topic Re: Room Finish Schedule in Collaboration with other software

Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:13:40 GMT

Currently, we have custom fields in our zone stamp for wall finishes (NSEW), so that the finishes can show up on our schedule. These finishes though are manually entered into the zones. Is there a way to extract this info from the model? There should be but I can't seem to figure it out. The zones themselves can do it because I can select "Inheret Boundary Wall and Trimming Element Materials" and they show up correctly in 3D. So how can I extract that info to a room finish schedule? Seems like it should be easy. Seems like it is the proper workflow, so that you modify the model (wall materials) and the info (that's the I in BIM right) shows up in a schedule.

What am I missing such that we need to find work arounds or GDL gurus to do this sort of stuff. Would be really nice if it was truely interactive, so that if I change the material in the schedule it would changethe model but I know that's just crazy talk.

Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:09:41 GMT

a screen shot of the schedule would be helpful. Is there some reason you would not want to extract the wall finish from the walls?

Just incase you were thinking ArchiCAD room finish schedules are difficult, take a look at this.
http://www.archidigm.com/classroom/adt_4_development_guide/adt_3-0_dg_part_18.htm

Re: Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:54:31 GMT

Yes I would want to extract the materials from the walls but without it tied to the zone how would you differentiate between rooms?

On the attached, the top schedule is a piece of our old schedule, done in Excel, pasted into ArchiCAD. A workflow we are trying to phase out. The bottom is the ArchiCAD schedule, based on our old schedule, all the info is extracted from the zones, all of which would have been manually entered into the "Parameters for Listing" of each zone.

The zone stamp itself is a modified version of a stamp we purchased years ago but it seems like all the out of the box stamps have the same parameters we are using but none seem to extract the actual materials of the walls that define the zone.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:29:29 GMT

Have you tried to add Additional Parameters to your zone schedule?
There are parameter you can add for the material of N,E, S, W walls.

By null at 2010-07-27

Re: Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:05:38 GMT

Those parameters (Wall Finish/N, etc) are in the schedule, it is those parameters that are generating the wall finishes on the schedule now (they are just renamed in the schedule to look graphically like our old schedules) but those parameters don't actually extract the info from the materials of the walls in the model, they have to be manually entered into the parameters within the zone stamp.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:30:01 GMT

Make a schedule for the wall data you want to show and add to it
Zone Name and Zone Number from the General tab of Available Parameters.
With the new features of the Label, you may want to extract some data from there for your wall finish schedule.

You can adjust the limits of what you can see of a schedule in layout. This way you can make it look like it is all one Room Finish Schedule, but it might be made of several different scheduels.

Work arounds

Re: Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:47:53 GMT

You lost me somewhere there. I can already get all the data I want out of the zone stamp but it's all manually entered into the stamp anyway.

I am missing from your workaround, how, if I change the finish on the North wall in the model, in Room 100 from PT-1 to PT-2, so that when I'm working in 3D the wall changes from say red to blue, I don't see where I can get that data to put it on a schedule, although its obviously there because the wall changes color and the zone boundaries change as well.

How are others dealing with this? Is everyone still just entering the data manually?

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:21:29 GMT

If you extract the wall finish data from the walls rather than from Zone you can still show what room the wall is in by adding the Zone Name, or Zone Number to a wall schedule. It would be a wall schedule with some zone info rather than a zone schedule with some wall info.

Of course it would be nice to extract all of the info needed for your room finish schedule from the zone object.

If you need to do it, you can use more than one schedule and place them next to each other in Layout. In the Layout, you can crop the view of each schedule so it looks like they are all one schedule. That's what I mean by work around.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:50:53 GMT

Maybe I'm just being dense here, and I get what you mean by combining multiple schedules in layout, cropping etc. I understand that part of it, I just don't get how that would apply here.

