Phasing order

[Andrej]

Once we have created phases in Revit, we can’t change their order. I’m looking for a workaround for this problem, hopefully using Dynamo. Here is a quick explanation why I need to be able to change the order.

We are designing a very large building. We constructed the shell of the building and its interior is to be divided into sectors. Each of the sectors will be a separate rental space. The intention of the investor is to rent warehouse and office space to many clients. However, he will not invest into a sector before has made a contract with a renter who is interested in using the space. I assume this approach has some financial benefits in an unstable market.

Naturally, we decided to turn the sectors into building phases. The problem is that we don’t know the order of the phases. The order depends on the deals that are beyond our scope of work. This is why I need to be able to change the phase order occasionally.

Please tell me that changing the phase order is possible using Dynamo and point me in some direction.

[SeanP]

Most often if you can’t do it inside Revit using the UI, you cannot do it in Dynamo or the API.

[Steven]

Oh wow, that sounds like a nightmare. Not the solution you are looking for but have you discussed doing the individual spaces in a separate file?

On topic for you, what about grabbing every element tied to a phase and then changing the elements phase? That sentence may sound easy but I know it would not be. You would also need to grab all views associated with the phase and change it along with its phase filter.

Rooms are completely another animal. You cannot change the phase of a room. You would need to delete the room and create a new one and transfer all pertinent information.

If you do attempt this make sure to look up transaction and how they work. You will probably need a couple of transaction end nodes.

Not sure if its documented anywhere but perkens and will developed a script to transfer all project data to a new file. I think it was to help solve a corupted file or something. It would be worth 5-10 minutes to look for that before you start.

[Hamish]

There’s no way in Revit to re-order phases. As a general rule, if Revit doesn’t let you do it, then there’s no API call for it, so Dynamo won’t be able to either.

You could maybe write a script to help with the process of setting up a new phase in the correct position, moving the model elements to this phase, removing the old phase, fixing up view templates, and so on. I think it would be quite difficult and time consuming to get something good here, and wouldn’t pursue it unless you’ve looked at all other options and determined phasing is the only feasible method of splitting up these chunks.

You might be better off having your ‘shell’ model, then doing each space as it’s own model link. Granted, there’s a collection of downsides to go with that too. Maybe the ‘Tags’ function available in the PyRevit extension could be useful? Either way I think it’s worth exploring some other options to find out what works and what doesn’t before fully committing to phases.

[Andrej]

Alright. Thank you guys for replying. Since I can’t do much with phasing, I will add a project parameter named “Sector” to all model categories and then use view filters to determine what shows and what doesn’t.

[Bjorn_Keulemans1]

Think about if you want to make it a Sector Parameter and Text to go “A”, “B” etc. Maybe it’s better to go number 1,2,3,4 etc. Then you can filter <= to Show/Hide multiple Sectors with 1 Filter.