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What determines whether Zone Names are from and to rooms?

Anonymous
Not applicable
I have a schedule that shows my windows listed by room. I have selected the "to room" parameter so it will list the room name defined by the zone tool. It works pretty well for the most part, but occasionally there will be:

1. a missing name and I have to refer to the "from room" in order to get the name to show up ( I prefer that they all show up in one of the parameters consistently, but not both, so I don't have to add another column to my schedule)

2. in a few cases, I can't get the zone name to appear in my schedule at all (I've zoomed in and out to see that I'm catching all the wall edges properly and even deleted the zone and replaced it with no success)

This problem has left me confounded because I can't tell what determines whether a room (zone) is "to" or "from".

a. What determines this?
b. Is it controllable?

Also, what determines whether a door or window will associate to the zone it resides?

I think if I can understand what the controlling factors are for the above, I will be able to mitigate weird circumstances where it's not working like I would like it to.

Thanks
10 REPLIES 10
Anonymous
Not applicable
Are you using the SE library? I'm not sure about the windows but I believe the doors have a dynamic hotspot (green diamond) that lets you set which zone to list in the schedule. I haven't figured out what determines the to/from relationship yet. This is something that really should be more straight forward. It is possible to get everything you want by editing the GDL, but that is a bit of a high hurdle.
Aaron Bourgoin
Virtuoso
I thought it was determined by the direction of the door swing with the from/to being determined by the travel of the door leaf.
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Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks for the replies, I didn't think I would have any luck getting a response on super bowl sunday.

My current issues are related to windows. I have'nt started the door schedule yet to see what issues, if any, exist.

All the windows are on exterior walls so there is really only one zone that should apply since I typicaly don't define zones outside of my building.

I am using the SE9 Library by the way. I don't see a green diamond that I can move or adjust. How do I get this to show up? Is it part of the SE9 Library?

I am placing operable casement windows and unfortanely they dont show swings like doors (Archicad powers that be, are you listening? This would be a great enhancement as my framers look at the floor plan more than anything else and it would be great to see the swing of the window in the same way I see the swing of a door)
Barry Kelly
Moderator
I've been playing around with this myself recently so might be able to help clarify this a little.

When you place doors and windows the last point you click on the plan is where it should read the zone from (I say should as I am not familiar with your SE9 library but assume it would work the same).

With doors this represents where you want the door to swing to - so setting the door schedule to give you "to room" will show this zone.
Setting "from room" will give the zone name on the side without the door swing.

With windows generally your last click is on the oustide of the external wall - this is also the "to room" side but as there is no zone nothing will show.
So with windows you will always want the "from room" field in your schedule.

So long as you are consistent and always place your windows by clicking outside the wall then this should work.

Barry.
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Seiss Wagner
Participant
I am using the SE9 Library by the way. I don't see a green diamond that I can move or adjust. How do I get this to show up? Is it part of the SE9 Library?
You should be seeing the green diamonds when you select any hot spots of the window or door objects. Are you sure you are using the latest SE9 Library? Anyway, to see the diamond hot spots and the direction they can be moved in go to the "Marker Settings" tab > set the first dialog to "Marker Geometry" > go to the last dialog at the bottom of the tab and check "Show Editable Hotspots".

I am sorry, I don't know how zones determine "to" or "from". As is true of most of Graphisofts instructions, they are written with half of the information left out. Over the years I have come to realize this is because most computer users treat applications like computer games, it's more fun to plug and play then to read and study, so why brother to write instructions. Graphisofts not stupid, why waste money writing manuals nobody reads!
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I wonder if we could revive this now that 10 is out. I'm using the charmingly improved Element Schedules.

As far as I can tell, 'From room' and 'To room' just don't work at all.

In the image I have the simplest scenario I can think of. Two zones, automatically placed, updated just to be sure. Four doors, two each swinging each way. None of the doors have been rotated, it's two orientation clicks in each room. The door is D1 10. The schedule is the 'Door List' that ships in the US version. I made one modification; I added the 'To room' parameter so I could see which is to/from.

As you can see, all four doors are shown as being 'from' Room 101, and the 'to' fields are all empty.

Further. The only way I could get Room 102 to show in the 'from' field was to place a door in an 'exterior' wall (no zone on the other side). Even then, regardless of swing, it's always 'from', the 'to' field is never filled in.

User error, or just broken?
doorlist.png
James Murray

Archicad 27 • Rill Architects • macOS • OnLand.info
Aussie John
Newcomer
Looks to me like a non working feature.
I cant get a door to take on any "to room" identity.
Do you want to issue a bug report?
Cheers John
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Anonymous
Not applicable
The door/window zone relations are quirky and not as advertised (at least as I understand what they are supposed to do). I couldn't get the choice of room to work as it should in 9 and the same seems true in 10 (though I haven't checked this in detail). To get door tags to work properly for my clients I had to add a dynamic hotspot to pull into the other room (opposite the swing) when needed.

Library parts behave similarly. The zone they are "in" is not based on their origin point, but on their geometric center. I needed some room tags that could be pulled outside the zone with leaders to point to small rooms. Placing the origin at the top of the leader did not work (reliably) and I found that I had to make an invisible element (a zero length line did the trick) equidistant in the opposite direction from the tag for it to detect the zone properly.

There are a lot of ways for the zones to be improved. Here's hoping it's fairly soon.
Strange: I opened a 9 project in 10. All the doors have to and from, and the To side is always the leaf side. Very consistent. When migrated elements act better than new elements something weird is going on.
James Murray

Archicad 27 • Rill Architects • macOS • OnLand.info