Understanding shared parameters

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We are looking at Revit and BIM in general, from the perspective of a relational database,

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we have looked at project information and how we can use that as a starting page.

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And we looked at how the information within the database can help us with annotations and sheet references.

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Now, the various parameters or fields within the Revit database are fixed,

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things like door width, and floor levels and sheet numbers.

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That's all preprogrammed into the Revit database.

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But let's say we have some information that we wanna put within the project that is not part of the Revit database.

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In that case, we need to create our own parameters. And that is what shared parameters are all about.

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In this video, we will be creating a text file that describes these shared parameters that can be shared throughout the Revit project.

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Here in Revit 2024, under Recent Files, is the small medical center project that we've been working on all along.

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Select that to open it. And here's the project landing page that we looked at earlier.

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Remember we have the project info, we have project notes.

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You may recall that this is a title block. And if I click on the title block, I can edit the family.

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We had done this earlier when we set up these various parameters within the title block.

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But now what we want to do is to create a parameter that is not part of the standard Revit database.

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Let's say, we require the civic number for this particular address.

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Now, the crux here is that I'm going to add the raw civic number, or tag in the family.

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And then I'm going to load it into the project.

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And I have to make sure that this raw civic number field definition,

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or parameter definition within this family will also be available in my project.

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And that is where shared parameters come in.

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So to demonstrate, let's create a new label.

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So on my Create tab, I click on "Label".

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And I'm going to position the label in my Project Info. I want civic number.

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But you notice that that does not exist in the standard Revit database.

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So I need to create a new parameter. So I click on this icon for new.

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Now, the only thing that I can do here is select my shared parameter.

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So I click on "Select".

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We don't have a shared parameters file yet.

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Do I want to choose one?

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I actually want to create one, but in order to create one, I have to choose one. So I click yes.

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And rather than browsing out to pick an existing parameter file, I click on create,

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I go to my project folder, and I'm gonna put it in my configuration file,

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and I'm going to call it 23-4512 which is our project number,

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dash shared parameters.

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I'm hoping that since it's in the config folder, people won't browse around in there.

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And if they do, they will see that this is a shared parameters file and hopefully they won't modify it.

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This is actually the Achilles heel of these shared parameters that it depends on a shared parameter, text file.

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So I click save. Now, the only available thing that I can do now is create a new group.

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So I click on groups, new. The group will be project information, and now I can create a new parameter.

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Let's create one for civic number. The discipline will be common, and the data type will be numeric.

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Click OK. Let's create one more parameter. So I click on new again.

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Let's call it the zone. The data type will be text.

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Click "OK" once. "OK" again.

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OK once more to close the shared parameters, and "OK" once more to close the parameter properties.

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And now you see we have our civic number, so I can add that to this particular tg, and click "OK".

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Let's add one more.

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Even though the zone was created in the shared parameter, it has not yet come into the family.

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So I once again, click on new, I'm going to select my parameter file.

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It's already loaded. So now I can select zone, and bring that into my family. Click OK a couple of times.

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And I'm going to add this to my parameters.

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Now, I could add some more text, but for now this will do.

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I select both new tags, and change my type to take one.

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Let's just stretch this out a bit. Okay. Let's save our project page family.

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I do want to override it, and let's load it into our project

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and we want to override the existing version.

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So when I click on the title block, we merely see two question mark where the zone,

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and the civic number is because as I was mentioning earlier,

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this project knows nothing about these parameters that we set up in the family.

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Therefore, we need to load these shared parameters into this project.

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So it will understand what the civic number and zone parameters are.

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Remember before I could double click on these, and I can go in and edit the values for these parameters.

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But I really can't double click on this question mark, it doesn't know what it is.

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So I need to load these shared parameters into this file, and I do that by going to the manage tab, click on project parameters.

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I have some parameters here already, and I want to create a new parameter.

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It is from a shared parameter. So I click on shared parameter, and select, and look at this.

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I have my civic number, and my zone. Click on "civic number", "OK".

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And now I need to tell it which category my civic number belongs to.

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I browse down to project information, and click "OK".

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We do that one more time for the zone, new parameter, shared parameter, select zone.

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Okay. And my zone will also be part of project information.

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Click "OK". And "OK" once again.

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And now I can edit the project page.

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And as before I can double click on this question mark, and put in the civic number of 2345.

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The zone, I can double click on the zone, and type in South.

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If I go to my manage tab under project information,

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and now you will see that the zone is listed under text, and further down under other,

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we have our civic number, and click "OK".

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Now I don't really like using shared parameters and will only use them as a last case scenario,

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because it relies on that shared parameter text file that can get lost.

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Or if I send this Revit project to another team,

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I need to make sure that I include the shared parameter file, and there are just too many possibilities, for this thing to break.

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However, if nothing else will do, this is the way to create new parameters for your project and share them amongst your team.