Shared Parameters and Equipment Schedules Overview

I wanna talk about shared parameters. Now shared parameters control a whole lot of things in the Rev X framework, so they're important to understand. And I thought that the way I would start is I would start by just doing something with an exhaust fan and showing how shared parameters control that family, how they schedule that family, how it's related to tags, and just walk through the whole thing because showing a real example would be better than me just kind of academically talking through it. So I've got a blank model here. I've got a roof plan and I wanna get an exhaust fan on the roof.

So I'm gonna go over to my warehouse view and I'm going to grab I'm just gonna grab a couple of exhaust fan families. I'm gonna copy them and go over to my roof plan and I'm going to activate this view by double clicking on it and control v, paste these fans into my project. So now I've got them. I'm just gonna write them here. And now I'm gonna tag them, so t g.

And click on this one, click on this one, and click on that one. Okay. So where do the shared parameters come in? Well, they're they're basically everywhere. First of all, I'm just gonna select this. I'm gonna select this fan. And over here in the properties, you'll see some parameters that start with a lower case s and the rest of the parameter name is all capitals. That's the naming convention for the Rev X shared parameters. So if you see a little s and then all caps in a parameter name means that we made it and it's part of the system. You're not gonna find these parameters anywhere else.

So we've got some we've got a location one here. We've got a number of other parameters here. You'll notice this tag, this tag says e f dash e f dash. And down here under the parameter s comma equip ID seen in e f dash. So you probably guessed correctly, this tag is looking for this parameter.

So if I change it here to e f one, that's an e f one. I can come in here, change this one, oops, to an EFDash2. And this one I could change to an EFDash3. Okay. And so just to just to show a little bit further here, I can click on this tag and and edit family.

And there's a lot going on here, but I'm selecting the mark label and I go to edit and you can see here is S comma clip ID. Again, this is the parameter that it is looking for. And these are all my options over here. I could have it looking at different things. But I have it set to look for S comma equip ID. And so that's why this tag is reading this parameter. Okay. So that's pretty much just the beginning. That's that's how the tag is reading. What we've got, you can see we've got a lot of other parameters that are controlling different things.

And these are all of the instance parameters. And we'll talk more about that later. And then we've also got a few type parameters. So type parameter means that it is set for all instances of this type. So all c u e one hundreds, they are the values for these parameters are gonna be the same across all of them.

Whereas if I had multiple of if I had multiple these, all of the instance parameters could be different. For example, value of these parameters could be all different even though it's the same type because because they're instance parameters. Okay. But now the question is, what are all of these shared parameters for? Well, most of these shared parameters are for scheduling, they're for the equipment schedules.

So let's look at that. Let's go back to mechanical warehouse and I'm going to right click, deactivate view, come over here, find my exhaust fan schedule, and I'm just gonna copy and paste that. And here my roof plan sheet, I'm gonna deactivate the views on now in the sheet space. I'm just gonna pop this schedule onto the sheet so that we can see what we're doing here. So we we see our schedule, we see the tags, and we also see the equipment right here.

So it should be should be easy to work with. So if I double click into this schedule, now the schedule editing mode, and I can go over to fields. And this list of parameters right here, these are all of the parameters. These correspond to the headers, to the columns. And you notice these are all of the Rev X shared parameters.

So the fan in my roof plan, it has all of these parameters loaded into it and this schedule is looking for these parameters. So you can see it's looking for SCOM equip ID. There we and that's this column, Mark. It's looking for SCOMMFR. That's manufacturer, Greenheck.

SCOMModel, CUE 100, 99, etcetera. So the so this schedule is reading the values of the parameters that are associated with the families. So and the reason that the column headers are different is because you can name them whatever you want. So in formatting, come here and see this SCOM MDL. Of course, I've renamed that to model so it it looks the way I want when I print my set. Okay. So I'm gonna go back to my roof plan. And I'm gonna go to my oh, let's we've got a couple e f threes here. Let's and a couple e f twos. Let's make this a little bit more clear.

So we go EF let's make that four, and this is gonna be EF5 so we can keep track. It's a little difficult to slow. Alright. So now, I'm gonna go into my e f one, and I'm gonna look at the s com weight field, and I'm gonna type in, let's see. I don't really know what reasonable number is, but I'm gonna just gonna type in a 120.

And you can see here, a 120 appeared on the schedule. Just by entering it in into the family here. So e f two, you know, I could do the same thing. Weight, let's say this one's two hundred. It's the same one, so it should be the same. Hundred and twenty pounds. Right? So I can edit the schedule. I can edit the schedule that way. I can edit the information that way.

