Distinguishing Cabletray Fittings

[pbobz]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to distinguish cabletray fittings... T junctions from Vertical Inside from a Vertical Outside and so on...

I search into many parameters without success. I found a way getting the element's Symbol->Family->Parameters-> "Element Type", it distinguish fittings but not vertical inside from outside...

If you have any idea about doing that.

Cheers

[jeremytammik]

I think you need to continue collecting various distinguishing characteristics and developing ever finer differentiation tools yourself. You may glean some ideas from several The Building Coder discussions on distinguishing various MEP fitting types:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2016/02/ifc-import-levels-and-mep-element-shapes.html#3

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Jeremy

[pbobz]

Thanks for the tip,

I was secretly hopping for some kind of enum of all fittings, but it looks like there's nothing more than:

FamilyInstance > Symbol > Family > Parameter > BuiltInParameter.FAMILY_CONTENT_PART_TYPE

to get the Part type. This, actually, do not distinguish for example a Ladder Vertical Elbow  inside (Part type 44) from an vertical outside (also part 44) but I'll find a way to recognize them.

Regards

[jeremytammik]

Yes, for sure.

They are curve based elements. Retrieve the curve and analyse that.

They have connectors. Retrieve the connectors and analyse their locations and directions.

They have parameters. Retrieve the parameters and analyse them.

Please let us know how you end up solving this.

Thank you!

Cheers,

Jeremy

[pbobz]

Hi Jeremy,

As Parameters, Connectors and curves are the same. The only solution to distinguish one from the other is by checking the position of sweeps inside the family. I'm not familiar with sweeps but it seems there's no offsets (vertical or horizontal offsets in parameters are 0.0 in both cases) .

Keep digging. 🙂

(PS: In the mean time, I'm shamefully using a string.contains in different languages to find "inside" and "outside" variations in the family name. That's of course temporary 🙂 ) 

OutsideInside

[jeremytammik]

Can't you use the connector direction to distinguish between these two?

In one case, they are both horizontal, and the Z component is zero.

In the other, one of the Z components is non-zero.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[pbobz]

Connectors are the same (don't take my screenshot as an orientation information, I just turn the view to show the sweep being outside). But, actually, vertical outside and vertical inside elbows are exactly the same. The only difference I found was the sweep position along the curve.

Wish the Part ID were different 😛

[marslandp]

Hi

Did you ever find a way of efficiently determining the inside from outside bends?

I have the same problem and have quickly solved it by creating a list of all the family type Ids for all the inside bends.

All I then do is check if the name of each "Vertical Ladder Elbow" type exists in the list, if it does its an inside bend if it doesn't it must be outside.

List<ElementId> insideBendIds = new List<ElementId>();
FilteredElementCollector typeCollector = new FilteredElementCollector(_doc).OfCategory(BuiltInCategory.OST_CableTray);
ICollection<ElementId> typeIds = typeCollector.ToElementIds();
foreach(ElementId typeId in typeIds)
{
     Element e = _doc.GetElement(typeId);
     Parameter p = e.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.RBS_CURVETYPE_DEFAULT_ELBOWUP_PARAM);
     if(p != null)
     {
          if(p.StorageType == StorageType.ElementId)
          {
               insideBendIds.Add(p.AsElementId());
          }
     }
}

The check code is:

if(insideBendIds.Contains(fi.GetTypeId()))
{
     cType = "Ladder Inside Elbow";
}
else
{
     cType = "Ladder Outside Elbow";
}