Using Dynamo to Map Large Revit Schedule data to an Excel File

Revit scheduling is a great tool to have all of your information in one place versus using excel with Ideate sticky or another tool to import a table/image.

As much as I am such Revit Schedule fan (ha ha), I have two major issues with them...

They are not easy to manage large amounts of data.

Although they have made improvements to the schedules (zooming in/out and being able to alternate shading of rows), it is not easy to manipulate data and copy/paste. You can use BIMLink and import/export the data from excel, but I got frustrated with having to take the time for exporting/importing and having to do this for every model.

It is helpful to have a reference schedule where you can edit all data at once.

You can view elements in linked models in one schedule but you are unable to edit the values in one fell swoop. This seems disruptive to workflow.

When something is frustrating...it can be worth investing a little time to fix it. This is how we fixed it...

Create a reference excel spreadsheet that has all of your items in a schedule.

It was helpful to list the parameter name that shows up in the schedule header as well as the actual Revit parameter name. We also put the column number so it was faster to input in the Dynamo script.

Create a dynamo script that will read the values in the excel and write them to the element in the model.

We still had the issue of opening each model, but once the data was entered into the excel, you simply run the script and it writes all the data to the element! In this example, we are looking at a fan schedule. The script searches for an element in Revit with the same "TAG" and "TAG NUMBER" in Excel and writes all the other excel column data to the associated parameters on the Revit element.

Example Excel Spreadsheet

What worked?

• Data is so much easier to input and you can batch your tasks more effectively. You can input all the info for all elements in excel at once instead of having to open up model to input data in each schedule.
• You can open up each model with only the required worksets, run the script, and get out of that model!
• Fewer steps than with using BIMLink.

What could be improved?

• This was a new process for our team and with anything that is new, it will take time to trust the process and get used to the workflow. Sometimes users would change it in the excel and also in Revit.
• QA/QC is still required. If someone uses a Revit family that does not have the proper parameters, the script will not work. However you would have this problem even if you didn't use the script!
• Myself and the team working on these scripts were in our earlier stages of Dynamo script writing. We eventually found a way to write more efficient scripts. See below for examples of how we improved...

First version of script

Improved condensed version of one of the scripts

Have you had a similar frustration? How have you made it better?