It never ceases to amaze how the name of an item will
influence a person to believe that item may actually carry that property. High Definition Hair Color Products probably
doesn’t mean the same thing as High Definition Television Sets when considering
what ‘High Definition’ is representing.
Just because an object carries a certain name does not guarantee that it
will have that characteristic. The Name
should provide clarity, not add confusion.
A parameter named Voltage means nothing to describe what
information it actually contains. A user
wants to believe that that parameter is an actual value of Voltage, but it
could easily be a just number or simply text.
Also, lists are shown in alphanumeric order. Looking for Air Flow parameters based on a system
name would require searching through an entire list, even in the same group, if
they are not somehow bundled together.
Using a Prefix of 227 will bundle all the Air Flow parameters together
in one area.
All the possible attributes for a shared parameter, the Disciplines,
Types and Groups of Parameters, were considered when developing a Prefix Standard in the Labeling Convention. The categories naturally
developed based on the available options.
The order of the numbering also aligns with the current list of options
when working with Shared Parameters.
Some standard libraries have developed a brand for each
parameter, in order to identify that parameter with the library it belongs
to. This requires every equation or reference
to a parameter to show that brand in it.
Most libraries do not use any special naming procedure that easily lends
to confusion once multiple parameters are found in the same model, carrying the
same name, but different GUIDs.
Selecting the correct parameters becomes very difficult. The Prefix provides a recognizable brand that
is more about function than just recognition.
As parameters are sampled, they are renamed according to the Labeling
Convention and obviously there are many instances where duplicate or redundant
parameters turn up. The Master Library
does not contain duplicate parameters that carry the same name, giving priority
to the dominant parameter.
300Voltage is a Text Parameter and 321Voltage is an
Electrical Potential Parameter. 300Voltage
is omitted from the Master Library, because it is not necessary while a 321Voltage
exists. Similarly,
224PressDropCoilCooling is a Shared Parameter for the pressure drop across a
cooling coil that is a unit of pressure and is found in the Revit Master Shared Parameters v2.1 from
Autodesk. Another example is
320FullLoad, which is a parameter for Full Load Amps that is based on Current
also found in that library.
The Prefix helps sort the Library of parameters
in an understandable order, provides a branding as well as important
information on the parameter. A quick
reference of the Prefix Sheet can be seen HERE. There is also a PDF of the Prefix Standard
available when you download the Master Library packet HERE that is FREE. When
dealing with Units of Measurement, this will hopefully become clearly
beneficial. That is for another time.
-Craig
No comments:
Post a Comment