So, in this thread I encountered an intruiging option with schedules that I never noticed before.
After some testing this option blew my mind: it's the holy grail for scheduling if you ever work for architects with lousy Family Management!!!
Every contracter (or anyone else working for third parties) encounters this once in a while: you are provided with a model, and asked to do some scheduling for Quantity Takeoff or Coordination purposes. And the misery starts here...
When you create the first (window) schedule you'll notice a whole bunch of width parameters, all referencing the total width of different windows (fig 1)
After creating the schedule you figure: let's create a "scheduled width" parameter which adds up all those separate width parameters. This way you can clean up your schedule (fig 2). Only to find that it won't calculate. In this case, the family "ontwerpraam doesn't have the parameter "breedte_vo" so in the schedule it returns no value. Therefor, the total cannot be calculated (fig 3).
In comes a very need trick:
Open the schedule properties, go to the Fields Tab, select the parameter causing problems and click Edit.
In the Parameter Properties, check the checkbox "Add to all elements in the selected category", select the category "windows" and choose whether it should be an Instance or Type Parameter (fig 4).
The parameter is now accessible in the schedules, even with the families it's not actually in. You can now fill in a value and the Scheduled Width parameter will calculate properly (fig 5). It will even show up in the family's properties (fig 6).
Be adviced though:
1. This has NO relationship to the actual family. It's a dumb number. It doesn't exist in the actual Family (to test it, you can open the family in the family editor, it won't show there). So keep this to 0, only as a way to be able to create proper schedules.
2. The choice for Instance/Type CANNOT be changed afterwards!!! In this case, I thought it would be better to make it Type instead of instance, but it cannot be accessed again (fig 6)
But hey: there's finally a way to clean up those messy schedules!! (fig 7)
After some testing this option blew my mind: it's the holy grail for scheduling if you ever work for architects with lousy Family Management!!!
Every contracter (or anyone else working for third parties) encounters this once in a while: you are provided with a model, and asked to do some scheduling for Quantity Takeoff or Coordination purposes. And the misery starts here...
When you create the first (window) schedule you'll notice a whole bunch of width parameters, all referencing the total width of different windows (fig 1)
After creating the schedule you figure: let's create a "scheduled width" parameter which adds up all those separate width parameters. This way you can clean up your schedule (fig 2). Only to find that it won't calculate. In this case, the family "ontwerpraam doesn't have the parameter "breedte_vo" so in the schedule it returns no value. Therefor, the total cannot be calculated (fig 3).
In comes a very need trick:
Open the schedule properties, go to the Fields Tab, select the parameter causing problems and click Edit.
In the Parameter Properties, check the checkbox "Add to all elements in the selected category", select the category "windows" and choose whether it should be an Instance or Type Parameter (fig 4).
The parameter is now accessible in the schedules, even with the families it's not actually in. You can now fill in a value and the Scheduled Width parameter will calculate properly (fig 5). It will even show up in the family's properties (fig 6).
Be adviced though:
1. This has NO relationship to the actual family. It's a dumb number. It doesn't exist in the actual Family (to test it, you can open the family in the family editor, it won't show there). So keep this to 0, only as a way to be able to create proper schedules.
2. The choice for Instance/Type CANNOT be changed afterwards!!! In this case, I thought it would be better to make it Type instead of instance, but it cannot be accessed again (fig 6)
But hey: there's finally a way to clean up those messy schedules!! (fig 7)
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