Hey Jozi

You can track every event in the model through API - a bit big brother and guess not quite what you want,

The Building Coder: Element Level Events


Or more sensibly, use Navisworks for model compare - you can generate a report from this. Really though You could tell your M&E to do a model compare on your last issue vs your current issue. we issue NWD files with the model normally.

Hi Raff

I spotted a post somewhere about using the api, as you say though its very big brother like and way overboard for our needs.

I might have to do a navis report myself, didn't realize you could do this in navis, I was aware of design review having a similar feature to compare changes on sheets.

Would still like to have something in place to record briefly what has been changed/updated in the model. For our own sake and to avoid these further questions, also saves me time doing a model compare before issuing a model.

I was thinking (read, heard of another office doing this) of maybe creating a family with a set of parameters which can be placed into the view model, this can then schedule on the startup view/information sheet. I'm not quite sure how to work it or how to go about it properly, I know you can schedule parameters from families that have had text entered which I'm guessing is how to do that part of it.

I think I know the Tool that you need
Revit coordination sample

Chris Vorster from Bimwerx, Presented his own little app at our local User Group a few months back.
It's absolutely Brilliant
Best you look at the link for more info on it
Basically, you run the app at the start of your Co-ordination Issue, & it take kind of a Snapshot of the Model & the Elements
The Next Time you use the App, it can recognize what has changed since the last issue & can write this out to an excel file
You then send the Revit model & the Excel File to the other Consultants
The Consultant then can open your file (and has the same app on his computer) & the app can then be run & can visually show what has changed!

I'm not sure that will work for us in the office, there are quite strict on what software gets installed here :banghead:

Does anyone know what kind of annotation I should use if I want to schedule these parameters? I was thinking of an annotation with description, Level and sheet, with the later to being aware of the level they are placed on and which sheet the view is placed on? In a schedule is it possible to have then numbered or would this also have to be the annotation (could be mark parameter I guess)?

Hi Jozi,

My construction team have asked for exactly what you are asking. They want to know what has changed from week to week in the model (this is of course before our sheets and revisions are up and running)
I created a detail family with shared parameters for:
Date
User Initials
Change description
Grid reference
Building level.
Building Zone

We also created different types. Arch, Mech, Elec, Fire etc

You can then schedule this detail family. Filter by family name.
Sort by date, level, zone or whatever.

We have created a duplicate view for each level in the model and used these to place the change markers. These views are never placed on sheets, but they are left in the model so our consultants can also see the changes when the models are swapped each week.

It's all very manual and only really used for significant cost implication items, not every small change.

I am not in the office now but I will try to post a sample tomorrow.

Hi Drew,

That sounds exactly like what has been asked from us and what I had in mind, less a few parameters. Are yours model elements or annotations? Correct me if I'm wrong bu if you place them in duplicate views, do you have a duplicate view for every view thats on a sheet as well for this purpose? I would appreciate it if you have a chance of posting an image of a sample.

By chance I have another (very manual) annotation in the model and I noticed I can create a "New Noteblock Schedule" which lists all the parameters in the annotation, I was hoping to do something similar with a annotation family and schedule it.

Still looking into finding a good way to track these changes. I had a play around with a generic annotation but this didn't work as we remove all sheets from the model prior to uploading which also removed the annotation in the views making rendering the schedule useless.