Wall ID's

[Anonymous]

I was experimenting with the labeling tool, and was wondering if there was any way to tie a composite to a walls ID. I have created several composites for all of our different wall types and it would be great if I could have the wall ID's change to match each composite for easy labeling. Just trying to automate one more piece of the puzzle.

[Anonymous]

I have done a sloppy GDL hack to one of the standard ArchiCAD wall labels. It simply labels the wall with the first two characters of the composite associated with the wall. I then standardized our composites to start with "W1" , "W2", and so on.

The gist of the code is:

if cid=1 then
if strsub (WALL_COMPS_NAME, 1, 3)= "" then
text2 0,(u/2+(tf-fsp/8)*u/fsp)*x,strsub (WALL_COMPS_NAME, 1, 2)
else text2 0,(u/2+(tf-fsp/8)*u/fsp)*x,strsub (WALL_COMPS_NAME, 1, 3)
endif)

Happy to send the the hacked label if you think it might help.

[Anonymous]

That would definitely help. Thanks. Please send to
mbrooking@fitzpatrickbutler.com

[fuzzytnth3]

Millard wrote:
I was experimenting with the labeling tool, and was wondering if there was any way to tie a composite to a walls ID. I have created several composites for all of our different wall types and it would be great if I could have the wall ID's change to match each composite for easy labeling. Just trying to automate one more piece of the puzzle.

Not as elegant as getting GDL to do it for you but I've used ArchiCAD's database to match the Properties of the composite wall. I can then use Find & Select to select the walls with a matching property, once the walls are selected I then change the wall ID to the same code as the wall property (eg a plasterb'd wall would be K10-110).

I do this for all the other composite wall types and then repeat for all the other storey's of the building. The auto labels then change to display the correct ID/code

If at a later date the wall has to changed to adifferent composite you just need to remember to modify the wall's ID to match

As I said not as nifty as GDL but it worked for us on this job http://www.graphisoft.com/community/success_stories/caltonhill.html

[Karl Ottenstein]

Millard wrote:
I have created several composites for all of our different wall types and it would be great if I could have the wall ID's change to match each composite for easy labeling. Just trying to automate one more piece of the puzzle.

Not automatic, but one step, easily repeated. This is what the Element ID Manager (EIDM) in the Calculate menu is for: changing the ID's of an entire group of elements that match certain criteria.


Just set the element type to wall, the criteria to fill, and then in the ID Format tab, set the style for the desired ID's.


I just found a problem with 8.1R2+ in that the walls get partially processed, and then AC just locks up on me - doesn't say "not responding", and doesn't consume CPU ... but just freezes! I use EIDM on EVERY project to renumber my windows and doors without a problem, so this seems to be something related to filtering on walls and fills (360 walls in the "Residential House" example file ... got as far as 24 walls before locking up).


However, this works perfectly, and in a fraction of a second, in 9.0. Apparently one of the many bug fixes there.

If numeric, but identical-per-composite (and other fill) ID's is all you want, then you're done. Save the EIDM settings, and just bring 'em up to repeat after any model revision.

If you must have more specific ID's - related to the name of the fill rather than fixed text and increasing numbers - then follow your EIDM command with an Interactive Scheduler preview with settings (just for editing purposes) that display the wall ID and the fill name. (Unlock and show all [wall] layers first so that you can edit everything.) You should have one line per ID. Simply change the IDs there to the text IDs that reflects the names of the fills, click 'apply', and all wall ID's are updated. Unfortunately, there is no way to automate this part. So, I would do this only when the project is nearly complete ... and then rather than use EIDM again to renumber all ID's and lose this work (!), the new walls will show up in the preview window and you can just manually change (copy/paste even) the proper ID values for them.

Karl