panel type

Result:

Door 100, Family "Parent Door A", Panel Type 1

Door 101, Family "Parent Door A", Panel Type 2

Door 102, Family "Parent Door B", Panel Type 2

Door 103, Family "Parent Door B", Panel Type 1

Workflow:

In the parent family select the shared family and open the type properties.  Grey boxes appear by the side, but when linked only can create a reporting parameter (Instance or type).  If the family has a label applied it will only pull type data from families with that label (if you have a nested door panel and a frame family you want to pull the type mark from only families with "panel" label to a panel type parameter).  

Another workflow would be to open the parameter dialog in the parent family, create a new family, choose a new "<Family types...> Reporting" type  which then opens a box to chose one of the <Family Type...> parameters in the family.  The parameter would be a type or instance based on what the <Family Type> parameter was assigned.  The value would default to Type Mark, but the user would be presented a drop down list of all other type parameters.

[jkidder]

Another place that the ability to link through to parameters would be to create a reporting parameter for specific material information for a material.  For example, in that door schedule I would like to to report that the material mark for the panel is WD-1 for doors 100 and 102 and is HM for Doors 100 and 103, while the frame type for all 4 is is HM.  A material take off can't do this because you can't show all the information in one row.

[jkidder]

Another, perhaps simpler, method to achieve this is described in this request: Allow "Field Format" to provide access to other parameters

[Kimtaurus]

If the nested family is Shared you can read their parameters. It's still not possible to have these parameters in the "parent" family, but you'll be able to schedule them in the project.