Scheduling a project by materials: shared parameters

Let's suppose you have already modeled a full project on Revit, with all his families, parameters and material. Then somebody asks you to send him some peculiar information on the Life Cycle Analysis of your building.

Of course the most influencing elements are the materials themselves, considering their volume, mass, lifespan, transportation method and distance from the manufacturer and even to their end of life assessment.

 

[immagine schema life cycle materiali]

Assuming that you have correctly assigned materials to each element of the project you can easily create a large detailed schedule.

The first step is to create some new shared project parameters in  the Category "Materials" (just flag the box in the scroll down menu) in this way you can set some specific Type information of each material.

[immagine project parameters]

[immagine selezione categoria parametro]

assigning them the correct Discipline and Type.

[immagine creazione nuovo parametro di progetto]

Once created all the parameters you need, you can starting scheduling a Material Takeoff

 

[immagine material takeoff menu tendina]

 

Since you may probably need to manage more than one category at the same time (the same material could be assigned to many different elements in

the same project), you must choose “<Multy-Category>” in the New Material Takeoff window.

Remember to name it properly in order to better manage your file.

 

[immagine new material takeoff]

 

The next step is to create the fields of the schedule in the Material Takeoff properties window.

In the available fields menu you should find all the parameters you have defined before, listed with the name “Material: ...” just add them to the schedule fields and sort them in the order you need.

 

[immagine select fields]

 

Of course like any other scheduling you can add parameters as a Calculated Value

 

[immagine calculated value]

 

For example, Revit already provide a System Parameter defined “Material Area” that works only with the system families.

For all the components modeled without using system families  it will calculate  each face of the object providing an incorrect value.  

To solve this problem you should create a specific Calculated Value that describes the Area as a function of Volume and Thickness.

 

[immagine funzione Volume/thickness]

 

Another issue generated by not using only system families is that in the Multy-category Takeoff you are not allowed to schedule certain parameters like density, thermal conductivity ecc..

This method (creating shared project parameters in the Material category) allows you to manage every sort of data you may need in scheduling.

 

To give another example to calculate the weight of each element you need the density value related to the volume.

You can create a Material Density parameter as a shared project parameter in order to obtain the weight as a Calculated Parameter in the schedule fields.

 

[immagine funzione Volume*Densità]

 

You may also need to add some general shared project parameter (listed without the naming “Material”) in order to better manage the schedule and to keep under control other things (like the wright position of each component in the project).

 

[immagine add parametro note]

 

Now we can start to choose the other schedule properties like formatting, sorting or filters.

 

[immagine formatting e altre propietà]

 

As any other schedule all the parameters value insert in the schedule fields will be automatically assigned to the element, so this could also be a good way to work without using the material manager interface in Revit.

You have just set a schedule that displays all the materials features and their related values. This allows you to work in the modeling being conscious that all the data will be up to date with your modeling changes… it is not a small thing!