Dynamic ID Coding of Building Elements

[Patrick Sherwood]

Hi,

Is there a way to define the ID of 3D elements (walls, slabs etc.) with some of its own properties .
eg. Wall = [Composite Name] + [Fire Rating] + [STC].

All of these have been defined, so would like a way to automate this rather than selecting all walls and changing manually.

Have tried the Element ID Manager but seems to only work to increment walls individually/or part of group and doesn't seem able to dynamically create IDs.

Thanks

[poco2013]

AFAIK - This is not possible with the "built in"tools in Archicad. You could create a new property using a expression which would create the new Id, but you could not overwrite the "element ID" property which I believe is your intent.

There are a few alternatives.

You could export a schedule to excel. Create a macro there to overwrite the Element ID field then re import into Archicad.

You could create a C++ AddOn to directly overwrite the "element ID"

Or the easiest, most straight forward way would be to create and use  a Python script. The script would involve only a few lines of code and would offer the most control over the logic, filtering and formatting.

[Sebastian Monroe]

I would like to know how this python script would be written.  I am also interested in writing specific information to the elementID field.

[SenecaDesignLLC]

Does the element id manager not do what you are after?

[poco2013 · Accepted solution]

I make a short Demo video to show a Python script to accomplish this.

Convert Element ID to new title based on three properties of the element 

Attach is the script. Leave a comment if you have further questions.

[_c_]

Hello Gerry, many thanks for your very useful example.

Here I attach a variant avoiding the extra modules. Also there was a missing property (we are on the German AC) causing error.

This might be useful to others. 

[JaredBanks]

The video is set to private, I'd love to see it.

[poco2013]

Try it now?

[JaredBanks]

Thanks. It works now.