Curtain Wall Favorite Import

[Brandon-W_DWa]

I have created a Curtain Wall favorite in an AC25 project with custom profiles, and I would like this favorite to be available to others in the office, some of whom are on AC27. I've tried a couple different times, and in the receiving file, I always get a curtain wall favorite with "MISSING" profiles for the perimeter, transom, and mullion profiles. This most recent time, I imported the complex profiles first, hoping that by those profiles already existing in the receiving file before I import the favorite, they would make it in the curtain wall favorite, but no luck.

I'd like the import process to be as seamless as possible for staff across the office; am I going about this wrong?

Operating system used: Mac Apple Silicon 12.6.7 Monterey

[Barry Kelly]

How are you importing the custom profiles?

Use the Attribute Manager but make sure you overwrite 'by index number'.

Attributes are referred to by their index number and it must be the same in all files.

The name is only what we see, not what Archicad uses.

Barry.

[Brandon-W_DWa]

It appears that even if I import all of my custom profiles associated with our curtain wall favorite (only four profiles actually) and overwrite by index number, after I import the curtain wall favorite, the profiles for boundary, mullion, and transom mullions are all "MISSING".

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

I am not sure what is happening but try this experiment.

I assume you have a file where the curtain wall favourites work.

Place some curtain walls in that file using those favourites.

Now in the favourite manager, select those favorites and export them (you don't actually need to do this).

Open a new file and copy those placed curtain walls from the first file to the new file - if the complex profile attributes did not exist, they should be created automatically.

Make sure the curtain walls look as they are supposed to.

If they don't, then the complex profile attributes did not transfer.

Copy them across with the Attribute Manager making sure it is 'by index'.

Now import the favourites from the export file you saved, (or by directly accessing the PLN with the curtain walls if you did not export the favourites).

Are the favourites now correct?

If so then I suspect it is an attribute index problem.

If they still have 'missing' profiles, I am not sure what is happening.

If that still did not work, try this.

Duplicate the file with the working favourites.

Delete the favourites from the duplicate file.

Now import the favourites from the working file.

If these now have 'missing' profiles, I really don't know what is happening.

If they are good then again I suspect the attribute index numbers are getting mixed up.

You could also compare the complex profile attribute numbers in the good and bad file.

They should be identical.

Barry.

[Brandon-W_DWa]

Thanks Barry. Your latest response is sort-of broken up into three sections, so I’ll organize similar:

1. I copied/pasted a modeled curtain wall element from my working favorites file into a blank file (out-of-the-box template). The only thing I noticed that didn’t look right was the pens (the mullions and glass were different colors). After checking the attributes, it looks like the index number was correct, it was just the color that was wrong (the pen index number of my mullions was “3” in both the origin and the destination file, but it was pink in my origin file, and blue in the destination file). So, I exported the four profiles from my working origin file, and added them to the destination file via the Attribute Manager, adding them and their associated attributes (14 total attributes) by index. I expected the pen colors to be correct, but they still don’t match.
2. Now I imported the working favorite into the clean destination file. This time, the profiles are there, not “MISSING”. Hooray! The colors are still off, but it’s a lot closer.
3. I tried this experiment, and it worked as it should, i.e. the profiles were present in the newly imported favorite.

All of this to say, I think I understand now how important the attribute index numbers are. In previous experiments, I was going from our company template file where my favorite and profiles were working, into an AC out-of-the-box blank template file, and stuff wasn’t working. I think I’ve known this for a while now, but our attribute indexes are wildly different from standard in our company template, so any copying into a non-company blank file will prove difficult. Time to clean up! Thank you so much!

[Barry Kelly]

Pen attribute always exist in every file (attribute index numbers from -1 to 255).

However the pen colours change depending on the pen set applied, and the pen sets can be different from file to file.

So pen 3 which is pink in your original file and blue in the target file, will remain blue if the pen set is not changed.

You can import pen set in the attribute manager as well.

If the pen sets in the 2 files have different attribute numbers and you overwrite by index number, it will simply add the new pen set (but will not swap to it).

If the 2 pens sets have the same attribute number (but different pen colours and even different pen set name) and you overwrite by index number,it will replace the original pen set with the new pen colours (and pen set name).

Attribute management can be a bit tricky.

There is a great video about this by Scott Moore.

You will find the link in this tread ... https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Project-data-BIM/Video-tutorial-Understanding-Attributes-and-Att...

Barry.