Add a door filtering option for sorting non-numeric characters "like most humans think"

[Jay_Holley]

We work with two large institutional clients with door numbering nomenclatures that include alpha characters, not just numerics. This lets them "at a glance" see exterior doors and is very logical.

When sorting doors by door number, Revit evaluates the number as a true "number," so for example door "30C8/6" is listed BEFORE door "1081/1" because of the "C" in the first example. Which is completely logical from a computer programming perspective, but does not capture the functionality for how most humans would think/sort. Most humans would say all doors "in the 3000's" should sort after those "in the 1000's."

I think a FEATURE (optional) to allow door schedules to sort "character by character," so that alphas are evaluated in full would be extremely useful and appreciated. 

There are a several fun little variables in how things might sort, but for example I think most humans would sort the example door numbers that follow in the following order: "A, 1, 40, 100, 100A, 100B, 1001, 10C2, 1002, 1003, 1003B, 20C1, 2099". That example is hopefully one that will never be seen on a project, just an example of how I think would be logical to sort. Personally, I think sorting along the lines of the above should be the "default" behavior, with an option to switch back to the Revit traditional sorting, but I'm biased....

[mhiserZFHXS]

This is not at all how I would sort those numbers... I understand it with you telling me that's how it works, but never in a million years would that be the conclusion I come to if you just presented those door numbers to me with no explanation. I don't read 10C2 as a "1000" room, I see it as a 10.C2 or 10C.2. Why wouldn't they just put a E or I at the end of a door to mark this? Or something like that? Why is it in the middle of the mark?

But I suppose that's beyond the point if you want this to be an option and not standard, but where is that option located? Is it a project wide setting, or for specific parameters?

I may be wrong, but I don't think a lot of folks would utilize this sorting system, so I don't think it'd be all that high on Autodesk's priorities.

[Jay_Holley]

@mhiserZFHXS

Rightly or wrongly, I have a major corporate client and a sizable state research university who have adopted similar standards (not with input from us... these are independent standards we have to follow). Tens of millions of square feet between the two of them with this type of door nomenclature. Maybe they are anomalies.

I would think a parameter to sort as such could be incorporated within door schedule visibility/graphics settings, which is where most folks naturally go to change the sorting and graphics of those elements.

In the example nomenclature, "30C8/6" the 3 is the floor level, C indicates exterior vestibule, 8, indicates vestibule number, and 6 indicates leaf within the vestibule. I'm not saying right or wrong 😊, but there's a logic to it and it works for a couple hundred of their buildings.

[mhiserZFHXS]

Sheesh, that seems like a lot information that doesn't need to be provided in a mark...But that's neither here nor there.

I believe the issue could be resolved by utilizing periods throughout the number to break up the different sections, if they would be accepting of that. I personally think that'd make it easier to read as well.

Not sure if you need a temporary solution or not, but you'll probably just need to make a hidden field that is used to sort the the doors. Its obviously not ideal, but you could use Dynamo to help automate the process.

[Lachlan-JWP]

@Jay_HolleyI understand the pain of using another organisations numbering system. I don't know how your suggestion would be implemented so I won't speak to that, but if I was trying to document a project with those numbering systems I would assign the building numbers, floor numbers, room numbers as new shared parameters. This would allow for sorting & filtering by those parameters as required later on. You can use a combined parameter to show the door ID in full.

[tgoodwinX2SUJ]

Wouldn't having the ability to concatenate in parameter formulas also solve your problem? Instead of trying to store mixed data types in a single text field, you'd have separate parameters (meaning you can sort by them however you want) that are then combined.

[Jay_Holley]

Yes, that could work also.