Of course, it's a fancy word alert. It's bidirectionally associative. This is a fancy BIM word that means it's it's the same data. They're both looking at the same source. So I could come over to my exhaust fan schedule and for the 99, maybe the 90 well, let's just keep it simple. That's £99, let's say. And then back over here in the roof plan, there it is. 99 pounds. And if I look at this, that's e f four. I click e f four and there it is.

It's come weight the value has been set to 99 pounds because I entered it here in this schedule. So you can see how it's all connected and it's all connected by these shared parameters. I'm gonna show another thing. So we have so this tag type, you see there's a few options, ID, unit type, weight, unit type, weight, comment. I'm just gonna set it to ID and weight. And you can see that this tag is reading, you can guess by now, it's reading the parameter s com weight to fill that out. So you can do that. So you can do lots of things. You could add weight. Obviously, we've already got that.

You could add gas connected load. You could add cooling capacity. Anything that's relevant, you could build that into the tags, have it read any of these shared parameters. Okay. Let's set that back. So before we get any further, might be wondering what what really are these shared parameters? Where do they come from? So shared parameters live in a text file, which generally you you never you never actually open the text file itself. I'm just gonna pop it open real quick to show you. You you never would wanna edit this.

But this is what's going on in here. It's essentially a, you know, a CSV file. This right here, these long strings, these are the the IDs of the shared parameter. This is what Revit sees. It doesn't really care about what the name is. The name is for us humans, it sees this. So you can actually have two shared parameters that have the exact same name, but their GUID is what this is called. Their GUIDs will be different. So according to Revit, they're two absolutely different thing two two different things, but you might not be able to tell because they're they're named they're they're human named the exact same thing. So that's something to to keep an eye out for.

So this is a big off file. Obviously, you wouldn't want to edit this. It's just pretty gnarly and you'd probably screw it up. The let's say we but but that is where the the shared parameters are stored. They're stored in that text file.

So let's say that I wanted to add another shared parameter to my schedule and to my my piece of equipment. So I'm gonna to do that, I'm gonna show the manual way first, the sort of out of the box Revit way to add shared parameters. Generally, you're gonna use a plug in like D roots to it just makes it incredibly faster. But it's good to know how to do it manually so that you understand how everything works. So I've got my exhaust fan selected.

I'm gonna say edit family. And I'm gonna come up here to the family types. And so you can see here, these are all of my parameters. And I'm gonna say new parameter. I'm gonna change this to shared parameter. Going to select. And because I've because because this computer knows me, it already knows to default that text file to go and here it is. So if if you haven't pointed Revit to the text file yet, once you get it, you just say browse and you would go find that text file and point it to that text file so that you can read that information. Okay. So so here it is.

I'm gonna change over to to Mac equipment. Let's see what should I add. So let's say that I wanted to add this parameter right here, s com option one for some reason to the schedule. So I select it here, hit okay. I tell it where I want it to go and I just generally default it to other, and I want this to be an instance parameter. Again, we're going talk about this more a little bit later. Type whether you want it type versus instance. It's an important decision, but it is a judgment call based on what the parameter is and what the family is and how you plan on using it. So it's kind of a whole discussion. There's no necessarily right or wrong choice here.

Okay. So I've got my SCOM opt one. I'm gonna click okay and here we go. It has showed up in this family and I can hit okay and I can load it into the project. It's my project 42. And now you can see that, here it is, SCOM opt one. So now I've got this extra parameter in my family. It's in all of these because these are all tied to the same family. And they're gonna deactivate view. And let's say I want it now in my equipment schedule, I'm going to double click on it.

I'm gonna say fields, and I'm going to search SCOM. There it is, SCOM option one. This wouldn't have populated in the list before because it wasn't in it wasn't in the project environment yet. So now that it is, it's an option and I can add it into my schedule. And I'm gonna add it right before location is area. And I'm going to put it in there. Oops. I wanted it one up. So I hit okay, and here it is. So of course, it gives it the the name it automatically assigns.

It's just the name of the parameter, which makes sense. But I want it to say something else, so I'm going to say, you know, option I don't even know what this is for. Option one trim trim kit. Right? And now I can type in whatever I want. So these, I don't know, stainless, bronze, totally making silver stuff up here. Okay. So oh, and then, you know, you've got tools for formatting this however you want. Okay. So I've added that parameter to my equipment now.

And again, the the manual way, it's important to know how to do that. Just so you know how everything's working under the hood. Normally I would use the d roots plug in to do that. That'll be a separate video where I will explain how all of that works. So that's a kind of a show and tell example of how shared parameters, what they are, how they work, how they relate to tags, and equipment schedules, and a little bit of basic equipment schedules. We're gonna do next a deeper dive by walking through an example of creating a family and a schedule from scratch. So thanks for watching, and that's all for now.