Hi all,
Here I am back for a quick tip I decided to develop inspired by a Dynamo Forum post.
As you can guess from the title, it concerns the naming of the family, a very common and important task for all the #BIMCoordinator, which can reasonably become tedious if you have to rename both the families in the project and the nested ones!!
How to
Easy-peasy, we made a dynamo node in the M4B package that allows you to do the trick very efficiently in no-time.
However, you really need to keep ATTENTION to the two lists defining the "names to replace" and "names to replace with".
They must be two different lists sharing the same order because, for instance, the name in 3rd position of the first list will be replaced only with the name in 3rd position of the second list.
... I know this might sound not very easy, but it's a workaround I ideate to give you the possibility of renaming multiple family names simultaneously.
Talking about the report output, this has been built to show you literally all the families the script reaches out. Per family, if it founds its name in the first list (names_toBeReplaced) will type "previous_name -> new_name", otherwise, will type "NOT renamed : family_name". In case the renamed (or not) family is a nested one, the string of above will be anticipated by a "NEST: (...)".
This way, you can easily understand on which level the function is operating.
How do you feel about it, speedy enough?
Curiosity: the trick was made possible because of the Family class property "Family.Name", which gives us the possibility of renaming a family without changing the file itself. This property was particularly convenient for the nested families, where was enough to open a transaction in the main family document and rename all the nested, without the need of reloading the main family back in the project!
As always, I hope you enjoyed and fount it useful,
Any question? comment below or drop me a text,
Cheers!