Locations // Import from Revit // Limitations around duplicates

[Chad-Smith]

I've just been trying to import architectural Revit rooms into the ACC Locations and hit a limitation.

To be honest, this seems like a fairly obvious one that should have been picked up during development.

Firstly, some background.

• In Revit, you can have duplicate room Names, but not duplicate room Numbers.
• In ACC Locations, there is no room Number attribute, and rooms that exist at the same hierarchy level cannot have duplicate room Names.

Therefore, there is a mismatch in naming/numbering rules and user expectations between Revit and ACC Locations.

I can see two possible solutions. ACC Locations needs:

1. A new attribute for Number, with which the Number must be unique, not the Name. Or,
2. The import process needs to concatenate Name and Number.

[itai.cohenN7DPC]

Hey Chad,

Thanks for the feedback.

Since room names can be duplicated in Revit (and rightfully so, god knows how many 'shaft' rooms I had on one floorplan) and numbers are expected to be unique (Revit warns you if you try to have two rooms with the same number) -

We decided to concatenate the room name and number and place it in the location name in ACC. We then check the uniqueness of the concatenated field. So, the only occurrence of the same room and the same number on the same floor should trigger an import error saying the location name is not unique.

If you experience something else - please let me know. 

Best

Itai

Product manager - ACC Locations

[Chad-Smith]

Thanks for the update on how it's working behind the scenes.

I did receive an error when trying to import from Revit, but the error was too cryptic. And because I couldn't finish the process, I didn't realise that the results would be concatenated.

Firstly, the error.

While it did make some reference to a lack of uniqueness, the error message was telling me that I was uploading an Excel file. Since the error message was not correctly identifying that was trying to import Revit room data, it was hard to trust the rest of the message about the uniqueness. I raised a Support case who couldn't comment on why it was mentioning an Excel import, but they did verify the uniqueness requirement. I just assumed that it was just the Name that was causing this.

I think overall, there is some room for improvement in the error handling to make it more informative to the user.

Secondly, is how this is displayed in ACC Locations.

If the result is concatenated, we should have the choice of the order. i.e. Name Number, or Number Name.

We typically put the Number first.

[itai.cohenN7DPC]

Thanks for your detailed explanation.
We have a ticket for fixing the ‘excel’ terminology in the error feedback. Behind the scenes both use the same code to import the locations, where the error descriptions were not separated.

I’d recommend you check your Revit file for warnings about recurring room numbers – if that’s not the case, please let me know.

[prestigesouthernstarapartments]

nice i appreciate it