Components inside groups-not repeating on other floors

[hkempenich]

We are working on a multistory building (hotel). The typical guestroom types are groups that are inserted into groups that make up the typical floors. The typical floor groups are in turn repeated at the different levels.

When we add a component to the guestroom, such as a towel bar, then "finish" the guestroom group, the towel bar propagates to other instances of the guestroom in the same floor, but not to other floors. The towel bar gets repeated in the same floor again and again. The towel bar should repeat into all the groups for that typical guestroom type, but it doesn't.

We get a warning stating that "There are identical instances in the same place. This will result in double counting in schedules. You can tab-select one of the overlapping elements to exclude it from the group instance."

If we select all instances of the towel bar in the project and check the elevation, we see that all the towel bars are on the same level (in this case, third floor). This shows that all instances of the QA01 guestroom type in that level got the towel bar, but the towel bars for QA01 on other floors got their towel bar on the third floor.

Any idea why this is happening and how to solve it?

[damon.sidel]

Everybody always cautions against using groups. I think you're experiencing one reason behind that recommendation. We use groups for a very similar reason; to do unit types in high rise buildings. One thing we are very careful about is not letting anything inside a group interact with anything outside a group. For example, we "Disallow Join" for all interior partition walls in a group that meet a wall outside the group, like a demising wall between units. We never place a component in a group that is hosted to anything outside that group. For example, the unit door is not part of the group, because it is hosted in the corridor wall, which is also not part of the group.

Even so, we have occasionally have trouble with our groups. Anything that is hosted can become a problem. So my question to you is, is the towel bar wall-hosted? If so, is it hosted on a wall within the guestroom group or the floor group or neither? Try making the tower bar not hosted by anything and see what you get. Those are my suggestions. Groups are so helpful and yet always seem to fall short. :(

[hkempenich]

Even so, we have occasionally have trouble with our groups. Anything that is hosted can become a problem. So my question to you is, is the towel bar wall-hosted? If so, is it hosted on a wall within the guestroom group or the floor group or neither? Try making the tower bar not hosted by anything and see what you get. Those are my suggestions. Groups are so helpful and yet always seem to fall short. :(

Thanks for your suggestions. As for the towel bar, it is not hosted. I intentionally created it as a generic model family so it would not be hosted.

I might break the floor groups at this point and deal only with the unit groups.

[hkempenich]

I think that I found a solution. Instead of randomly picking an instance of the group, I am making sure that it is not a mirrored version of the group.

I selected another copy of the same group, and the problem did not occur. Then I tried placing a copy of the group with the original orientation and add the components there. It is working for now.

[damon.sidel]

Interesting quirk. Too bad it doesn't just work. :)