Sheets from Excel

3 min read

When developing a project document list, the most convenient way is to create information within Excel. The formulas and formatting in Excel allow for a lot of mundane document management tasks to be expedited. The next step is to get the document list into Revit and generate sheets from that list.

Option 1: Simple workflow

For a simple document spreadsheet containing sheet number and name information, we can use a simple Dynamo script as follows.

The title bock family and file path of the sheet list needs to be assigned as the inputs for the script. The list is then sorted and any redundant spreadsheet data removed before the sheets are created. There are two possibilities for sheet creation within Dynamo:

  • Sheet.ByNameNumberTitleBlockAndView’ – This is a standard Dynamo node. It requires Sheet Names, Sheet Numbers, Title block Family Type, and View inputs. If the project is in a very early stage, the views for the sheets have generally not been created yet. Therefore they cannot be used as an input without generating an error.
  • Tool.CreateEmptySheet’ – This is a node from the SteamNodes package. It requires Titleblock Family Type, Sheet Numbers, Sheet Names and the refresh inputs. The good thing about this node is that you don’t need to have the views in your model for it to work, as it will create empty sheets.

Option 2: Advanced workflow

For a more complicated spreadsheet, we may have multiple worksheets and additional parameter information. For example, BVN utilises an organisation method for assigning different trade packages in a document set via the ‘BVN Alphabet’ parameter. This standard allows us to group and quickly identify views and sheets in the Project Browser and group trade package documentation together. In the example below, the Excel document spreadsheet is identifying Sheet Number, Sheet Name, BVN Alphabet series, Sheet Issue Date, Design Stage, as well as having multiple worksheets corresponding to the different BVN Alphabet series.

Although these additional fields allow for greater functionality in Excel, they add complexity in how Dynamo extracts the data. The enhancements to this script allow for the other sheet tabs in Excel to be read.

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