How VUE turns parameters into controls, and how to curate them.
A type is one configuration of a product that has actually been converted — the 1200 mm anthracite one. A Revit family typically contains many; an FBX arrives with one.
Everything a visitor can select is a type. VUE does not generate geometry on demand, so the configurator is a way of navigating what exists rather than a way of making new combinations. If a size is not in the family, no amount of configuration will produce it.
A flat row of buttons labelled Stelrad - 450mm x 1200mm - Blue is not a configurator. The information a specifier wants is inside those names, and inside the family’s parameters — so VUE reads the parameters instead.
It looks for the smallest set of parameters whose combinations correspond exactly to the list of types. On a real radiator catalogue with 12 types and 103 parameters, that resolves to two controls — form and size — which between them pick out all 12 with nothing missing and nothing duplicated.
Each control gets a shape from what the parameter is:
Everything else that varies but is not a control — a calculated heat output, a product code — becomes a specification readout that updates as the visitor selects. It is information, not a choice.
The studio lists every parameter VUE rejected and says why. This is deliberate — “why isn’t Finish a dropdown?” should be answerable without asking us. The usual reasons:
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| Same on every type | It does not vary, so there is nothing to choose. It appears in the specification readout instead. |
| Unique per type | A different value on every single type, with no repeats — that is a product code or a name, not a choice. Twelve types with twelve distinct codes would make a dropdown that duplicates the type list. |
| Missing on some types | Not present on every type, so it cannot describe the whole family. |
| Determined by another control | Its value follows from the ones already chosen. Showing it as a control would let a visitor pick a combination that contradicts itself. |
The derivation is a proposal. You can, and generally should, adjust it:
TypeName with values like “Classic Towel Rail (Straight)” is better labelled “Form”.Your curation survives re-conversion. It is stored against the parameter name, not against the converted output, so re-uploading an updated family keeps your labels. A value that is new appears at the end with its raw name; one that has gone is kept and flagged rather than dropped silently.
An FBX or OBJ has no parameters, and a Revit family occasionally has the wrong ones. In both cases you can define the options yourself:
The result behaves exactly like a derived control, because it is the same mechanism — you are supplying the parameter values that a Revit family would have supplied.
This is how you get “change the body colour per type” on a model that arrived as a single mesh.
Real catalogues are sparse — 1200 mm might come in anthracite and white but 300 mm only in white. VUE handles that without ever showing a dead end:
There is deliberately no “no such product” state. It is unreachable by construction rather than handled with a message.
The analytics record when this happens, and it is one of the more commercially interesting numbers on the dashboard — it is a log of combinations people asked for and you do not make.
A variant is a version of a type you create in VUE rather than in Revit — most often the same geometry in a different finish, using a material from your library. Variants sit alongside the configurator rather than inside it, because they have no parameters to place them on the grid.
See materials and finishes for how to make one.