The look is only a minor (IMHO) issue. If you were to SHARE what all the rows and columns are telling the story of (what specific information and regarding what objects) that would give the info to guide you... like posting an existing/complete example...

Hey Jay, Well what they want to do is schedule all the room types for hotels. In the one above the rows are rooms per level, and the columns are the various room types, (k1 for king size, JS for junior suite, etc. etc.) The Schedule I've attached is from Excel, and is manually input, then linked back into Revit. What they want is for Revit to pull the info and populate the schedule automatically, the reson being counting your own rooms is bound to create some errors. Now we can certainly make a schedule for each room type, but where the room doesn't show up on a level, the level "Row" wont show up. So in the context of the matrix I've tried approaching it by creating the individual schedules for each room type and hiding every parameter but the count. Problem is for some I'll get 8 rows and others I'll get 1 row and everything else inbetween. Question, can you schedule or have a NA value for a room that doesn't show up on a floor? and can you do this in one schedule as opposed to one for every room type?

Please clarify:
1) Room Types??? Is that an added shared parameter? -Sorry, I am in a Revit 2014 project at the moment, so I cannot check 2016, since that's at home
2) Rooms not on a level??? How is that??? I cannot duplicate the issue of a room not being on a level...unless it is simply not placed in the model
3) When you write "for some I'll get 8 rows and others I'll get 1 row and everything else in between" Some what...Levels???

I've not seen rooms schedule improperly as you seem to be finding (outside of the Room Type that I do not understand, since that is not a hard-coded Revit Parameter or option), Do you have filters, unplaced rooms, or phases or design options getting in the way perhaps?

The issue with the format you've shared is the horizontal organization of the data. Revit doesn't organize data across like that. You can definitely summarize rooms and rooms types and list them by floor in a Revit schedule but as you've noted it isn't in the familiar format that you want.

Revit schedules are very much like a query of a database (if you've ever used Microsoft Access for example) combined with basic reporting functions. In MS Access we build tables, then queries, then reports based on the results of the queries or even a combination of them. A query is just asking Revit a question and the schedule's reporting side is the answer. In MS Access we can ask a new question based on the previous answer, a query of a query...and then create a report based on that answer. Revit is not so flexible.

In Revit schedules, when you select a category and the parameters to appear in the schedule you're telling Revit what table of data to look in and then what unique data in those tables are relevant to you. The sorting/grouping defines how it should organize the data to be more meaningful. Sorting a database query with specific criteria creates a conflict when some of the data doesn't include anything meaningful for that value. For example, a room or room type that is not present on a specific floor won't have a unique row to say "Sorry there are zero rooms of this type on Level 3", it only reports rooms and room types that EXIST.

Likewise, Revit won't show N/A in data fields, unless N/A is THE text value that we've typed into a parameter. It either shows the information that is present in the record or it doesn't. For some parameters Revit is more wordy, like when a room is redundant or not placed yet.

If you can live with a vertical summary of the information then you can tell the story you need to tell, just written differently, with a different author's style than the last story you told your client.

If you're looking for an automatic way to get exactly what you want in the image you can consider a couple applications, available now, that will let you extract the data, export it to Excel and then reorganize it into the desired format, then import it back into Revit.

IDEATE Sticky ($395 stand alone)
CTC Schedule XL (included as part of their BIM Project Suite - $450)

They both take advantage of the relatively new API (a couple years old now) access to customizing the header portion of a schedule. The live data is extracted and then reassembled into the header portion of the schedule using the format of the external Excel file you reorganize it with. You could do the same thing manually within a schedule's header, but that's a bit more labor intensive and it won't update without repeating the process each time the summary changes.

Room types as in it would have to be an added shared parameter to make a column in a schedule. at least I'm assuming, (I know don't assume) that you would have to make a parameter, as I can't make the room name parameter into schedule columns.
2. When I say rooms not on a level, I mean that in the context of a schedule that is taking into account all Rooms from All Levels, O want my schedule to have all a levels showing in the Rows, I.e. 1st 2nd 3rd 4th... the in the columns each room would show how many it has per level. Now lets say room2 is on levels 1 & 2 & 4, in the schedule there should be a 0 for the 3rd level, since room 2 isnt there. (I'll bring this to the RUG meeting on Weds...)

Hey Steve, Thanks I probably didnt explain it so well but you hit the nail on the head! I knew about Sticky, and actually that was my recommendation to the studio heads, (We'll probably adopt it) but they did challenge me to find out if we could do it natively. Thanks

After you've input all your rooms' with your custom shared parameter information you could make that matrix with a Pivot Table in Excel in less than 5 minutes. No need for any expensive addins.

If leaving it in Excel format is acceptable, which for some reason seems out of the question more often than not. The price point for the software does help define how serious someone is.

My money is almost always on:
1. The deliverable is a .pdf - so how you get there doesn't matter
2. The recipient, if requiring the data to juggle, will be more comfortable working with an .xls over an .rvt


I don't follow. Are you suggesting that being frugal and averse to spending good money on (costly) addins somehow defines one as less serious? If so*, that's just tosh. Addins are only as useful as their authors make them - and I am a keen advocate of people developing their own, tailored, solutions - using common, accessible and extant platforms. Since output requirements are certain to change, and vary, from job to job, sector to sector, region to region, etc etc - it makes no sense (to me) to expect an(y) addin to provide a solution for all.


*if not, then yes, I've missed your point.