Name and ID for Surfaces

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have a good workflow on how to label Surfaces on views?

I have my Surfaces named after the type of brick, type of wood cladding or color of the plaster. That is, in full name, which works fine for me while I am designing, but when I label my facades using the Label tool, I do not want to show the full names of the surfaces. All I want to show then, is the "more traditional" label which consists of just a few letters/numbers.

So for example instead of "Plaster NCS 2005-Y20R", I would like to get something like "PL-01".
I know I can go through my Surfaces and rename them in such manner, but ideally, I would like to keep both the "id" and the "full name". Does anyone have a good way how to do something similar? I'm sure other people out there have come up with smart and dumbproof ways how to do something like that.

Ideally, I would like to have some sort of a Surface ID and a Surface Name, which could be displayed separately or together. But I guess that would be something for the "Wish" section.

[Lingwisyer]

I created a poll a while back regarding name trimming in relation to Composites which can be found here. Pretty sure there was another wish regarding the same thing in relation to Surfaces.

Not sure of what people's workaround consist of... I have not really needed to worry about it so far.



Ling.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Ling, I can see it now. https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishes/IDs-for-Surfaces/td-p/226226?f=26&t=69273

[Anonymous]

So far, I've come up with a custom Property with an expression and a string splitting rule for the Outside Face Surface.

Ling, I think something similar will work also for your issue with Composites.

But I still think some sort of Surface/Composite "ID" would be better than these workarounds.
It's getting a little crowded among all my expression-based custom properties.

SPLITLEFT ( {Property:Wall/Outside Face Surface}; " "; 1 )

[David de Roquefeuil]

I've been trying to do the same with expressions using the splitting rule for surface names, examples below...

Surface Name Example - WB | Weatherboard

Expression Example - SPLITLEFT ( "{Property:Wall/Inside Face Surface}" , "|" , 1 )

However the expression editor won't recognise this & comes up with the following message "expression contains text that cannot be identified as a string literal". Have attached a screenshot of the error & setup.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[JeffH]

It works for me if I remove the " _ " quote marks before and after the defined parameter.

[ddonn]

I would like to be able to add this functionality to a label for finish plans, but when the expression doesn't properly evaluate, have you had this problem?

[ddonn]

Did you every figure this out, I'm trying to do the same thing.

[David de Roquefeuil]

Hi @ddonn 

I solved the issue by doing what @JeffH replied with & these work in all views (plan, section, elevation...). I have the following property expressions made which can then be used as autotext in our labels (have these labels also saved as favourites)...

All expressions are pretty much identical (see screenshot below), only difference being what surface is being called out. Basically what its saying is to only show the letters to the left of the '|' symbol. For our surfaces we have a naming convention (Code | Surface Name & Description). As an example TF1 | 90mm Timber Flooring will show up as TF1  when using one of these tags.

Have added an extra expression which is automatically showing the renovation status of the finish as a prefix to the finish code. If its existing 'e' is shown & if its new no prefix is shown. This is the expression...

Hope that all makes sense.