Families Shared Parameters and Revit Data Export, Speckle the Solution?

General discussion
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Hi @Everyone!

I am new here so I will introduce myself, I am Marco, I like Data Science and AI, the outdoors and climbing! I am currently doing an internship as a Junior Data Specialist in an AEC Company.

In my tasks I have found that Revit doesn’t allow to export shared parameters via ODBC to a database, unless these parameters are first passed defined also as Global Project Parameters and consequently they need to be assigned to a category. This implies that in a case (like the one I am in) where some shared parameters are given only to specific families (and not their category) these shared parameters will not be exported.

Enter Speckle!

So in a quest to find a solution to this problem I came across this beatiful open-source tool that Speckle is and importing my test project here I find that it has all shared properties of all families, even the ones specific to them and not their category!

My question is, how do you get this properties from Revit into your server PostgreSQL DB? Revit API? IfcOpenShell? Are you allowed to share this information or is it maybe available in the code-base of Speckle Server?

Thanks in advance to anyone that will take part in this conversation! :wink:

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Speckle kind of does that for you. Our server’s storage is trusty Postgres; as a user you have access to all objects you’ve created and can use the api to query them however you see fit.

To help you more we’ll need to understand what you’re after.

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Ok, realising I’ve replied really on the wrong question. Our connector’s code is also open source: GitHub - specklesystems/speckle-sharp-connectors: Speckle Connectors V3

You’ll find Revit in there and the infamous parameter extractor class :slight_smile:

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I guess what I am trying to understand is which data the Speckle add-in use, does it directly access the Revits objects in Revit (if so I guess using Revits internal API?) and “parse” the project there or is it “parsing” the .rvt file or else?

Sorry if the question may be dumb, I am very new to the BIM world and Revit :see_no_evil_monkey: