By Dennis Collin
Whatever your discipline using Revit there is likely to be a need to create schedules of elements. Indeed, Revit excels at this task and with coordinated drawings and schedules, makes this once tedious task quite routine. Some components however, can be quite complicated and might need to be modelled as separate components. For example, ironmongery on a door, fixings to a concrete panel, variations in complex door and window assemblies or taps on a sink.
By default, Revit only schedules family at the top level i.e. the ‘container’ family. However, to get an itemised list of the nested parts the procedure is simple. Let’s look at a typical example of a family where we have a table and a set of chairs. The Table has been modelled in the container family with the chair loaded in as a separate family.
As we can see in the image above the nested chairs do not show in a simple furniture schedule.
However, by editing the chair family this can be changed. Simply tick ‘shared’ within the properties dialogue and update the family definitions and reload into the project. Once the nested family has been redefined, revisit the furniture schedule view and see that we have a more complete list. Not only will it show the name of the family, but bespoke nested parameters will be available to schedule as well.
Whilst furniture may not be relevant to your discipline, Revit is remarkably consistent in what it does, and a similar procedure could be applied to fixings on concrete panels and fittings on plumbing and mechanical equipment.