Labeling elevators

[damon.sidel]

I would like to tag my elevators. Right now, I've used a generic model for my elevator. It is essentially a door with some symbolic lines in plan to represent the cab in each plan. The goal is to be able to place a tag on each floor plan for each elevator. I could just to a generic model tag by mark, but here's where it gets more complicated... I've grouped all the elevators level 1 and copied the group up. It would be a huge pain to select each elevator and change it's mark. How do you deal with elevators? What family(ies) do you use and how do you label them? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

PS - I thought about tagging a shaft, but you can't tag a shaft. Why not?

[pfaudler]

We do this in all projects. We treat elevators as speciality equipement. But GM should be fine too. We just use GM tag or speciality tag, as you mentioned and assign individual Mark. you can also do this in a schedule and then use tag all not tagged. We also tag "Room" indicating shaft area.

[damon.sidel]

OK, but how do you deal with having a ton of elevators? I guess you probably don't use groups, but you're still left with assigning individual Mark parameters to every instance, right? That seems like a lot more work than necessary.

[cliff collins]

You could try "nesting" an annotation family in the elevator family.

[damon.sidel]

Cliff, I'm probably being slow, but how would that work?

[cliff collins]

Well, you are not slow.

It doesn't work. I thought somewhere in the past I had added an annotation inside the elevator family. But I just tried it and no-go.

[damon.sidel]

Glad to know I'm not slow. ;)

OK, so after some experimentation, attached is the family that I created. On every floor it shows an "X" for the shaft opening and can be tagged on every level since it is one instance top to bottom. I already have an elevator in my project as a generic model (which I will be switching to specialty equipment). It is a door and plan representation of the cab. It has been placed on every level where there is a stop. I was going to include the cab plan representation in this new family, but couldn't devise a way to exclude it on levels where the elevator doesn't stop. So this duplicates effort a little, but it serves my purpose... and shows the cab in sections as an added bonus. If anybody has any suggestions for improvements, I'm all ears.