Maria Lamas
It is among the most useful updates to Revit in years — and it’s finally here. With Parameters Service working with parameters is now easier and more efficient than ever.
Released in Revit 2023, Parameters Service is a semi-automated, fully searchable database of design element parameters.
Because Parameters Service lives in the Autodesk Construction Cloud, you can easily share it with teammates and partners across the aisle or on the other side of the globe.
Parameters Service: a big deal, in a small package
For years, setting and using parameters was a manual, labor-intensive process that could consume days of time on every project. No more! With Parameter Service, you can streamline workflows and share best practices with anyone anywhere and at any time.
Before the availability of Parameters Service, creating, changing, and finding parameters required opening and modifying individual text files.
Traditionally, most organizations have tried to work from a master parameter list, the reality though is that one list is often not enough. It left designers, architects and engineers hunting through text file after text file to find the parameter they were looking for.
Furthermore, once you found the parameter you need, it often required additional knowledge not stored in the parameter file itself.
On top of it all, adding parameters to a model is a tedious and slow process. Even worse, updating parameters to reflect new or changed information, like an updated IFC standard, had to be done one at a time. A list of a few hundred parameters could take days to update.
Save time with cloud-stored parameters
Parameters Service changes all of that. Working from a web app, the new service allows you to finally author, batch edit and update parameters, independent of the Revit Application or annoying text files.
With a couple of clicks, you can recategorize whole classes of parameters, or update them with new or additional information.
But, don’t worry, not everyone can just change things as they please. Being integrated into both the Autodesk Construction Cloud and Revit, means you can manage who and what your users have access to in a familiar and known way, alongside your project data.
Every Parameters Service has a dedicated administrator (or BIM manager), who can control what users can and can’t do. Helping you prevent and reduce that critical data from being changed or lost with the wayward click of the mouse.
Get the most out of labels
An important new feature of Parameters Service are labels. Labels allow you to add vital information to a parameter, so you can identify individual parameters across a range of identifiers using a simple intuitive search function. A great example of this would be a designer working on a door family. They can now quickly find all parameters not only set to category “door” but also filter this list by labels on those door parameters to find the exact ones they need for their type of door, such as finding anything related to “rotating doors” or “garage doors.”
Real-world benefits for Revit users
In the past, many firms struggled to ensure that the same set of parameters was being used across all of their projects. For large firms with multiple projects in multiple locations, version control and parameter updating poses serious and ongoing challenges.
All too often, critical information about parameters is not written down. Only a handful of experienced BIM managers would know or remember them. The cloud-based Parameters Service allows everyone to work from the same, up-to-date set of parameters complete with standardized formatting and element definitions. This includes default design intent and useful metadata to find the correct parameter for your needs.
The defaults you can set for any parameter includes category bindings, type or instance preference, and where it will appear in the properties palette.
These defaults help describe the design intent and proper usage of the parameters. While defaults are valuable for consistency, building projects are unique and require flexibility, so the capability also supports flexibility on the file level for your team’s specific project requirements.
If you’re a structural engineer, for example, you care about structural elements. Parameters Service lets you zero in on just those elements with a few clicks. No more hunting and pecking through endless text files!
There’s another workflow improvement with Parameter Service: It knows when you’ve already added a given parameter to your model. In the old system, this was a manual process.
Customize your parameters view
The GUI of the new service gives you all the benefits of a modern interface. You can customize the columns you see, define save searches, and when you launch the service multiple times in a Revit session, it will remember where you left off.
Also when inside Revit, you can hover over a parameter in your project parameter list where you will see if it was loaded from the service, and if so, what account it came from. That means you gain more knowledge on the source of your important design data.
The benefits of Parameters Service extend well beyond the air-conditioned confines of a corporate office. Eliminating potentially costly errors during the design phase leads directly to a more efficient job site: more productive project meetings, fewer change orders, and fewer punch lists.
At its core, Parameters Service is about streamlining operations by sharing best practices and firm standards across multiple teams with just a few mouse clicks. Autodesk is excited by the possibilities these new capabilities create and we hope you are, too!
Learn more about Revit Parameters Service. You can also watch the on-demand keynote session from Autodesk University 2022.
Want to help us prioritize the next capabilities to release? Check out our roadmap and share your view on whether a feature is Critical, Important, or Nice-to-have for your work you do.