What’s New in Revit 2017

As Steve Stafford has compiled a comprehensive list of new Revit 2017 features over on OpEd, I will not write a list here.  Instead I will comment on a few features – especially since the Autodesk Help files are so sparse on detail.  We all need to know the benefits and shortcomings of each new feature.I have previously commented on v2016 R2 features (in this link), which are obviously now included in v2017.

New in Revit 2017 (selected features)

Global Parameters

Refer to my description of Global Parameters as introduced in v2016 R2. 
Improvements in v2017 include:

• Type Parameters can now be linked to Global Parameters (GPs)
• Assign global parameters to groups within the list in the GP dialog box
• Reorder GPs in the list
• Filter a schedule by parameters that have GP associations – this should be invaluable for tracking down all those associations that are making unexpected changes to your model!
• Show Label in View – hopefully useful, but that ‘Cannot find view. . .’ message is a worry when looking for other warnings and issues, so I don’t know how useful it will actually be?
• Transfer GPs between projects

All of these are very welcome additions to this exciting new feature.  However, we are still missing the ability to associate GPs directly to most system parameters.

More on this later. . . .

Schedule Templates

Schedule templates now include parameters for Fields, Filters, Sorting/Grouping and formatting – previously it was only the Appearance that could be included in a schedule template.  This sounds wonderful, but in my opinion it is very dangerous in the way it has been implemented:
If you apply a schedule template to an existing schedule, it will entirely replace all your fields, filters, sorting, formatting.  This means that if you had all sorts of complex calculation fields in the original schedule…