How to Use the Revit Tag Generator in AVAIL Kent Lewis
Transcript
When indexing Revit content to AVAIL, one of the things you might have seen is that these keys and tags automatically show up - such as Revit version host and Revit category. So, you're probably asking, "Where do these come from, how do they automatically get there?" What I want to demonstrate today is a little bit about our Revit tag generator, and how that works. Let me start off by saying that there is a header file inside of each cut piece of content - family, Revit project, and so forth - and we are able to extract that and read that header file and pull out that information.
So, the way that we do that is through our tag generator. If you open up a Windows File Explorer - as you can see here I've actually gone into, I'll back out and do this again - so, I've got a %programdata% and if I hit enter, it'll bring me up and I can go to the AVAIL folder and into the add-ins folder. Now, each installation has this file - so make sure that, across your organization, that you share this file if you're using it across all your publishers.
But if you can go up here, you're going to see and notice that there's a Revit tag generator file. Now, this is an XML document, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to right-click and I'm going to edit this with notepad. So, I'll bring this over and what you're going to see is - I'm going to take these two out right now and I'm gonna hit X - and one of the things you're gonna find out is that you're going to see that there's instructions and you can add keys, and examples, and predefined keys, and you can read all this when you go through and look at it. But what I want to concentrate on are these four, because these are the default when you install AVAIL.
So, you've got Revit version, Revit category, host, and file type - so let's go ahead and do this. I'm gonna hit save, ok, and now it's gonna ask me to be in administrator mode. Then let's say yes - I'm gonna hit yes again. Alright, and so this is what your default looks like, alright, this is what you're gonna see when you first open it up.
So, let's go ahead and do a couple of modifications. I've copied these out on purpose, so you can see them - I'm gonna just copy them in. Here's what's happened; I've added the Omni class number, and there are all kinds of shared parameters. It could be a custom shared parameter, it could be a parameter within your environment - within your business - that you're using within your company that you're actually sharing, or you have custom parameters that you want to use and you can pull those out.
In this case, I described a generic one, which is the Omni class number. We could go grab the Omni class title if we wanted, but you can see if I scroll down there's low classification keynotes, assembly codes, there's all the content. Especially all of your customs. Something else I've done here is, just so you can see how I've done a translation, you can do key translations where I take the omni class number. I don't want that to be the key - I want it to actually be table number - so I can translate the name of the Omni class number into a table number, and you'll see what I mean in just a second.
So, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna save this again, just so you can see it and I'm gonna close this. Alright, so, just want to make sure this is here. I'm the class number - I mean, you can see this on me - class number translation, so I'm going to save this. Okay, I've got to here, and then I'm gonna go back to my new Channel that I created.
So, I created this brand new Channel XML tag generator. I'm gonna come over here, like this. I'm gonna grab this dining room table and chairs. I know this has the Omni class in it, I know that it's got that many class numbers, so forth, and I'm gonna grab his table. I'm gonna index it right into AVAIL now, I'm gonna go ahead and skip a lot of these steps, I'm gonna hit skip all the steps, and I'm gonna just Index this right now.
So, while this indexes, what's happening is it's going out, it's finding that it understands where the path to this file is, it's gonna grab this information, and then it's going to go and extract all the XML that we've asked it to do. It's going to store it in AWS, it's going to create, and now - you can see here - I'm gonna refresh this Channel, and what you're going to find is that all of a sudden I have this dining table with chairs. Or, what you're going to see though is that - "Whoa! Wait a minute! I thought that I was looking for omni class?" - and I was grabbing that number, so understand that because this Channel was already created, and I had some keys already defined, it doesn't know that those keys exist yet.
So, if you come over to your tags and filter section, you're going to notice that in the bottom of this specific tag generator that I now have these two new values. One of the things to make sure of is that, if your active keys have been set, to make sure you come back and set your active keys to 'All", so let me come back and now you can see, within this table, I have this nice diamond table dining room family. And now, you can see - at the bottom - that I have the Omni class number, and then I have the translation. Same tag, same number. But, I translated Omni class number into the table number.
So that's a quick snippet on how to use the XML tag generator. Be sure to email support@getavail.com if you've got any further questions on how to use the Revit tag generator. Thanks!