topic Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit. in Project data & BIM

Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Rastko Pecar — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 17:44:29 GMT

Hi,

I would like to create a property that reads the thickness parameter of skins that form composite structures and convert it from my default calculation unit (meters) to centimeters in my schedules. I went to property manager and when I wanted to create an expression for conversion, I cant find the component thickness parameter. Can anyone help?

I don't want to change my calculation units as a global setting because I use meters for all my quantity takeoffs and I need centimeters just for this specific case.

Ideas appreciated!

Operating system used: Windows 10,0,22631 build 22631

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 01 May 2024 21:36:49 GMT

Unfortunately, Properties can only inquire and generate data about entire elements, but not about subelements, groups of elements, or other elements.

The thickness of a composite skin is subelement-level data so you cannot get it with Properties.

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Barry Kelly — Thu, 02 May 2024 03:34:39 GMT

You can get the inside and outside skin thicknesses in properties.

Also the thickness of skins tagged as air or insulation (this is set up in Project Preferences > Calculation Units & Rules > Conditional Parameters).

But as Laszlo said, you can not get all of the skin thicknesses.

Barry.

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

AllanP — Thu, 02 May 2024 04:21:36 GMT

Why just the inside face and outside face?

That reminds me of the "PROFILE_DEFAULT_GEOMETRY" command in GDL.

Why?

We want to know the current geometry of the placed profile, not the default unplaced version...i can't seem to find that command...

GLOB_NORTH_DIR that no longer works for parameters

GLOB_PROJECT_LONGITUDE that no longer works for parameters

GLOB_PROJECT_LATITUDE that no longer works for parameters

I want my solar hot water panel numbers to be calculated correctly.

that can't happen the when parameters can not be set by the north direction...

All elements ARE "project dependent" and should be able to be used in parameter script.

Imagine if i wanted to be able to program windows so they place correct sun shades on them in the correct Latitudes and correct orientations, but i can no longer do that unless i go back to Archicad 18 where it still works..or be able to program Hot Water Solar panels so they count correctly based on the sun rose requirements, but I can no longer do that unless i go back to Archicad 18 where it still works.

I hated having to disable those features when we moved on from Archicad 18...

Australia is a big content, and the code in the objects from the suppliers should be able to calculate these shorts of things for us...

Why should i have to create API's to do things that were available in the program before?

Is the plan to make Archicad as dumb as REVIT so everyone moves to REVIT?

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Barry Kelly — Thu, 02 May 2024 04:55:48 GMT

The original question has nothing to do with GDL.

It is about Properties and Expressions.

Barry.

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Rastko Pecar — Sat, 04 May 2024 06:34:54 GMT

Thank you Laszlo and Barry,

this is unfortunate. I struggle with other aspects of reporting composite assemblies and I hope GS will improve functionality in this regard. Ive seen a presentation somewhere of enzyme architects where they show custom built label that is able to pull the information of skins constituting an composite. It can be done and I hope GS will solve this.

Have a nice day

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Rastko Pecar — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 13:40:26 GMT

Hi all,

After some playing with materials, properties and labels, Ive managed to come up with a method of reporting composites that suit my deliverables. It was a fun exploration process I would like to share:

Skin list label allows you to choose units for reporting thicknesses. If you duplicate one of your views that contains most (preferably all) of your composites and set the units (in view settings) to centimeters, the skin list label will display the skins in cm with proper alignment of numbers. If you look at my skin list label below it has everything turned off except the description of the building material and thickness. The name of the composite and thickness are actually another label (green boundary), which just contains some auto-text (keynote, title and thickness) in bold text.

One good thing about using the description property of materials is that it allows you to use the description for external/public purposes (specifying your materials). and using the material name for internal/company purposes: organizing your materials, finding them quickly using text search and most importantly keeping copies with different intersection priorities of the same physical material. This way, I can have 3 versions of the same material with "+" extension for hi priority, normal without any extension and "-" for low priority and the same description "thermal insulation, XPS" for example.

