Best Practices Course – Week 25 Part 3 – © copyright 2013 by Eric Bobrow

BEST PRACTICES COURSE WEEK 25 – Project Data – Part 3 – How to Set Up Door & Window IDs Quickly

Hello, this is Eric Bobrow with another ArchiCAD video tip.  There are times during the course of a project when you need to rework the ID numbers for windows, doors or other elements so they can work in the schedule properly.  We will see for example in this project that these windows all have number four and the actually should be put in some sort of a sequence. [0:00:24]

To change them, I’m going to select first of all this one and here I will open up the window dialog box.  So in the dialog box I will need to go down lower in the dialog box to the ID under listing and labeling and here’s where I could change it to let’s say “window seven”.  And you’ll see it update on the plan.  Now to do it a little quicker I can use the info box.  Now the problem is that the info box doesn’t show the ID until you scroll all the way over to the right, at least in the standard settings for ArchiCAD’s default setup. [0:01:02]

And I will change this to number six, done.  A little bit quicker.  Let’s see if we can make this even more convenient.  Go to the Options menu, Work Environment, Info box. Now the info box can be customized so that, for example, for the window tool, here are the list of parameters that are shown at the beginning of the info box. And then way at the end, the ID and label elements, which is what we want to spend some time on.  [0:01:32]

I’m just going to grab them by the up and down arrows on the left side and move them to the top.  This will put them on the far left, so that when I activate the window tool or select the window, the window IDs are immediately visible. So I select the window and I can very quickly go here and change the number.  Now there is an even faster way to do this, particularly if you’re going to be renumbering a whole lot of them.  [0:01:58]

You need to select them in the order you’d like to number them. So I am going to first select this one, then that one; this third one; this fourth one. And you can do as many as you wish. Then go to the Document menu, Schedules and Lists, Element ID Manager.  In the Element ID Manager, you need to make sure that your element type matches the type of element that you have, because it may be set to something different.  You see that there are four windows are selected and they can be configured. Make sure that it says unique ID for each element so that it can renumber all of them. [0:02:35]

Then I go into the ID format.  The ID format has up to four different groups of numbering or lettering. In this simple case, we’re not going to use the first two. We’re just going to use a W for the text and have a counter here.  Let’s say I wanted to start this at the number four. I’m noticing that this is not working right now, so I’m going to have the save the settings and close. Then go back in, this seems to be a little bit finicky, so I’ll go back into Schedules and Lists, ID Manager and go to the ID format again. [0:03:14]

And you can see that it actually recorded the number four here. Let’s say that we wanted it to start at 12 just be arbitrary.  I’m going to click on “change IDs” and you can see it gives me a list of the windows and how many were renamed or renumbered. And I’ll say OK. And you can see immediately on the plan 12, 13, 14, 15. Let’s say that I wanted to put them in the reverse order. I can go here. It depends upon which one I select first. I’ll go to the Document menu, Schedules and Lists, Element ID Manager. [0:03:49]

Again, make sure that it’s set for windows. It says “Unique ID”. Go to the ID format, and if it’s already remembered what I had, maybe I’ll just say that it starts at 19 and change IDs, and you’ll see 19, 20, 22. Okay. And you can see that the numbers have now gone in the other direction.  So this way you can group elements on the first floor, the second floor, any story that you wish and start them at any number. You can do 3, 4, 10, as many as you wish simply by selecting them. So this is a very speedy way to renumber windows, doors or other elements.  This is Eric Bobrow with another ArchiCAD video tip. Thanks for tuning in.

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