Revit Tricks - Schedule Detail Component

In some cases I found I need to schedule length for something not modelled as 3d. The best way is to schedule detail component. So it won't interference with other schedules. And can stay in the file for later references. But by default, in revit, you can not direct schedule detail component. There is a way around it by suing annotation symbols to pass the parameters from detail component into Note Block schedule. Refer to below for simple instructions.

1. create a line based detail component.
2. create a fill region to represent the length
3. create an annotation symbol family, make it shared for appering in schedule. create a instance parameter inside it called symLength.
4. load the annotation symbo into detail component family.
5. link length parameter to the symbol symLength parameter.
6. load detail component family into a test project
7. draw several instance of detail family
8. create a note block schedule pick the annotation family crated before. pick symLength to schedule.
9. Now you can have the length from detail component scheduled.

You can do the similar thing for scheduling rectangular area. It may be useful to calculate things in a hurry. Just need to do a formula inside detail component to calculate it first. Then passes it to symbol family for scheduling in note block schedule.