How about if you model your assemblies using 2 or more composites? Sometimes this is the easiest way to achieve proper representation of roof eaves and necessary if you want to model a balcony slab with inclined flooring for example. In this case you model the structural part and bottom finish using the slab tool and one composite, and the top skins using the roof tool in 2% slope and another composite. With SEO subtraction you then finalize your assembly. You can report such assemblies by stacking skin list labels in appropriate order that corresponds to the sequence of skins. The only two things you have to keep in mind is rearranging the placement of skin list label if you add/subtract a skin and recalculating the sum if you change any thickness (I'm planing to do another property that would automatically sum composites that constitute the same assembly.

In schedules however, it is possible to list two (or more) composites that form an assembly in a unitary way:

As you can see in the schedule above, both of my composites are merged into one assembly, which is fantastic. You achieve this by giving both composites the same keynote (TB-1 in my case) and numbering them (#1 and #2) so that schedule can sort them in appropriate order. Keynote and ordering number are written in the names of my composites (seen in the images above) and extracted with SPLIT expressions.

Some concluding notes: schedule must have "merge items" option turned off, "show headline" turned on. For thicknesses to be reported properly it is important that the schedule lists only one instance of certain type (assembly), otherwise the SUM function will start to add the thicknesses of all skins that it finds in the model (your 20 cm of insulation that you have in your typical wall will be multiplied by the number of instances of this wall type and you will get hundreds of cm of insulation which we dont want). You can prevent such mistake by creating a property called sample composite of a true/false type and having false as the default value. Then go to the model and choose one instance of all your wall, slab and roof types and change the property to true and set up your components schedule so that it lists only elements with the value of this property set to true. Sometimes the schedule wont display the correct composite order. When this happens, go to scheme settings, click on "keep components together in the schedule" option, click OK and then go back in and uncheck the same option. It should work fine.

You can now export the schedule to Excell and convert the thicknesses to cm, which you can do with and expression. Still double check your values because vapor barriers, foils and other thin materials get reported as 0.00 thick. These items you have to manually correct. You can avoid this hassle by publishing your assemblies directly form Archicad by placing views with skin list labels on layouts, format them in groups (floors, roofs, walls) and publish them to PDFs.

Using this workflow allows me to keep my assemblies properly structured and always in sync across all my plans, details and specs. Hope people find this useful!

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Rastko Pecar — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:55:54 GMT

quick follow-up: no export to Excel is needed, because you can temporarily change your calculation units (options/project pref./calculation units) to centimetres, publish your composites specifications and revert the calc. units back to cm. This is not a solution, more one of work-arrounds and in this sense the first method using labels is better, because skin list label adapts the units to view settings.

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

StefanV_BCP — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 12:14:49 GMT

Interesting perspective on this issue. Personally, I’ve taken a different approach that works well in our case. However, I’m glad to see new ideas emerging within the community.

Cheers,
Stefan V

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

scom570 — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 10:08:11 GMT

Can we get the name of each skin so that the building materials list shows up row by row instead of a string? I tried using Property Manager, but I'm getting nowhere. Also, can the thickness be expressed in fractions?

Re: Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

Rastko Pecar — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:23:48 GMT

Yes, the important thing is to do this kind of schedule as a component schedule (scheme settings, left column).

The next thing are the field settings, which should contain the parameters as seen on the print screen:

The important thing is to list "component thickness parametes", not "thickness" as a general parametes.

Instead of "description" maybe first use "building material" property. I use "description" because my bmats naming convention contains some information that I don't want to be reported. Similarily my naming convention is made to order my bmats library, not specifiing materials. Thats why I use "description".

One thing to keep in mind with this schedule is that you have to apply a filter to your model elements so, that only one element of each composite is captured by the schedule, otherwise it will start summing up particular skins (if you have 10 cms of insulation and 10 walls in your model, your insulation thickness will be registered as 100 cms, which is wrong). In the schedule above this filtering function is applied via a custom property that I created, called "sample" of a true/false type and I asign only one model element for each composite to avoid skin thickness summation. Another way of doing this is to place such "sample" walls, slabs, roofs into a dedicated design option and then apply the filter in the scheme settings or view settings. You can check this link for this controlling thickness units here.

Hope this helps, cheers!