About shared parameters

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Shared parameters can be created within a family or in a project environment.

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A shared parameter can be used across multiple families and

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projects and hence is an externally stored text file.

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Shared parameters can be tagged and scheduled

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and exported to open database connectivity.

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In the diagram below,

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you would typically have one shared parameter file on the file server.

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When you are required to create a specific parameter,

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either in a project or a family,

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you can browse to the file server and use the shared parameter

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in the examples below. You can see that the parameter load in FZ

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has been added multiple times to the project.

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This can happen when multiple people create their own

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shared parameters and add them into a project.

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This is likely to happen if the project has work

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sharing enabled and several people are working on the project,

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shared parameters should be very carefully managed.

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Also note that if a shared parameter is deleted,

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then order tags and schedules that reference that

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parameter will be invalid and need to be recreated

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in the level one plan. You can see that we have a foundation layout.

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These foundations here have been created with shared parameters

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before we edit the family and take a look at how this has been created.

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Let's look at the functionality with tags and schedules.

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You can see that some of these pad foundations have already been tagged

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and the tag is showing the length, the width and the thickness of each foundation.

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We'll now select this tag here

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and on the context ribbon, we'll go ahead and select copy

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on the options bar, ensure that you have selected multiple.

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And for the move start point,

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I'm going to snap to the top left hand corner of this foundation

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and I'll then snap this to other foundations.

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And as we do this,

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you'll notice that the tag then reads

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off the correct dimensions for each foundation.

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Let's also take a look at a schedule

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in the project browser under schedules and quantities.

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Go ahead and open up pad foundations

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note here that the type name is not controlled in the tag.

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The tag is built up out of some shared

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parameters and those parameters are based on the length,

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width and thickness of that foundation panel.

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We also have some instance parameters here allowing us

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to add the vertical load on these foundations.

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OK. Let's go back to the level one plan

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before we open the family up.

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Let's see what happens when we make a change to one of these families.

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So I'm going to select this family here

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and in the properties pad it, I'm going to select edit type.

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Normally, the tag will be reading off the type name of this foundation.

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So I'm going to duplicate this and I'm gonna call this one T four.

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And here you can see that we've got some dimensions controlled in the pad size. Here.

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In this example, I'm going to set this to 6 ft,

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er, the width I'll set to 8 ft

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and a thickness to 3 ft

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if I click. OK.

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The first thing you'll notice here is that

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the tag automatically reads off the correct sizes.

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And this is quite an important point because it's very easy

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to edit a family and forget to update the type name.

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And therefore your tag is displaying the wrong information.

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We'll now edit the family to understand more about the

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shared parameters and how they're used within the foundation.

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Go ahead and select one of the families. It doesn't matter which one

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and on the

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and on the context, ribbon, select edits family.

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So we're now in the family editor. Let's begin by looking at the creates ribbon

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and selecting family types

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in the family types dialogue box.

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It's not obvious that these are shared parameters, but in fact,

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the shared parameters are foundation length,

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foundation thickness and foundation width and also the force in the Z axis.

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I'm going to select foundation length.

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And if you look at the bottom left hand corner of the dialog box here,

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you'll notice we have edit parameter.

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If I select this. We can now clearly see that this is a shared parameter.

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You'll notice that the parameter name discipline and type is grayed

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out because this is actually defined within the shared parameter file.

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Notice here that the type is selected.

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If I click on the select button,

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you can now see that we're now looking at the shared parameters themselves

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in the shared parameters. Dialog box, you'll notice we have parameter groups.

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So I have a structural loading group.

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And as we've said before,

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I could use these parameters in multiple structural categories and families.

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If I go to foundations again, I would have piles, I would have pile caps, pad,

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foundations, strip footings and so on.

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And I could use these for all of those different foundation types.

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If I select the edit button here,

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you'll notice that we can see the file path back to that shared parameter file.

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Now, like I've said,

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this would normally be on the server and normally there'd

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only be one and this would be centrally managed.

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You'll also notice in the edit shared parameter dialogue,

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we can create a new shared parameter file.

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If we wish, we can also change the parameter group.

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And of course here we could create new parameters and new groups if we wanted to.

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OK, let's click, cancel to the edit, shared parameter dialogue.

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We'll also hit, cancel to shared parameters,

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enter parameter properties

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to show the dynamic nature of these shared

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parameters and how they affect tags and schedules.

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We're going to change the foundation length and

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foundation width from type to instance parameters.

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So let's go ahead and select, OK.

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In the project browser and the floor plans, let's open up ref

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level.

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You can see here that we have foundation length and foundation width.

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I'm going to select foundation length here

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and let's take a look up onto the context ribbon

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and of course, you'll see here that we could swap out the parameter that we're using.

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But more importantly,

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we can then decide whether this is an instance parameter or a type parameter.

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So I'm going to convert this to an instance parameter

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and I'll do the same again here for this one

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and that's done

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now, something that's quite useful is to be able to identify

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instance parameters versus type parameters in the family types dialogue.

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So let's take a look at that family types dialogue on the modify ribbon.

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Let's go ahead and select family types.

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If I expand the parameter column,

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you'll note here that the instance parameters have

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the word default in bracket besides them.

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So that's a very quick and easy way of seeing which

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ones are in instance parameters and which ones are type parameters.

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OK. Let's select. OK.

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And here we're going to load into projects and close.

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And in this example, we will not save changes. So we'll select no to save changes.

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And here we will overwrite the existing versions.

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If I now select one of these foundations.

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You'll now notice that we have shape handles on each of the faces of the foundation.

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This is due to the fact that we're

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now using instance parameters versus type parameters.

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If I now drag these grips,

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you'll see in real time, the foundation is now changing.

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If I want to, I can also select here and I can type in my actual dimensions that I want.

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So for example, here, I might want 60 inches

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by 60 inches.

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And for the foundation thickness,

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I'll leave this the same because this is in fact a type parameter.

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If we go ahead and select, OK,

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you can now see the family's been built and the tag has updated.

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Now, normally, if I hadn't used shared parameters,

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it would be very difficult to put off

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the physical dimensions of that instance driven foundation.

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Let's now make another change to this. This time. We'll use the properties pad it

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in the properties pad it because we've

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now converted from type to instance parameters.

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You'll see here that we can just simply make some changes here if we wanted to.

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So now I'm gonna make this 4 ft by 4 ft

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and you can see now the foundation's changed

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and I'm now going to hold the control key down and simply duplicate this.

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The reason why I'm going to do this and I'll just drag this back onto the grid here.

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The reason I'm doing this is in the project browser.

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If I now go ahead and open up the pad foundation's schedule,

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you can now see that everything is updated again.

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The schedule is reading off the shared parameters.

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So you can see here if we look down through the dimensional sizes we have

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now two T fours at 4 ft by 4 ft by 3 ft thick.