As reader may have got the impression that we are working on Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) right now. Apart from addressing issues and fixing bugs, we are also enhancing Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe), one brand new feature among which has already been mentioned a bit, adding a grouped view list and still keeping the old fashion flat view.
In addition, we are also designing and working on a new related software product, Revit Shared Parameter File Editor (RvtSPFEditor.exe), as it seems more wanted than Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe), as a reader/user suggested, Russ Green.
Since we are working on it, we think it would be better to do it the best. We have noticed that two more fields (Description/ToolTip and UserModifiable) of shared parameter definitions have been introduced since Revit 2015. Not sure how widely the two new fields are used nowadays or they could be skipped in Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) and Revit Shared Parameter File Editor (RvtSPFEditor.exe).
In terms of the new Description/Tooltip, it should be what will be displayed when the mouse cursor is hovering on a parameter name in the Properties UI. It looks useful but we just found that Revit itself does not really exercise the new parameter field, Description/Tooltip. All tooltips of all the Revit parameters that we checked so far were the same as their parameter names. Since Revit parameter names (either shared or not) can be pretty descriptive and no seemingly length limitations, we wonder why necessary to introduce the new Description/Tooltip. The description/Tooltip does have a length limitation, 250 though. It is a good number!
In terms of the new UserModifiable parameter field, it's more confusing. It's not controlled by users at all. It's accessible to Revit API only. Due to this fact, plus that Revit API has provided another property, ReadOnly, which looks pretty similar to the UserModifiable, for parameters, we wonder if it's good to expose an additional UserModifiable column in the already pretty crowded WPF DataGrid to users of Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) or Revit Shared Parameter File Editor (RvtSPFEditor.exe), as we understand they are most likely Revit users instead of programmers.
Of course, Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) and Revit Shared Parameter File Editor (RvtSPFEditor.exe) still have to take care of those two columns if existing in any Revit shared parameter files behind the UI. For example, when users save back any changes those columns and values will not be lost if any; when users save as PO.txt or PO.csv those columns and values should be carried over; when users select some parameters to save as a new Revit shared parameter file or merge into an existing one those columns and values should still be taken care of even if they are not viewable in the UI of Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) or Revit Shared Parameter File Editor (RvtSPFEditor.exe).
In case having any ideas or comments about the above, please feel free to jump in. Russ Green, are you there?
The new Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) will come out very soon. We are doing some final testing about it. Please stay tuned.
Just in case, you'd like to have a look at the previous build of Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer (RvtSPFViewer.exe) or give it a try, it can be found in another post: