Find Duplicate Objects Based on Geometry

This tool automatically excludes all duplicate objects, i.e. objects that are on top of each other, in the exact same place, and have identical geometry.

This tool is useful when the model author has by accident pasted multiple copies of the same object into the model, e.g. when copying objects from one building storey to another. This would cause, for example, duplicate quantities on the quantity take-off. By excluding the duplicates, they won’t be included in the export and thus have no effect on any consequent analysis.

Settings

Objects

Select Object Class, Group, Group Category, Top Most or Part level objects. The calculation is done only to the objects included in your selection. 

Connection Name

Connection Name defines the Connection property name, where the references between one of the duplicates and the rest of the duplicates are assigned. Make sure you use unique names if you want to run the tool multiple times on the same model (and don’t want to update or override the existing connections). You can use the connection to further analyze the duplicates, or add a property to the duplicates to indicate that they are in fact duplicates.

Override Connections

Use this option to choose whether you want to override (checked) or update (unchecked) the Connection Property, if it already exists in the model.

Check Object Class

Turn Check Object Class on if you want to limit the duplicate check only to objects from the same object class.

Create Group

Turn on Create Group if you want to create a group for the duplicate objects. The groups can be either a generic group or an IFC group. A generic group can only be used inside Simplebim. IFC groups are exported to IFC.

Only the duplicates are assigned to the group if they are found. In other words, one of the duplicates is not assigned to the group.

Groups are a convenient way to find duplicate objects from the model, but you could also feed the group to other tools to further process the objects. For example, if you want to exclude them with the Include/Exclude Objects tool.

Group Name

Group Name defines the group to which the duplicate objects are assigned. If you use a group name that already exists in the model (under the parent group defined below), then the objects are added to this group. If the group doesn't exist yet, then a new one is created.

Parent Group

Groups can be hierarchical. Use Parent Group if you want to assign the groups under a specific parent group.