Tip of the Month: manage codes with a Project Info lookup table in Archicad

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Dear Community members,

This month's tip comes from community member @Mathias Jonathan, who shared a practical way to turn Project Info into a small internal lookup table: a place where you store a list of values inside the project, so a property expression can look them up and reuse them elsewhere in the model. Instead of maintaining door and window codes in external Excel sheets or custom scripts, this approach keeps that data in the model so schedules and exports stay aligned with the current project state.

Challenge

Project teams often need clear, short codes for doors and windows that colleagues, stakeholders, and clients can quickly understand. When those codes live outside Archicad in spreadsheets or external workflows, every naming update requires extra coordination and increases the risk that schedules and exports no longer match the latest model state.

Solution

Mathias' technique can be adapted to door and window codes in a few simple steps. Doors and windows are just one use case here—the same logic can be applied to any set of codes or categories you want to manage inside Archicad.

1. Create a Project Info field for the lookup table
   Open File → Info → Project Info and create a dedicated field for door and window codes, for example: Door & Window Codes.

2. Add the code pairs as plain text
   Enter one item per line pairing each door or window type with its short code, for example Entrance Door: ED and Bedroom Window: BW.
   

3. Use a property expression to read the code
   Create a text property for doors and windows that checks whether the element name appears in the Project Info field and, if it does, extracts the matching code. If no match is found, the property can return the original name, which keeps the workflow safe even when new types are introduced before the lookup table is updated.

4. Show the property in schedules and exports
   Add the new property to your door and window schedules so the code is generated directly from Project Info instead of typed manually. The same property can then support exports and documentation outputs that need the same code logic.

Result

With this approach, the lookup table lives inside Archicad instead of in a separate spreadsheet, which makes updates easier and helps keep schedules, labels, and exports aligned with the current project file.

What other use cases can you think of for this workflow beyond door and window codes?

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You can leave kudos to @Mathias Jonathan  for sharing this tip with the Community and explore his original example in the forum post.