Defining new IDs for Attributes

[agroni]

Hi,
after a really looooooooooooooooooong absence i decided to come back to the community... must be honest, the new layout looks more inviting

While I was working on developing a strategy for separating files in big projects, I came across the issue of attribute index number. Now I understand that this number is important. Now is the time to get serious and I need your help

As you can see on the image, my number system in my already complex template file is crazy. I want to give it a clear order for all attributes (layers, lines, composites, etc.) beginning from 1 and going up. The only way that I found out, is by deleting the attributes for ex. layers and appending the same ones from the same template (opened on the right screen). The problem is that I have a lot of elements in my template that have these attributes referenced (in use). By deleting them, I lose those elements on floor plan and also all other links like favorites or deeply hidden properties.

Do you think there is a way to define a new number system for the attribute IDs without destroying the connection?

[runxel]

Why do you want to implement it in a live file... better keep that for the template.

And by the way: please keep in mind that Archicad expects some special attributes at a certain index.
E.G. foreground- and background-only fill must be at 64 and 65.

[agroni]

I don't want to implement it on a ongoing project. It will be done for the template file.
I am trying to understand how did this numbering happen in the first place, since in the original Archicad template the logic is already there. Anyway, it is not an easy process to change these parameters.

And by the way: please keep in mind that Archicad expects some special attributes at a certain index.
E.G. foreground- and background-only fill must be at 64 and 65.

Why is that for? Where and how should i know this

[Barry Kelly]

agroni wrote:
Why is that for? Where and how should i know this

Look at the default Graphisoft template.
If you want to use any of the standard library objects you will want to keep the default fills, pens, surfaces that they use otherwise you will be constantly changing settings as you need the objects or having to set up a lot of favourites with all the settings you want.

It is not impossible to change the attribute index numbers to what you want but it is very tedious.
You can append from one side of the Attribute Manager to the other and you can duplicate attributes to get to the index number you want before you append (then delete all the duplicates of course).
And remember in the attribute settings dialogues, you can usually delete and replace to delete an unwanted attribute with a new or even temporary attribute as you juggle the numbers.

You can also list the attribute in the Attribute Manager by index number so you can more easily spot the gaps.
Click on the # symbol in the heading.

Barry.

[agroni]

The GS Template is just an example and should be possible to adapt it to office requirements. An example are the standard fills from GS which are way too much of what we need. Therefore, I believe there should be a possibility to manipulate these values in order to get a proper office template.
Not being able to change the Attribute ID seems to me like a big disadvantage and an obstacle to achieve higher standard. Sadly this is interconnected to other parts of the program.
I don’t understand how are you appending an Attribute and giving it a new number? The only way so far is to delete the attributes from the original file and embed them from the source file. When you append an attribute from a different source, the program defines the next free number in the list. That is why only deleting them will give automatically the number 2, 3, 4, ….

[Erwin Edel]

agroni wrote:
Do you think there is a way to define a new number system for the attribute IDs without destroying the connection?

To answer this question:

Yes, but it takes a lot of time and patience.

I do this if I need to migrate a very old project to current version of ArchiCAD.

I get lots of unwanted fills, building materials and such.

What I do is:
1. Purge everything I do not need (but as pointed out, the ArchiCAD library expects certain fills, pens, line types etc to exist at their respective index numbers)
2. Append the attribute I want to change in manager until I get a suitably high index number
3. duplicate the remaining attributes, so they all get high index numbers.
4. delete the original attributes one by one and chosing to replace them with their copies (this maintains the connection)
5. create my new attributes
6. delete the copies and assigning the new attributes as needed.

I will say this only works well with bring an old project to a new template that is based off the original archicad template.

Maybe your localisation is bloated, but I do not have fills or linetypes that are useless in the NL template. If anything, I've added more fills and linetypes.

Layers are fine to do with as you please, since as far as I know, you only need at least the one ArchiCAD layer, layer 0.

Pen sets work fine for me too, just made some small adjustments for some missing pen weights.

You can also sort attributes by name, if you are bothered by the number sorting.

Outside the attribute manager, those numbers do not show up anywhere.

[runxel]

agroni wrote:
I don’t understand how are you appending an Attribute and giving it a new number?

Yeah, yeah... having the possibility to assign custom index numbers is a long standing wish.
But tbh – a "normal" user will never the see it, heck, and if they won't care. It has little to no impact.
(It's like tidying the windows registry)

Erwin wrote:
Outside the attribute manager, those numbers do not show up anywhere.

However, there is an easier way to manage those numbers.
Just export your attributes as XML.
Open it in a text editor and change the values inside the <Index> tags to your wish.

[Anonymous]

Why is it important/necessary to manually manage id numbers?
I'd need to organize a project where multiple projects are hotlinked between each other so I’ve run into this discussion on importance of keeping attribute index numbers unique and separated.

I did a test on 3 pln- files that all had layers and composites using same index numbers. When the files were hotlinked, the pln hosting another one as a hotlink just gave the layers and composites new free index numbers. I could rename layers and update the hotlinked file with no problems.

Since setting up and maintaining a complex arrangement on centralized attribute index numbering between multiple offices working on a same project is a lot of work, I’d like to know what’s the downside if we dont do it?

What happens if you don’t fiddle with attribute index numbers? I’ve read it gives you problems and headache but to be a bit more detailed...

[Minh Nguyen]

Hi All,

I hope everything is going well for you!

I am happy to say that this has been added to our WishList database (please refer to it as Wish #12750). As I can see that this could be a crucial function, I truly hope that our Product Management team will adopt this one in the future.

Thank you all once more, and I wish you a great day!

Best regards,
Minh

[agroni]

mnguyen wrote:
I am happy to say that this has been added to our WishList database (please refer to it as Wish #12750). As I can see that this could be a crucial function, I truly hope that our Product Management team will adopt this one in the future.

Finally after two years someone is talking seriously. Thank you Minh!
Where is this "wishliste database", that contains probably over a thousand entries?