Goal

In this example we will create a simple task to copy room number to a parameter in all furniture elements in the room.

Prerequisites

• A license or trial of Reope’s Toolbox
• Make sure Toolbox is properly installed in your Revit version.
• A model with rooms and furniture elements. If you don’t have one you can use the architecture example models in Revit. In Revit 2023 and before it’s the RAC_basic_sample_project.rvt. From Revit 2024 it is the Snowdon Towers Sample Architectural.rvt.

Steps

1. To start, just open Parameter Link from the Toolbox toolbar.

2. Make a new settings file by clicking on the Browse / Open button in the upper right corner.

   1. Name the file getting-started.json

3. Make a new task by clicking on the + button on the right side of the task list

4. Now we will start defining the task settings. Ask yourself these questions:

5. Let’s start with the From column in the Task Settings: From which elements do we want to copy parameters from?

   1. The answer is from the Rooms! A not just the rooms, but the room volumes, or Solids, as they are called.
      1. Set Element Selection to Category
      2. Select Rooms in the dropdown menu in Category / Filter
      3. In Method select Solid

6. Let’s move over to the To column. Question: To which elements do we want to copy parameters to?

   1. The answer here is all Furniture elements! All elements of the Furniture Category.
      1. Set Element Selection to Category
      2. Select Furniture in the dropdown menu in Category / Filter
      3. In Method select Location

7. The window should now look like this. What did we just do?

   1. By setting the method in the From column to Solids, and to Location in the To column, ParaLink is now instructed to go through each room solid and search for all furniture elements which are located inside the room solids.
   2. Each furniture inside the room is considered as a match, all other furniture elements are so-called non-matching.

8. Before we continue to the Parameters, let’s set up some other important settings.

   1. Make sure Comparison Source is set to <Current Document>
   2. Enable Blank Non-Matching by checking it
   3. Leave Blank Value empty

9. We did this to tell ParaLink to blank out the parameter value of non-matching furniture, that is, furniture not located inside any room. This is important if a furniture, which were inside a room, is moved outside. We don’t want to parameter values from the previous room to still be present in the furniture! We want to blank those values out.

10. Now, let’s set a parameter to be copied, but before we do that we must create a parameter for the Furniture category which should hold the room number value.

    1. Save the settings in ParaLink and close the window
    2. Make a new instance parameter for the furniture category in Revit, and call it Room Number. It should be a Text parameter. Make sure that Values can vary by group instance is checked.
    3. Go back to ParaLink

11. In the Parameters section in ParaLink do this:

    1. In a new row in the table, write Number in the From column
    2. On the same row, write Room Number in the To column
    3. That’s it. Now ParaLink will get the Number from the rooms and write it to the Room Number parameter in the furniture elements inside rooms.

    

    It should look like this when all steps are finished

12. Save the settings and click Run. ParaLink will make a report for you summarising how many parameters have been copied. Any errors will also appear.