I have been working through some of the tutorial videos on using the excel connector and was wondering whether we have a process in place to bring a table in excel onto a sheet in Revit using Speckle. There is some content on youtube showing people using it to pull tables out of revit, update them in excel and then send it back to Revit using speckle, but nothing to suggest it could be used to create a new table.
I would like to be able to use it to create electrical schedules, like switchboard schedules, cable schedules, lighting schedules etc.
We haven’t had any conversion from Excel sheets to new Revit tables on sheets or even new Schedules.
We have a standing position of “create no Revit parameters that do not already exist” for non-Revit data sources. This would fall into the same category.
If the parameters all existed in Revit already, then maybe we could get closer, but we also don’t deal with sheet content at all.
Hi Will, I’m not sure I understand your workflow…
Why would you need Speckle to create these Schedules and not just create them from Revit directly?
Assuming these elements already exist in Revit, you already have all the data you need.
If these elements, instead, do not exist and come from another source (eg Grasshopper), you can use Speckle to load these Elements inside the Revit doc, and then manually create a corresponding Schedule.
Could it be to treat / curate data and then send it back to Revit ? Excel will always be more intuitive than Revit / ArchiCAD to add data to a schedule.
For example Exporting a raw windows schedule to excel, then filling all the info such as ID / parameters / types / fire rating / … in excel (potentially using formulas / macros / … based on other data sheets / templates) and trying to feed this back in Revit / ArchiCAD via Speckle.
From the ArchiCAD experience, some of this can be done via an native workflow (but it has limitations on the import options based on string / numbers / option sets / …). There are work arounds using Python scripts directly that give a bit more freedom and access to the data : (The excel export / import at this link Python – Graphisoft , I used these to tweak various information in ArchiCAD in the past). Potentially how it could work on Speckle ?
Hi guys perhaps my request isn’t being properly understood so i’ll try and explain it a little better.
Speckle is capable of creating sheets from an excel table using dynamo script and Speckle connector.
Why couldn’t this same kind of functionality be extended further to create tables on a sheet?
Normally additional addons are required to import and display raw excel data in revit or can but after watching the sheet creation tutorial I thought perhaps creating a table like a cable schedule or switchboard schedule could be a much more straight forward task using Speckle.
Im not sure if this kind of functionality has ever been explored or if there are ways to do this in revit alone, but was just wondering if anyone has had any experience doing so.
Its not something that exists to date, I’m happy to change this to a feature request and we can follow if others upvote the idea - our best effort of tracking interest for prioritising initiatives.