There once was a time when it was necessary to open up a folded piece of paper that explained what the roads were in a town and even across the entire United States. This item, commonly referred to as a map, would require some level of user understanding. Once the correct position and required direction were understood, the next step was determining how to get to the desired destination. With modern technology, you can be told exactly where you are, which direction you are headed and even the best route to get to your destination pending options such as avoiding tolls or highways. You don't normally ask anyone for directions to where they are anymore, just the address.
A Live Schedule is a term used to distinguish a Revit Schedule that is referencing live data from model elements in a project model. When it comes to developing a Live Schedule Standard, it is critical for colleagues to understand what the Fields are for a particular Live Schedule and a basis for how it is formatted. The term, Schedule Map, is used to describe a line sheet that documents what Shared Parameters are used in populating the Fields as well as some of the Basic Properties such as how it may be Sorted or Filtered. This allows the user to see the destination and find a way to get there.
It helps to have one, or a few people, involved in developing the standards for the Live Schedules, but it is even more important that those few people are not required every time a schedule needs to be added to a project model. The Schedule Maps are meant to be documentation to provide guidance for any member of the team to see how the Live Schedule is formatted. That should save time in a project by allowing the editing of the family, when needed, to be done without constantly checking if it will work in the schedule.
This sample Schedule Map reveals how a Live Exhaust Fan Schedule is developed. The top is a rough visualization of the field headings and which ones are grouped together. The Schedule Fields provide the list of Parameters needed for the schedule, including optional or hidden fields. The Blue Parameters are from the MASTER SHARED PARAMETER LIBRARY and are known Shared Parameters from the Autodesk Shared Parameter Library. Those parameters in Blue should be found in the most common Manufacturer provided families, allowing for the Schedule to be populated in those fields without any modification. The Purple Parameters are from the Master Shared Parameter Library that are loaded as Project Parameters for this particular model, but are not necessarily needed to be Project Parameters. These are commonly used Fields that don't normally exist in Manufacturer families. Finally, this Live Schedule is filtered by Mechanical Equipment where 100Type contains EF and is sorted by 100Mark in ascending order.
This Exhaust Fan Schedule Map is not meant to be identical across multiple companies and doesn't need to be. The most important aspect of the Schedule Map is the list of Blue Parameters, that are known Shared Parameters in use by most of the Major Manufacturers. As long as the Shared Parameters are there, the aesthetics can be altered by company and not affect the population of data in the Live Schedule.
-Craig
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