Explore the process of creating custom schedules in Revit, with emphasis on creating a door schedule. This guide covers how to define columns based on parameters, add new parameters, assign categories to schedules, and customize the schedule to meet individual project needs.
Key Insights
- In Revit, users can create custom schedules, where different parameters define the columns in the schedule and the rows represent the different elements within a specific category.
- A door schedule, for example, groups all elements in the door category into a spreadsheet-like format within Revit. This process involves assigning the door category to the schedule, defining columns based on desired fields or parameters, and customizing the schedule fields in an order that suits the user's needs.
- Users can add new parameters to the schedule if the desired scheduling field is not included in the list of available fields. For instance, a "door material" parameter may be created, given a descriptive name, and set as a type or instance parameter as needed.
Now we're going to go ahead and get started on creating our schedules, and the first schedule we're going to create is our door schedule. Now, the door schedule is going to take all of the doors—or all the elements, rather—that are on the door category and schedule them into what's kind of like an Excel spreadsheet within Revit. The difference is what we will do is we will pick different parameters that will define the columns in the schedule, and then the rows—those will be the different elements that are within that door category. And so I'm saying it as the door category on purpose because if you were to have created something on the door category by accident, well, it's going to show up in that schedule. So let's take a look at how this works, and then we'll go through and see how we can customize these schedules in a way that suits our needs. So let's jump to the View tab, and the process for creating schedules is pretty much exactly the same, no matter what type of schedule you're creating. We'll go to Schedule/Quantities, and you can see here.
I can pick that, and then you can see we've got the entire list of all the categories here. So that's quite a bit of stuff. So what I do is I'll typically go in here and then I'll just uncheck the ones we're not going to be scheduling, and then it's a much more manageable list. So I can just pick Doors, and once I've assigned that category, this is telling it what type of schedule we're creating. You can see here, and then it's also only going to schedule elements of that category. We'll hit OK, and then the next thing we need to do is define those columns based on the fields—or we're also calling parameters—that we want to have within our schedule. We're going to start just from left to right because when we place these in here, it's the scheduled fields in order. What that means is the first one at the very top is going to be your first column on the left-hand side. So, if I pick the first one I want, which is going to be Mark, I can select it and I can do two things here.
I can double-click on it, which will move it over, or I can use this green button here, which will move it into that scheduled fields column. If I wanted to take it out, I could do the same thing, pressing the red button to move it out. Next thing we're looking for here is going to be Type Mark, then we want Width, Height, and Thickness. And you can see here how there are quite a bit in here that we want to go through. So what I'd encourage you to do is to keep double-checking to make sure that you're picking up all of these. It's not like you can't add them later or after the fact, but it's just easier to kind of keep it going as we're moving through here. So after that, we're going to go ahead and look for our next one, which is going to be Finish—and this represents the door finish—and then we're going to grab the Frame Material and then Family. This is just a short description of what the door is that'll be at the end of our schedule, and then the last one we want, which isn't necessarily going to show up as a column in our schedule in the long run, but it will help us to sort our schedule, we'll see Level here and then we'll move it across. Now one of the questions that comes up pretty often is, "What if I wanted to add more parameters to my schedule or if the scheduling element or the scheduling field that I'm looking for is not included within the list of available fields?" A good example of that would be we had door finish, but if you go through here, you'll notice that door material is actually not one of the parameters on here. So it's kind of odd for us to specify a material or a finish and not identify what the material is. So to do that, what we can do is we can create a new parameter here, and that'll allow me to add a new one. So I can just give it the name that I'm looking for, and I highly encourage you to be as descriptive as you can without being too overboard with this. So it's very simple.
I'll call it Door Material. Okay, at this point we have the option to create it as a type parameter or an instance parameter. And it's a very simple decision here. I'm going to go with Type, and that's because each one of my different door types is going to have the same material in this case, and it'll automatically populate the schedule if I use this option. If I went with Instance, then I'd have to type it in individually for each individual door. If you were making a parameter where you might have to have more control over each one individually, Instance might be the way, but material is pretty typical, so you're not going to have a lot of differences between that. So you could have different door types to define the different materials. We're going to stick with that. The next one is we're going to change the type of parameter here, and it's very tempting to pick Material. If you were to set up your project in a way where you did have actual Revit materials defining your door materials, then you could use that, but if you're just trying to fill out a schedule like we are here and not necessarily using Revit to that full extent, then you can just pick Text, and that allows you to type in whatever designation you want for that material. So I'm going to change this from group parameter under Text—that's not ideal. I'll put it under Material and Finishes, and there we go.
That's our new parameter. So I'll hit OK, and then I'm going to move Door Material up in the schedule. You see it threw it in the back there. So I'm going to move it up until it's right before Finish. Now we're going to repeat those exact same steps and we're going to create a Frame Finish, which again, it makes sense to have both the material and the finish specified here.
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We'll go ahead and add a new parameter, and it's going to be pretty much the same process, just a different name here—Frame Finish. I'll make it a type parameter. This is one that could probably be better suited as an Instance parameter, but for the purposes of our project and to save time on a ton of data entry, we'll go ahead and make it a type parameter. We'll also make it Text for the type of parameter that we're using here, and then I'll also locate it under Material and Finishes. So exactly the same process, just a different name. I'll hit OK, and then we'll go ahead and move this up to be below Frame Material. Once we've done that, we can go ahead and hit OK and take a look at what our schedule looks like.
