Duct Accessory Tag

[HN_arucker]

I am looking to make a Duct Accessory Tag that will return a value based on the family name.

Example, "=If(and((Family Name) contains "Damper", contains "motorized", "MVD", "VD")  "

Of course, there would be more options and parameters to look at for tagging but this is the basic idea. Is there a way to have a return based on a test contains in a formula?

I feel utterly stupid asking this but I cannot find the answer. 

[RLY_15 · Accepted solution]

To my knowledge, Type Names/Family Names cannot drive formulas. You also cannot use strings in your conditional logic, only in the output (if it's a text value parameter).

How many variations of Motorized Damper/Volume Damper families are you intending to include in your projects? Unless you're pulling from manufacturer libraries I would have only expected one for each duct profile type.  For this use case it's probably more expedient to just type the results into each family, rather than test for them.

[fabiosato · Accepted solution]

Hello,

The best way is to include a shared parameter that contains the desired text in the duct accessories, and them create a tag to display this parameter value.

[HVAC-Novice · Accepted solution]

Why not just make a shared parameter for the type mark and for each family or type. so the motorized damper type will then have the type name you want it to have.  I use this for type families where I don't schedule each instance. 

Unless you want a mark where which instance has a different name. But then you would assign a logical value. 

Having text changed based on conditions doesn't really work in Revit AFAIK. I was hoping to create model numbers based on segments of text, but that doesn't' work. so you may not be able to do what you suggest. You also would have to build the smartness into the tag. So that duct accessory tag also would work the same way for a damper, but also other duct accessories. Balancing damper, fire damper etc. they may not follow your scheme. so better to put the smartness into each family. 

[HN_arucker]

Thank you to the 3 of you for responding. As all of you gave similar resolutions, I accepted all as solutions.

Yes, using having a parameter for the acronym would be ideal. This current client, however, is VERY particular and does not want us to mess with their parameters and families (I asked them if I could, but it was shot down fast). I got the green light to use the out-of-box "Comments" parameter. So I selected one of the volume dampers the client supplied, right-clicked and selected all instances in the project, and placed the text "VD" for the tag. Did the same for motorized dampers ("MD"), fire dampers ("FD"), and so on.

So, now my Duct Accessory (Damper) Tag will pull from the Comments instead of a fancy workaround to make things more simple.