IN a "wall schedule" I would end up with a line on the schedule for every wall, so even the simplest room would have 4 lines in the schedule, (although in a quick trial I get some rroms with only one wall listed ??) and there's no way that I can see to differentiate which wall is which (directionally NESW), also the only way I see that you can extract the wall material (based on the available parameters in the schedule scheme settings) is selecting by reference/opposite/edge but in some zones it would be the reference side and in the zone on the other side of the wall it would be by the opposite side.

If someone is using a methodology like this I'd love to see it, maybe I'm just not getting it.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:05:33 GMT

It depends on what you want to show in the schedule.

Do you want to show all walls in the project with a certain finish, or all wall in a Zone with a certain finish. Do you have many rooms in a zone for do you have a different zone for each room?

You may want to use wall ID numbers and wall labels. It all depends on what exactly you want to show up in a schedule.

As I understand it, you want a schedule that will show the wall finish for each wall in a room and have the room number or room name the wall is in on the schedule too.

There many ways you can show which wall has what finish in a schedule, or even in a list.

ID's and Labels could be a good way to do this. This information does not have to be extracted out of a zone object.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:34:43 GMT

Steve, I appreciate all the input. I need a schedule like the screen shot I posted. The work arounds of tring to use wall IDs, etc would be more work than just manually entering the info into the zone stamp, and how do you ID one side differently from the other, a North Wall in on room is the south wall on the other side.

Every firm I've worked at and most drawings I've seen from other firms, at least those doing commerical work in the northeast have a finish schedule more or less like this. Rooms listed by name and number, 4 walls differentiated by direction, floor, ceiling. Some have more info some less but that's the basics. It shouldn't be so hard to get something useful for something that is so common, especially given that the parameter is somewhere, the zone can extract that info by clicking the inheret button, so why can't I find that parameter somewhere to put on a schedule.

Thanks again for trying.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Erika Epstein — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:27:29 GMT

Using room Identifier_NCS 14 I created a schedule using fields some that are read directly from the zone, others from filled in parameters.

They can be changed in the schedule or in the zone settings individually or in groups.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Erika Epstein — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:35:02 GMT

here's the pic

Re: Room Finish Schedule

kevin b — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:33:10 GMT

Erika>the attached file is no longer available, but it looks like what I have and from the sounds of it you are filling in some of the parameters (wall finishes/N, etc), in the zone, same as we are. It's good, just seems like it should be better.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Erika Epstein — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:09:20 GMT

Kevin,
I agree, it is not an ideal solution.
If you have a physical baseboard, you can call its material, but even that is not a complete solution as you are still stuck with the orientation problem.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:21:58 GMT

the orientaion problem goes away when you use a wall ID.
Too many times N,E, S, W is not enought anyway. Rooms may have several walls in each direction, or walls that are rounded, on angles, etc...

If you want to have the wall material inherited by the zone from the walls displayed, try the listCodeWallMat parameter. You can verify it in 3d window. The sides of the zone will have the schedule assigned material.

This will display the inherited wall material in the scheddule and give you a tab to click in the schedule that will open up the materials/fills window.

You will need to click on the wall finish first to see the tab/arrow.
You can select what ever material you want and it will change the material inherited from the walls.

By null at 2010-07-29

By null at 2010-07-29

Re: Room Finish Schedule

Steve Jepson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:46:54 GMT

This is still not what is needed in a room finish schedule, but forget about trying to extract that from a zone with out some additional gdl scripting.

If you don't want to do that, quit trying to extract that data from a zone.

Do you really want a roof finish schedule?

Put some useful schedules next to your interior elevations and you wont need a room finish schedule.

Re: Room Finish Schedule

DaveOlufs — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:16:02 GMT

KevinB...

In other words, do it manually. There seems to be no flexibility or really capabilities with scheduling unless you have years of education and programming experience. To get it done 'right' you must do it manually or fake it until you make it.

I don't have time to figure out AC schedules to be frustrated the output and information is inadequate or minimal.

From a scheduled response...