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Error handling for unclassified elements

Bruce
Expert

Is there a way to test for an unclassified element in a Property Expression, and return an empty string instead of a #hashtag?  A similar Excel formula would be "=ISNA()"

 

E.g. we are concatenating our wall label from multiple properties to have one label that has (for example), the wall type, the fire rating, the acoustic rating etc.  One of these is "Wall Core", which is only available for the "Solid Wall" classification.  However, we also have labels attached to walls that are classified as "Partition Wall", which result in a #hashtag error.

 

As far as I can tell, if the Property isn't available, then the expression doesn't even run.

Bruce Walker
www.brucepwalker.com
Barking Dog BIM YouTube
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7 REPLIES 7
runxel
Legend

The solution is in your last sentence already.

You don't need to explicitly test for some classification. If the expression can't be evaluated (e.g. because one element does not have this property), it will be skipped. But please bear in mind: you can add as many expressions as wanted. AC will take the first applicable one. In this example if some element does not have "some property", it will just get a static "foo" applied. Cool, huh?

Bildschirmfoto 2023-02-09 um 15.46.53.png

Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»
Bruce
Expert

Thanks runxel,

 

Although this would work for one, maybe two combined properties, we have five or six, with either an "N/A", or the value.  The end result would look something like:

WT1 | CRC1 | 30/30/30 | RW45 | R3.2

 

Where if any of those values were "N/A", they wouldn't appear in the final concatenated property.  It's a long CONCAT statement, with heaps of nested IF statements, e.g. IF(CORE TYPE = "N/A", "", (CONCAT CORE TYPE, "|")).

 

We could get around it with a proxy property to test, but this introduces new properties, and all properties create processing overhead which has significant impact on larger projects.

Bruce Walker
www.brucepwalker.com
Barking Dog BIM YouTube
Mindmeister Mindmap
-- since v8.1 --
AC26 5002 INT Full | Windows 11 64 Pro | 12th Gen Intel i7-12700H 2.30 GHz | 64 Gb RAM | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 32 Gb

Okay I can see that this produces some overhead for larger concatenated properties.

I have the same thing going on for fire safety properties. But since I might need the parts for themself anyway I have them seperate. I really don't care, I was not able to see any performance drops so far with having a few more properties.

So a workaround for you would be to split your one big property into its constituting parts and having a "fallback". Could be e.g. a special character, which you then use to test for (instead of your "N/A").

Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»
Bruce
Expert

Yes, we do have our properties split out, as you've described.  "N/A" is our 'special' character...but if the property isn't in the classification, it can't produce even the special character to test for.  This is the problem we're running into.

 

This would be solved if we could test for a null value. e.g. ISNULL.

Bruce Walker
www.brucepwalker.com
Barking Dog BIM YouTube
Mindmeister Mindmap
-- since v8.1 --
AC26 5002 INT Full | Windows 11 64 Pro | 12th Gen Intel i7-12700H 2.30 GHz | 64 Gb RAM | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 32 Gb

Have you tried empty quotes "".

This is a null string.

 

Barry.

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Bruce
Expert

Good idea Barry.  Unfortunately, no, that didn't work.

Bruce Walker
www.brucepwalker.com
Barking Dog BIM YouTube
Mindmeister Mindmap
-- since v8.1 --
AC26 5002 INT Full | Windows 11 64 Pro | 12th Gen Intel i7-12700H 2.30 GHz | 64 Gb RAM | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 32 Gb

Yeah you're right Bruce, sorry.

My suggestion doesn't help when the whole property is not available.

The other workaround still works. But I see it is cumbersome to generate all versions, especially when every one of the parts could be missing. This would like 5! (=120) versions? 😅

So yeah, valid wish.

Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»