topic Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS in Collaboration with other software

SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:20:09 GMT

How can i make an interactive schedule that will give the total sum of all the wall lengths without listing out each one in a separate row (because they all have different lengths)

like

Type height total length
2x4@ 16" o.c. 8'-0" 145'
2x4@ 16" o.c. 10'-0" 28'
2x6@ 16" o.c. 8'-0" 28'

I don't need to see every single wall listed as its entry just because they are a different length

I tried the sum button in the scheme settings and it just adds a sum at the bottom but does not consolidate all the similar walls into one row

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:25:22 GMT

Anyone?

Just wondering how to get this information in a useful way for lumber list

the only thing I can think of is doing a separate schedule for each different wall height and sum the length

open to any suggestions as to how to uses these schedule tool to create lumber list for pricing/ordering

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:52:38 GMT

Mo wrote:
I tried the sum button in the scheme settings and it just adds a sum at the bottom but does not consolidate all the similar walls into one row

The part where you said it did not consolidate all similar walls into one row - did you check the box next to "Show uniform items as a single entry"? It can be found at the top left of the schedule options.

EDIT: Never mind - if it consolidates all walls of the same height and length, it will not update the total length - I see what you are saying now. You may be better off listing all the walls and show the sum of lengths. If you want to break it up by height - put the flag next to the height (same location in the scheme settings where you tagged the sum next to length) and that should break up the wall schedules by height and calculate the sum of length in each height group.

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Anonymous — Tue, 29 May 2018 16:00:45 GMT

I agree that it should be possible to get such information nicely in a schedule without listing every individual wall piece. But apparently, getting a practical useful list with total amounts out of ArchiCAD is not possible.

I would like to kindly ask the developers to look into this. These are common user cases that appear in daily practice and the ArchiCAD schedules are currently not providing us with the tools we need.

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 29 May 2018 17:29:04 GMT

It is possible to get exactly this information. Attached is a Scheme and the output that groups walls by their wall type (composite in this case) and totals the length of all walls of each height.

Note that no flags, and no summation symbols are used in the Scheme. The grouping and totals is done via the schedule settings. The order of the fields is the critical thing. The composite - major grouping - must be first, followed by the next grouping (height) and finally the length for summation.

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Anonymous — Wed, 30 May 2018 08:07:38 GMT

Not sure what goes wrong here, but it doesn't work:

Here the schedule settings: Here the output: I drew three walls. Two with same height (3 000 mm) one with different height (3 600 mm).
The two walls with the same height have length 4 000 mm and 6 000 mm, so I want to see one row with 3 000 mm and total length of 10 000 mm.

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 30 May 2018 17:45:26 GMT

Strange! I have 13 random walls in my example. I tried to break it and make it stop working, but couldn't. Yours sure looks the same (I even changed my first field to match yours). No idea why it isn't working for you. 😞. The only difference I see is that I am on MacOS and you are on Windows, but the core code is supposed to behave the same cross-platform.

Re: SUM OF WALL LENGTHS

Laszlo Nagy — Sun, 03 Jun 2018 12:02:48 GMT

I have checked this in both ARCHICAD 20 and 21 because from the color of little ARCHICAD logo in the top left corner of the screenshot, I think Wilt is on AC20. So this works in AC21, but it did not in AC20. There must have been a change in how Schedules behave in this regard.

I have not seen any mention of this very subtle change in the Help Center. Here is what it says:

Merge Uniform Items
Check this box to group the Schedule’s identical items in a single record. If it is unchecked, all items will be listed individually.
Items are uniform if the values of their fields are identical (e.g. same element type, surface, orientation). If the only difference between two elements is their area or volume, they are still considered uniform.

https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/guides/archicad-21/archicad-21-reference-guide/user-interface-reference/dialog-boxes/format-options-interactive-schedule/#IX_Merge_Uniform_Items

So it talks about area and volume, when deciding whether they are uniform, but not length or height. I will let the guys at GS know about this so this info can be added to the article.