Duplicate Detection

Objective: In this video and/or step by step walkthrough, you’ll learn about a feature built into VECTOR in the assignment process called duplicate detection

Duplicate Detection

In order to complete duplicate detection:

  • Make sure you are on the Build screen inside of your VECTOR bid
  • Check that your bid structure is built out and a page is selected on the left hand side
  • Your page scenario must be utilizing a valid filter set so that Revit elements appear on the screen (as shown in the illustration below)
  • Assemblies must be added to your scenario as well as the relevant pages you are working with

Duplicate detection involves scenarios where the Revit element may exist on multiple different sheets or pages inside the job, even though it’s the exact same element

Duplicate detection was enforced to protect contractors from taking off the same element twice

For this example we are focusing on Floor Plan – Level 1 where we:

  • Zoom in on PoF3
  • Select the wall
  • Click the Properties tab
  • Scroll down to view the Entity ID (8033172)

View Different Page

We navigate to a different page – Floor Plan: Enlarged Floor, then left click to select it

Here, we see a different background image zooming in on that particular room on the floorplan we just left

On the bottom, we:

  • Select the wall type POf3
  • Click on Properties

Under Family Type, we see this is also an SG-P0F3 wall and the Entity ID  is exactly the same as on the previous floor plan

This is one example of an instance where an element may appear on two different sheets

Built in Protection During Assignment Process

In this example we navigate back to our original floorplan, Floor Plan Level 1 and start by assigning that element to an assembly

  • Select the SG-P0F3 assembly in the left hand side
  • Click the Assign button

After the assignment, we scroll back up to the Enlarged Floor Plan that focuses on the Bike Room

Here, we try to assign that same element to our same target assembly. When we hit assign, we’ll see a message in the top right-hand corner that said one entity did not get assigned due to duplicate detection

You can see the color of the element has not changed and no quantity has been aggregated for this assembly

The application detected that both of these elements have the same exact entity ID and so we only allow an element with a unique entity ID to be assigned on one page throughout the bid

Previous Page

Maneuvering back to our previous page, we are able to assign this same element within the same page

It is only when navigating to a different page and trying to assign that same element, where the restriction will take place

Mass Assignment

Let’s look at how this process works for a mass assignment

Navigating back to our original floor plan, we select a wall that is also an SG-P0F3 wall type and the Entity ID ends is 8032662

Filters

  • Click the Filters Tab
  • Expand Basic Wall Family
  • Select the P0F3 Family type
  • Click Assign Assembly

Assign Window

In this example, under Scenario Assembly we:

  • Click the drop down and choose the P0F3 assembly
  • Select the box next to Apply this assembly to all (44) pages of this Scenario
  • Hit Assign

Once we hit assign, we can see the elements on this page did not change color and the quantity did not increase for the P0F3 assembly

If we navigate up through our bid structure and look at our Enlarged Floor Plan, we also don’t see any color change or quantity aggregated for the assemblies on this page (see video)

However, we can see in our bid structure that another floor plan, Roof Base Plan, does show this assembly with a changed color and does show the target assembly with aggregated takeoff quantity

So what the mass assignment functionality has done, is detected that there were multiple duplicates of that element with matching Entity IDs

Rather than grabbing the length dimension for all of them and duplicating the quantity, it shows one existence of that element and performs the assignment for that page only

Essentially, this element could have existed with the same entity ID on five different pages, but the mass assignment will randomly select only one of those five pages and will perform the assignment there

This protects you from duplicating the quantity four times over and this is how duplicate detection is built into the assignment process