Been working on a script that will take model totals from pipe and bends (think of conduit without fittings) and generating how many reels of each size is needed for totals. I’ve got a pretty solid proof of concept built, now I’m ready to write it back to Revit as schedule data, but I can’t decide where I want to store the information. I don’t want to write reel totals to all pipe/fittings or the such, thinking more writing it to either:
- A dummy family with solids visibility turned off that I’d pick up thru dynamo. Don’t like the idea of a hidden artifact buried in projects though.
- Writing totals to something like Project Information, and create a schedule just pointed at these values.
- Writing to Project Parameters on every single piece of pipe in the project. (no no no, one current project has 10,000 fittings!)
What’s a better/more correct place to store generated data from modelled objects?
Would a Type parameter create less work/back and forth between Dynamo and Revit?? Since it covers multiple sizes ranges for both fittings and pipe I don’t think this would even work, just tossing ideas at a dart board. I’m hoping some of ya’ll here have gone down a similar route and know something more appropriate I don’t!
I would likely do a Project Info parameter or a key schedule if you intend to have multiple takeoff values for different systems. A detail item (built to look like a schedule) would be better than a model element you’d have to hide and you could place it directly on sheets.
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Hi,
Do you want it by date, as the model grows?
Yeah, the company I work for generates PEX in 4 different colors, various sizes, and then it’s packed on spools in 1000’, 500’,300’ and 100’ lengths, so I wrote a handy script that separates it, divides it by max reel size, then rounding the rest to the last spool size, so it’ll be a decent amount of data when it’s run.
No, it’s more a total before a project ships out, breaks down the total linear footage by color and size, then the number and sizes of reels needed to purchase it all, so the script would only be run before the bill of materials is sent out. If work comes back and additional modelling takes place, we’d just re-run the script to update all the values again and replot.
Maybe dump it into a key schedule for an unused category. I think archilab has a set of nodes for creating schedule keys.
I was thinking about that. I have a build your own bill of materials referencing topo, so I spose I could tack on the reel data somewhere too with topo. How to fool a database in so many ways should be the Dynamo long name! lol
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