Data conversion in schedules

[alexliz]

Guys, it is not without having searched that I am posting this.

I am looking to be able to sum floor construction cost calculations from various zones in a zone schedule.

I can sum the total areas measured in my schedule.

For the construction cost, I have created the Property 'Cost per surface area' for the cost of building 1 m² of floor. I manually enter the unit cost in there for each floor type (in each Zone).

I have then created another Property, 'Area Cost' - it's en expression which multiplies the 'Measured area' parameter (coming from the Zone) by the 'Cost per surface area' value in my Property. It also adds the British Pound sign at the front, so it returns a text value:

CONCAT ( "£", STRCALCUNIT ( {Property:Zone/Measured Area} * {Property:COST OF STRUCTURE (Expression)/Cost per surface area} ) )

The problem is that I obviously can't SUM these values (because they are strings). I have to convert them to number. That's where I've got stuck, I keep getting to errors with the data types etc. I have tried creating an expression Property, 'Area Cost as Number', like this:

( {Property:Zone/Measured Area} ) * {Property:COST OF STRUCTURE (Expression)/Cost per surface area}

But it complains that the data type (Number) differs from the result (Area). I have tried dividing the first part, 'Measured Area', by the area unit, but it's still complaining that it doesn't recognize the 'm2' text:

( {Property:Zone/Measured Area} / m2 ) * {Property:COST OF STRUCTURE (Expression)/Cost per surface area}

Can you help me spot where I'm going wrong? Many thanks!

PS I know I can do all these sums in Excel after the export as text, but I really am in a pressing need to see the sums within Archicad, before any exports.

[alexliz · Accepted solution]

Got it - of course AFTER posting here...

I'm leaving it, in case it helps someone else in future.

What I needed to do is add the '1' before the unit, before the 'm2'. So, it's like this:

( {Property:Zone/Measured Area} / 1 m2 ) * {Property:COST OF STRUCTURE (Expression)/Cost per surface area}