Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. In this series of support blog posts, we highlight questions and our answers.
I’m a big fan of ice cream! One of my favorite dishes is locally called a Smoosh-In, where several different ice cream flavors or toppings are combined in fun ways. This same concept can be applied to Revit where you need to smoosh several parameters or properties into a single item like a Door Mark.
Here is a recent support question that came from a customer with a specific request. However, it’s a broader question that gets asked in so many different ways by our Ideate Software customers.
The customer asked: “If I wanted to renumber doors by exporting Door Marks out into Excel, is there a way in Excel to select a large number of fields (Door Mark IDs from one level) and automate the sequential numbering of selected fields with a prefix? For example, I would want to renumber door Marks to follow this naming convention of:
<DoorFunction>-<Level>-DoorNumber>
Example = ID-00-001, ID-00-002 etc.”
Ideate BIMLink excels at this! (OK, pun intended)
I know that I’ve mentioned this a dozen times, but it’s always good to start with one of our pre-defined Library Link Definitions that you can easily browse to locate. A simple one to use and potentially modify is just called Doors. Notice that it is defined as an Instance link because we want to edit each instance of the Door Mark’s value.
Creating a new Link Definition by browsing the Library Definitions
You will want to be sure to add the properties that you might want to use within the door tag to smoosh together. I just added Assembly Code and Keynote as two property options.
Select from many available properties from Doors, categories and additional properties from the dropdown list.
Once you export the information to Excel, you can use an Excel formula to combine the information. I first might want to create a “scratch” column or temporary workspace to just renumber the doors in a sequential order. That’s what I’ve done with column “I” in the Excel image below. Then I’ve used a formula within the Mark cell to combine Level Name as well as Keynote properties. Of course, keep in mind that your Door Tag family might need to be enlarged to contain the text string. In many cases, you may just have a level prefix such as 01, 02, etc. plus the Door Number, as was requested by this customer. They also wanted the Door Function, which is probably a short code.
(Click image to enlarge)
The Excel export from Ideate BIMLink showing the formula definition within cell B2
If you would like to learn now to place From Room data and To Room data within a Door Tag, we have an excellent blog article and video that explain the process, which is similar to the process I outlined above.
For more tips and information, please review the online Help topics for Ideate BIMLink. Our Frequently Asked Questions page is also a good place to start.
Once you have mastered the property/parameter combinations, I recommend you celebrate with some ice cream, and be sure to combine many flavors together for your own Smoosh-In!
About the Author
Richard W. Taylor, Associate AIA – Technical Evangelist
Richard has more than 30 years of experience working for companies that develop architectural and engineering software solutions, such as Intergraph, Bentley, and Autodesk. He has over 20 years of Revit experience, and he was part of the original development of Revit while at Revit Technology Corporation. He worked for 12 years at Autodesk, where he presented, taught, and worked to improve features in Revit. Richard holds both a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. As Technical Evangelist, Richard works with AECO clients worldwide, developing and consulting on BIM solutions. Find Richard on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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