When Creating Rooms, Default Should Be Alphabetical - D-Tools Forum

David_Haddad · 06-02-2009, 04:55 PM

D-Tools>Project Information>Locations (or any of the other ways to get to the same thing).

When creating a new location or room it always drops it at the end. Then you have to use the up/down buttons to place it where you want. I'm going to guess most users either arrange their names alphabetically/bynumber, with a remaining percentage who are too lazy to use the up/down buttons to adjust an added room every time just leaving them in haphazard order

. So...I suggest that you add a "sort alphabetical button" to speed things up and eliminate the endless use of the up/down button. And that will still allow users who for whatever reason don't sort alphabetically to do so.

Thanks

avzone · 06-02-2009, 05:05 PM

Originally Posted by David_Haddad

D-Tools>arrange their names alphabetically/bynumber

We call this "alphanumeric" order.

David_Haddad · 06-02-2009, 06:04 PM

I have a choice word for you that begins in A too

.

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 06-02-2009, 08:38 PM

We follow a practice of numbering and naming rooms and place rooms in the project starting with the primary entry point on a floor and continue clockwise around the buidling.

The most popular reporting format we see used for not only proposals, but wire labels, wire checklists, and walk through reports follow a 'by location' (room) grouping.

When walking a building to plan and perform an install, it is most helpful to have installation reports follow the flow of the building by moving from one room to adjacent rooms and so on.

Organizing the rooms in the project produces the best reporting result for this.

Numbering the room, allows the number to be pulled into COMP ID to make the wire and/or other devices assigned to the room more dicernable as to its location while keeping the COMP ID to 9 characters (short and sweet)

David_Haddad · 06-02-2009, 11:34 PM

Hi Kevin,

Different strokes for different folks. I know you like the numbering method for room ID, I have come up with a room naming scheme that is more descriptive while adding a number or letter differentiator when needed. My installers love to be able to look at the wire label and instantly be able to know the room without remembering the room number. I know your issue is what about when you have 5 rooms that all start with "bed" but my method addresses that.

I have never found ordering the rooms in the "order" of the house to be practical, it's extraordinarily hard to be consistent, and for me it's soo much faster if i am looking for the dining room to know it's alphabetical. Same thing on blueprints, I can find a room twice as fast if I know the blueprint pages are sorted alphabetically (by floor).

But I have learned a lot from your methods, your starter database, and our discussions. And I'm sure I'll learn more from you in the future. So I don't hold it against you that you're wrong on this issue

.

Seriously though, if users have the ability to sort alpha-numerically, it will not stop you from continuing with your method nor add any time for you. It will on the other hand save me a lot of time.

avzone · 06-03-2009, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by David_Haddad

I have come up with a room naming scheme that is more descriptive while adding a number or letter differentiator when needed. My installers love to be able to look at the wire label and instantly be able to know the room without remembering the room number. I know your issue is what about when you have 5 rooms that all start with "bed" but my method addresses that.

David, this sounds interesting as I gave up on this years ago. Would you be willing to share what you've developed?

David_Haddad · 06-03-2009, 12:24 AM

I would have been willing to, until your 2nd post in this thread

. Sure I will a little later. It's really quite simple, not much too it. Back in a while..

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 06-03-2009, 01:09 AM

Wrong...

I love being wrong, it means I get to learn something new.

Most important that you have found something that works which your staff can learn easily, well done.

Another reason for the method we apply is due to the fact that many other control system programs we work with sort alpha numerically without choice and numbers are the only way to control order.

Our preferred method meshes well with these situations.

So Q, I will stand with Grant and ask to see your methodology.

Thanks

avzone · 06-03-2009, 01:14 AM

Originally Posted by David_Haddad

I would have been willing to, until your 2nd post in this thread

. Sure I will a little later. It's really quite simple, not much too it. Back in a while..

Gosh, I thought my second post was nice compared to the first one.

David_Haddad · 06-03-2009, 04:46 AM

OK, in a nutshell:

1. On the blueprint specifications page there should be a list of all room names with associated room ID's.
2. More importantly, in each room I list the room name and the room ID. For instance:
Kitchen
Room ID: KIT

I know you two are pros, I'm just laying this out for anyone that is interested. Because if you don't bother to take the extra 15 minutes to show it clearly in every single room, it's all for naught in terms of easily remembering what is what.

I am currently using (up to) a 6 character ID based on location plus 3 digits for all component ID's. There are two main challenges:
1. Dealing with rooms such as "master bedroom" and "master bath". Obviously if you use the first 6 letters you end up with the same thing for both rooms. So I come up with something that makes sense such as "MBED" and "MBATH".

2. Dealing with rooms where they are all basically the same, lots of halls or bedrooms. For that, I am using a number to indicate floor and a letter as the unique room identifier. So let's suppose we have 7 halls in the house. I don't try to name them "dining room hall" or whatever, because it's always difficult to give good names for halls plus they end up to long than. So I just give each hall a name as follows:
HALL 1A
HALL 1B
HALL 2A
HALL 2B

The number 1 tells what floor it is on and the letter is unique to the hall. This works quite well when you have a lot of similar rooms as the number immediately tells you the floor. So if the installer sees the label HALL1A-101 on a cable, at a minimum they immediately know it is a hall on the first floor, not in the basement or 2nd floor. And it probably won't take them long before they even remember which hall A is.

I find this works well in homes that have two of any room as well, since they are almost always on separate floors. For instance, a lot of homes that I work in have two kitchens, a main one and perhaps a small one in the basement or second floor that's not a true kitchen but everyone still calls it the "basement kitchen". So a component ID of KIT2-001 immediately tells you it is the kitchen on the second floor.

For the basement I would use the number 0, so it would be KIT0-001.

The biggest advantage to this as I see it is that when looking at wires with labels, it's incredibly efficient to be able to read the label and instantly know where the cable goes, as opposed to just having a number that someone has to refer to on a sheet.