Schedule tag with multiple property sets

[NSharp]

I've got a multi-family building where I'm trying to create a schedule tag that will number walls sequentially in a view drawing. The units are elements that are then brought into a construct and mirrored and rotated as needed.

The first thing I did was to create a Property Set  that uses Level and Manual property set that automatically increments to create a property called UnitNumber. Then created a tag that will number the units in my building ie: 201 202 etc.  This works fine.

I then created a Property Set to apply to the walls that uses the UnitNumber from the other Property Set along with a Manual Property Set that increments as well to create a wall tag.  What I am expecting to get is 201-01, 201-02 etc.  What I’m getting is ?-01, ?-02 etc.

What am I doing wrong?

[David_W_Koch]

For the Property Set that is attached to the Walls, you will need a Location property to read in the room number property from the appropriate Space object.  Is that what you did?

[NSharp]

I have set it up using spaces and I am able to get the tags to work correctly.  My problem is I'm trying to do it without spaces.  I want to be able to use spaces for individual rooms in the units.  When I do that and then try to have a space for the overall unit I end up with the problem of spaces on spaces.  By using the level ID of the construct I am able to create the Unit tag.  I then want to be able to use the information create by that tag as part of the wall tag I'm trying to create.  Thanks for replying.

[David_W_Koch]

Location grips "look" down and report on the first Space that they find.  If you have overlapping Spaces (one for the entire unit, and one for each individual room within the unit) that are at the same elevation, there is no way to reliably control which Space a Location grip will find.

Location properties can apply to either Spaces or AEC Polygons.  If you are only using the overall unit Space to hold the unit number, you might be able to use an AEC Polygon for the overall unit and have your Walls look for the unit number property from a Property Set attached to an AEC Polygon.

[David_W_Koch]

Here is a quick, proof-of-concept file that uses Spaces for the rooms and an AEC Polygon for the unit.  I did not create an ACA project, so I have a manual property for the Level (and you already have that bit worked out), but you should be able to see how the Location property in the WallObjects2 Property Set Definition is used to read in the unit number so that it can be used for the wall identification.

The attached ZIP file contains a drawing file that was done in ACA 2010.

[NSharp]

David,

Thanks for your suggestion on using AECPolygons.  My initial trial using them did not work since they do not have names.  I’m attaching a simple example showing what I am trying to achieve.  The project is structured with two Unit elements that are inserted into a common walls element that is then inserted into a Construct.  The unit elements are inserted into the common walls element so that we can do an analysis on the corners and tees where the xrefs interact with each other for wall framing purposes.  At the moment I am just trying to tag the units and walls in the construct drawing.  As you can see in the example I am creating the unit tag “Unit A – 201” without a problem using the xref name, Level ID and an incremental number.  I am then trying to use the “201” along with an incremental number to tag the walls.  However I am not able to get the 201 to appear in my wall tag. Thanks for taking the time to look at it.

[David_W_Koch]

I took a quick look at your files.  You do not appear to have any AECPolygons (or Spaces) in any of the files.

I am not quite certain how you managed to get a valid property refernce to [UnitObject:UnitNumber] in your WallID:UnitNumber property, since the WallID Property Set applies to Walls and the UnitObject Property Set applies to Block References (unless you had temporarily made UnitObject apply to Walls as well).  In any event, you cannot reference a property on a different object type that way.

There are two property types that can be used to extract a property from another object type.  One is the Location property.  These only allow an object to obtain information from a Space or an AECPolygon.  The other is the Anchor property, which allows an object to obtain property data from an object to which it is anchored.  For example, a Door could have an Anchor property that reads a Property of the Wall to which it is anchored (such as a fire-resistance rating).  Since your Walls are nested within the block you are using to hold the unit number, you will not be able to use an Anchor property here.

AECPolygons may not have an automatic name property, but you could add a manual text-type property to hold the name value (which is what used to be done with Spaces before they added a Name property to the object).  If you absolutely had to use an automatic property, rather than a manual one, you could create a separate AECPolygon style for each unit type and use the unit name for the AECPolygon style name, and then use the Style automatic property source.  I would go with the manual property, unless you were already planning to have a separate AECPolygon style for each unit type.

You should be able to add the AECPolygon to your Units Element files.  A Location property on the Walls could then read the unit number and concatenate that with the increment to provide the wall tag ID number you want.  I made some quick changes to your sample project files to show you how this could work.

[NSharp]

David,

It looks like I’m going to end up using Spaces.  We are already separating everything into Architectural and Structural.  So I can use Spaces for rooms in the Architectural and Spaces for Units in the Structural.  I was hoping to eliminate making the structural guys put in Spaces but that’s the way it works and if they want the walls to have a UnitNumber-WallNumber tag that’s what they’ll have to do.

Thanks for taking the time to look at it and providing some valuable information.

Ned