increment items on a schedule with numbers

[gotphish001]

I know I can do it with element IDs, but i'd like to do it a different way.

I'm scheduling millwork and cabinets. Lets say I have a 4 drawer cabinet. I can add a 3D view of it and then annotate with dimesions each drawer size onto the schedule. My problem with this is you need to make the 3d column and row so big to make the object and dims readable on a print. That in turn makes every column and row way bigger than needed. I end up with way over sized millwork schedules because I have a 2"x2" block that says 30" in it. I don't want a 10 cabinet schedule to take up most of a 24x36 sheet.

Here's what I'm trying to do. I want to exclude the 3D view from my millwork schedule which will shink the size of the schedule drastically. I want each scheduled item to get asigned a number just in order top to bottom 1,2,3, etc. I then want to reference that number on a second millwork schedule and put the 3D with annotations on that one. The second schedule will only be a column with that number and the 3d image. I then can make the image large enough to be readable and not waste a ton of space. 

I know I can do this with element ID's and increment them even after the fact. This second schedule is just for us and not for a GC. It's just to help avoid mistakes on ording cabinets. It doesn't happen ofter, but it sucks to eat a $1000 cabinet because someone ordered something they thought was right. The 3d image will help as a checkset.

If there's a variable field for this I can't seem to find it. I know I can just make a user defined field and put in the numbers myself. It actually won't take that long as even a giant kitchen doesn't have that many cabinets. Maybe take one minute to add 35 numbers into the schedule. One of the reasons why I'd like it to be auto is during design the number of cabinets will change. I'd have to manually fix the reference numbers all the time. The numbers don't need to mean anything at all. They are just to match a cabinet from one millwork schedule to the other. Even if cabinets changes numbers as I added cabinets it wouldn't matter as the second schedule would change as well. 1 would also reference 1, 2 would always reference 2 and so on. What cabinet is each number is meaning less.

[Gerry Leonor]

it sounds similar to how we doing our Window Schedules.

a window will be scheduled & presented twice on one layout.

• first as a hardware schedule (dims, type, location, ID) on the left-side of the layout
• second as a 3D image with overall dimensions & window type, on the right-side of the layout

there is actually a 3rd drawing in this setup.
it's a drawing that sets out the dimensions of the mullions/transoms/sashes. it sits directly below a laid-out group of the Window Type Elevations.

screenshot below. i've hidden the window type elevations for clarity.

now, the reason we did the 3rd drawing (as a Worksheet) is because there was (still is) a chance that if the internal (non-overall) dimensions were done in the 3D Window Schedule View, it would disappear if, say we change the window from one type to another. there were times that even a simple update of the 3D schedule. to make this work, we do a Trace Reference of the layout into a worksheet & use hotspots & dimensions to measure the mullions & sashes. keep in mind that the alignment of the Layout & the Worksheet. I've drawn a red border to indicate the over-all size of the layout in the worksheet.

it's not perfect & again, another duct-tape workaround, but it's been workable with us for years. perhaps if we can have the dimensions not disappear in the 3D Schedule Elevation it would make this process much smoother. to be fair, i haven't tried to disprove the idea that these dimensions disappear for a while now & not since AC22.