ksobon
commented
8 years ago @AndrewHeumann there is nothing wrong with Dynamo here or its method for Parameter retrieval. What happened is that Revit DB allows for storing of multiple Parameters under the same name:
What happened is that when you used a Name property it will return one of the two Parameters. It's a bit of a lottery and you lost. One of the Level parameters stores a level name as a string. The other one stores ElementId.
To deal with this behavior Revit API actually implements something called BuiltInParameter that allows you to retrieve a Parameter by its built in and unique name like this:
Built In Parameter always points at only single parameter value so its reliable unlike the name of the parameter. You can use a node from Archi-lab package called GetBuiltInParameter like so:
kronz
ThomasMahon
ghost
andydandy74
aledarba
Dynamo version
1.1.0
Revit version
2016
Operating system
windows 7
What are you whining about this time, Andrew?
I would have expected that - where an element's parameter storage type is element ID - the "GetParameterValueByName" node would actually return that element. For instance, trying to get the "Level" parameter of a Room element, I want the "Level" object back so I can query its elevation. Instead, I am getting back the name of the level only - the data type being returned is string. For the "Upper Limit" parameter, the element is actually returned. Is there a reason for this inconsistency? Am I missing something obvious? I shouldn't have to do a lookup to match this level name with the document's levels in order to retrieve this element, nor should I have to write a custom script for something as basic as parameter value retrieval. (I am aware that there are existing "Element.Level" scripts available - I am wondering why this behavior is inconsistent in native Dynamo.)