Copy Property Values from Other Objects
In Simplebim you can copy values from one property to another in many different ways. The obvious one is to copy from a property of the same object, but you can also copy property values from different objects. For this you need a relationship between the two objects, and you follow this relationship to find the new value for your property.
For example furniture is contained by a space, which means that there is a ‘contained by’ relationship between the furniture and the space. By following this relationship you can copy the name (or any other property) of the space to the furniture contained by the space.
A space contains furniture, which means that there is a ‘contains’ relationship between the space and all the furniture in that space. Although this relationship exists you can’t use it for copying property values from the furniture to the space. This is because the contains relationship is a one-to-many relationship and you can’t specify from which of the potentially many pieces of furniture contained by the space you want to copy the information to the space.
Copying from other objects is done using the Copy Property Values -section on the Model worksheet of a Simplebim template. You can easily copy from the following objects:
- Containers. This covers the spatial containment of project, site, building, building storey and space. You can also copy from element assemblies, including the main or topmost element assembly, curtain wall, stair and roof. Finally you can also copy from any container regardless of object class, which covers objects with building element parts.
- Model. Each object belongs to a model. If you import just one IFC file you will have one model, but when you merge model, you have multiple models, for example one model each for architectural, structural and HVAC. The model object contains for example the name and timestamp of the imported IFC model.
- Groups. In Simplebim a lot of things are groups and you can copy information from any group an object belongs to. Most often you copy the name of the group, but you can also copy any property of the group. The full list of supported groups is listed in the template guide, but the most common ones are systems, zones and classifications. When you create your own group categories you can also copy from them using the [Group|Group Category] -notation.
Finally you can copy using any relationship in the model by naming the relationship explicitly. You can for example copy information into the objects creates by the Create Space Covering Objects -tool using the following notation
- From the space: [DC:COVERING:COVERSSPACE]
- Example: [DC:COVERING:COVERSSPACE].Space Name
- From the building element: [DC:COVERING:COVERSELEMENT]
- Example: [DC:COVERING:COVERSELEMENT].Object Class
The last notation is [Reference Property|Object Class] which allows you to follow the relationship until an object of the specified object class is found. The container notations listed above work like this. Let’s say you have a roof that contains an element assembly that contains a beam. With this system you can copy information from the roof object to the beam object. The system will first find the element assembly object as the container of the beam, but because it is looking for a roof it will continue and look at the container of the element assembly – and find the roof.
This is a very powerful feature of Simplebim and you should give it a try. If you need help, please let us know at support@simplebim.com