By Dennis Collin
Although Revit is primarily a building design tool, a great number of users I speak to work more on the surrounding land and site about the building. Revit does have site components and drawing plans, sections, detail drawings and schedules can be created using these Revit Tools.
Sometimes these tools do have to be used in innovative ways such as using floors for complex ramps and rooms for area tools. This is so that users can overcome element limitations and achieve their desired outcomes. A recent question whilst training some Landscape Architects was how to make elements such as plants location aware i.e. register where they are on site for the purpose of a planting schedule, in addition to quantities and costings.
Unfortunately, whilst certain elements like furniture and engineering equipment can be location aware with schedules, site components and planting are not. Although Dynamo Scripting could be employed to pull and push data to parameters, there is a simpler option. By utilising Multi-Category Schedules, these tools do have location reporting options and by applying some simple filter rules (e.g. category) a location aware Planting schedule can be created, added to a sheet, or linked to Excel.