08 Family Tracker

Created by Chris Mckeown, Modified on Mon, 21 Nov, 2022 at 4:54 PM by Chris Mckeown

Welcome to this demonstration on Bonus Tools - Family Tracker

Family Tracker lists all Loaded Families or Groups in the Project and the date of insertion and reload/modification and who by. Note: the insertion and modification date are only recorded if Kiwi Codes Bonus Tools or Family Browser are installed and running. From the list, you can the highlight Families that are out of date in the Project file and reload or repath them, or see who has loaded a Family from a source that is not to Company Standard.

To run the tool, navigate to the Bonus Tools Tab and select Family Tracker.
The Family Tracker dialog box will appear.
Note: The dialog by default will have an empty grid; at the bottom right is the total count of items in the grid.
All except 3 buttons and a drop down box are greyed out. These include the Group/Family Selector, the Load with Family Paths button.
Choose to view either Families or Groups.

1.1 Load with Family Paths

Note: The Load with Family Paths operation can take some time depending on the number of Families in the Project.

Select Families.
Click Load with Family Paths button.
Note: The progress bar.
Click ok through any warnings as the grid loads.
Note: These warnings would occur if you were to export the families from Revit to disk, i.e. it is not a Family Tracker issue, but a Revit file issue.
Once loaded, within grid you can see the element ID, the Family Category, the Family Name, Insertion Date, Inserted By, Modification Date, Modified By, Comments, a Update check box, a Reload Button, File Date and File Path.
You select the Families you would like to Assign Dates that are not set, Set Comments, Repath Families, Reload Families or delete Families.
Select the Families you would like to work with:
1. To select the Levels you can either; tick the check boxes individually or highlight the rows using standard mouse drag and control key operations and click Select Selected button.
2. Note: the Total selected is updating
3. or click Select All button to select all Families in the grid.
4. or click Select None button to deselect all Families.
Reload Individual Families.
1. Within the grid itself, is a Reload From button for each family giving you the chance to reload individual Families one at a time.
3. Click on a reload button for a Family.
4. An open dialog will appear.
6. If the family path is found in the Family path column, then the Family Tracker tool will take you directly to that Families location for reloading, else browse for the Family.
7. Note: This is a good way to swap out non standard families.
8. Once selected you can click open.
9. You will be prompted with the standard Family Already Exists dialog, Overwrite the existing version or Overwrite the existing version and its parameter values.
11. An output dialog will show with the result, explaining if the family was reloaded or not.
Highlight out of Date Families.
Highlight out of Date Families, highlights Families where the File path is found to show if a Family in the Project is older or newer than the one found on file.
1. Click Highlight out of Date Families.
2. Families in red are out of date and those in blue are newer in the Project, which means someone has edited the family, and reloaded it into the Project without saving it to disk.
3. Note: Highlight out of Date Families is comparing the Modification date with the Family file date.
Assign Dates Not Set.
If Families in the grid have a <.... Not Set> in the Insertion and Modification columns it is because either not all users have Bonus Tools installed on their PC's or Bonus Tools was installed part way through the projects life cycle. To track Families moving forward you can Assign Dates Not Set.
1. Click the Assign Dates Not Set.
2. An Output Dialog will show.
4. Once finished look in the grid and notice all those in green have been updated and now there is a date and user name in the Insertion and Modification columns.
6. Once all Families have dates assigned you can see the results. Where the Family was found on disk it will use that date as the insertion date, else the current today's date.
Set Comments.
You can add comments to Families, this might be to say don't update this family...
1. Type in the text.
3. Tick the Update check box.
5. Click Set Comments.
6. Once done the comments will be in green.
Repath Selected Families.
Repath Selected Families allows you to bulk repath families to another location. If you select a parent folder it will dig down through the folders, and if it finds a family with that name it will reload it with the found family, note if there are the directory contains more than one family with that name then it will use the first found family.
1. Select the families.
2. Note: The path before.
3. Click Repath Selected Families.
4. You will be prompted with the standard Family Already Exists dialog, Overwrite the existing version or Overwrite the existing version and its parameter values.
6. You will then be prompted with a Browse For Folder dialog. Browser for the parent folder.
8. Click ok.
9. Once completed an output dialog will show with the results, explaining if the family was reloaded or not.
10. Note: If the Family in the new location is the same Revit version, it will not be reloaded. A limitation of the Revit API.
11. Once done the updates will be in green.
12. Note: The Repathed family. The comments on the Repathed family are removed.
Reload Selected Families.
Reload Selected Families allows you to bulk reload the selected families in the grid where the family path is found.
1. Select the families.
3. Click Reload Selected Families.
4. You will be prompted with the standard Family Already Exists dialog, Overwrite the existing version or Overwrite the existing version and its parameter values.
6. Once completed an output dialog will show with the results, explaining if the family was reloaded or not.
7. Note: One Family was not found and two Families were already up to date.
8. Once done the updates will be in green.
Delete Selected.
Delete Selected allows you to bulk delete the selected families in the grid.
1. Select the families.
3. Click Delete Selected.
4. You will be prompted with confirmation dialog.
6. If you click yes a output dialog will show with the results.
8. A final confirmation dialog box will display giving you the count of the number of families deleted.
Inplace Families.
1. Inplace Families are list as such.
Export to CSV.
1. Export to CSV file allows you to Export the Grid to a CSV file for further exploration within excel.