Add-In for View Template manipulation

[Anonymous]

I may be preaching to the choir here, but I am currently looking for a faster way to manipulate view templates across a project, and projects in general.  I am a designer at an MEP firm and I am involved in some large BIM projects and responsible for the view templates and deliverables for all 3 disciplines on projects for my team.  

I am often managing a project models with multiple revit links from different consultants/trades models which all contain small pieces of model elements which I need to selectively show between multiple view templates, sometimes across our own 3 different project models for each MEP discipline depending on the size of the project.  

In a perfect world everyone would organize their links with all the appropriate worksets any of the other disciplines may need to manipulate for their views and/or all the appropriate model category separation for their elements.  But we all know this is not a perfect world and often not the case.  There is also the progression of projects and the easter eggs that present themselves with new content constantly being added to linked models.  

I am sure this is a frustration encountered by many users so I am wondering if there is a convenient method or something close to if not exactly to the tune of an add-in for my ideal scenario below:

Suppose something new appears in the architectural model that is irrelevant to my entire project but it doesn't just live on its own isolated workset.  If I had something the equivalent of tabbing into an object on a link and clicking an element in that link would prompt a context menu or window which would give me options as far as removing that element from my view template and ask me in which way I wanted to do it (the entire link, the link's workset, major model category, nested model category) and if I decided in which way, then also which other view templates I would want to make the same change to.  I realize the danger of even turning things off and not doing it as selectively as possible has the potential of turning off too many things also, so if there was some way to graphically communicate (highlight maybe?) a preview of all types of elements that would also get frozen with your choice, that might also be a help (vague I know).  

Something as simple as this would save me multiple clicks and boatloads of time of the meticulous task of manipulating my view templates.

I am open to suggestions or best practice method tips you might have as well, but keep it constructive.  We tend to use worksets as the best practice for general manipulation of our own model elements in-house across disciplines and I have ran into much frustration trying to control everything with filters as it becomes too much customization and time consuming.

Thanks for your help,

Warren

[RobDraw]

As long as your templates are established, this really shouldn't be a problem if the families in the links are categorized properly. Using worksets for visibility is not a good practice and should be avoided. Counting on others to use them in this manner is futile. There will be elements that are in categories that are normally turned on but are not necessarily needed. That's where filters come in.

You also said something about turning things off as selectively as possible. That almost sounds like you want to turn things off "by element" which is also generally not recommended. I start at the category level and work my way towards being more selective as needed.

Since worksets are at the top of your priority list, I would suggest taking a look at your workflow and adopting something that does not rely on worksets for visibility.

[Anonymous]

Rob,

I have to disagree about adopting something besides worksets.  They really are the easiest way to manipulate multiple system categories at the same time.  This really does seem standard to me.  If not worksets, what is your more efficient alternative.  I am not expecting all the consultants to use worksets as well, but it really does come down to unchecking very specific model categories at times and those are often not even categorized correctly on a consultant's end.  Unchecking everything under specialty equipment not having any bearing but unchecking the parent category specialty equipment for instance turns off EVERYTHING.  I understand that may be something not done on their end correctly but this is often the case and I can't make everyone fix it on their end.  Also no, I do not try to hide things by element, I quote my post "(the entire link, the link's workset, major model category, nested model category)" I am using a view template, therefore I try to set it up once and make small adjustments throughout the project.  But when you are clicking into 5 context menus just to turn one pesky category that shows up across 3 projects, all with multiple view templates, you can see how this is not efficient. 

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@RobDraw wrote:

As long as your templates are established, this really shouldn't be a problem if the families in the links are categorized properly. Using worksets for visibility is not a good practice and should be avoided. Counting on others to use them in this manner is futile. There will be elements that are in categories that are normally turned on but are not necessarily needed. That's where filters come in.

You also said something about turning things off as selectively as possible. That almost sounds like you want to turn things off "by element" which is also generally not recommended. I start at the category level and work my way towards being more selective as needed.

Since worksets are at the top of your priority list, I would suggest taking a look at your workflow and adopting something that does not rely on worksets for visibility.

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@RobDraw wrote:

As long as your templates are established, this really shouldn't be a problem if the families in the links are categorized properly. Using worksets for visibility is not a good practice and should be avoided. Counting on others to use them in this manner is futile. There will be elements that are in categories that are normally turned on but are not necessarily needed. That's where filters come in.

You also said something about turning things off as selectively as possible. That almost sounds like you want to turn things off "by element" which is also generally not recommended. I start at the category level and work my way towards being more selective as needed.

Since worksets are at the top of your priority list, I would suggest taking a look at your workflow and adopting something that does not rely on worksets for visibility.

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