Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Associate Family Parameter

I've written about Revit's sneaky buttons in the past (see the three links below). I find the button for the Associate Family Parameter feature particular frustrating.


First of all it's tiny and second it has no tooltip, both of which mean it is not particularly obvious. I find myself wishing for a different way to interact with this concept. I can't say that I have a better solution in mind. I just know that this one feels awkward.

Keep in mind that I'm coming from the point of view of someone who has spent about eighty hours clicking on those tiny buttons about a thousand times recently. There are many tasks in Revit that seem quite fine when you think of them as occasional activities. When you start to think of them as your 9-5 job, doing them over and over and over and over all day almost anything can start to wear on you.

Perhaps a clear cut button on the ribbon that says Associate Family Parameter and opens a dialog that lists the parameters that qualify. Even better perhaps a mapping methodology that allows us to define a series of native parameters and then map them to the nested family or the connector's parameters?

Here's links to three past Sneaky Button posts: POST 1, POST 2, POST 3

1 comment:

The BIM Man said...

How about a dialogue that let's you "wire" parameters together, something like the interface in Dynamo or Rhino...?