Copying properties between demolition and reuse elements via a common ID — howto Featured

Boris Brunner

Hi

We are working on a circular economy BIM workflow where building elements appear twice in a federated model: once as a demolition element and once as the same element reused in the new construction. Both share a common ReUse ID stored as a custom property.

We would like to copy property values from the demolition element to the corresponding reused element based on this shared key — essentially a join between two objects from different models.

Our current workaround is to export a CSV from the demolition model, perform the join in Power Query, and re-import the result via the Enrichment tool. This works, but requires steps outside of SimpleBIM.

Is there a way to achieve this directly within a Dataflow — for example by creating a named connection between objects that share the same property value, and then using Copy Property Values through that connection?

Or is there another approach we might be missing?

Thanks!

Comments

2 comments

Date Votes
  • Comment author
    Gio Siradze

    Hi,

    I think this could be solved using Groups. If the objects from the separate models share a common ID, you could first group them based on that property. We have a dataflow called “Generate Groups by Text Property” that creates groups according to property values.

    After that, you could use the “Aggregate Properties for Groups” tool to copy the property values from the demolition element to the group. Once that is done, you can use the “Copy Properties” tool to copy the missing property values from the group to the objects within the group without overwriting any existing non-empty values.

    2
  • Comment author
    Mickael AUQUE

    I would have done the same as Gio 🤓

    2

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