Creating Type Catalogs

Keep in mind that Type Catalogs have a very simple purpose; loading Families with many Types. They don’t read or change parameters automatically, you have to duplicate (type or cut and paste) the parametric information from the Family....The following is a re-post from this autodesk page...

Creating Type Catalogs

Type Catalogs assist you with the family selection process. You can sort through the catalog and load only the specific family type required within your project. This helps decrease project size and minimizes the length of the Type Selector drop-down list when selecting types.

See Using a Type Catalog for more information.

Although Revit includes a Type Catalog when loading structural families, you can create a catalog for any existing or user-created family. The type catalog is a comma-delimited .txt file.

Creating a Type Catalog

There are several ways to create a comma-delimited .txt file. You can type it in using a text editor like Notepad, or you can use database or spreadsheet software to automate the process.

As you create the type catalog, follow these rules:

• Save the type catalog file name with a .txt extension; the file must have the same name and same directory path as the Revit family, for example, Doors/door.rfa and Doors/door.txt.

• The left-most column lists types.

• The top-most row describes the parameter format. Format is columnname##type##unit.

• Use decimals.

• Do not use single or double quotes.

• Types are for length, area, volume, or other

• For Units, use only: inches, feet, millimeters, centimeters, or meters. Leave unit field blank for type other.

• Revit applies project unit settings to type catalog when loading family.

Example file:

,Manufacturer##other##,Length##length##centimeters,Width##length##centimeters,Height##length##centimeters

MA36x30,Revit,36.5,2.75,30,

MA40x24,Revit,40.5,3.25,24

• Revit applies project unit settings to the type catalog when loading families.

• You can export your project to a database using ODBC and download the element type tables in comma-delimited format.