Flex Duct Lining & Insulation

In the recent creation of my Duct Material Schedule, I ran across a very annoying problem with the way AutoCAD MEP handles Flex Duct and regular Duct. To see my Duct Material Schedule, visit http://www.geniusoftllc.com/tools/ductmaterial.asp

The problem occurs when looking at Lining Thickness and Insulation Thickness. Duct has it, Flex Duct doesn't. Makes sense right? Well, but now click on your favorite piece of flex duct, right-click and select "Flex Duct Properties". Go to the "Lining and Insulation" tab - hmm...



So apparantly, you can set the lining and insulation thickness for flex duct, but the property set definition for them does not exist (nor can you add it).

This doesn't become a problem until you try to display properties of both Flex Duct and regular Duct in the same Schedule Table. And of course, I want to be able to display both in my Duct Material Schedule.

So how do you get around this?

First, you need to create a Formula Definition with an "On Error Resume Next" statement in it, here is an example:

On Error Resume Next
If UCase("[PartType]") = "FLEX DUCT" Then
RESULT = "N/A"
Else
RESULT = [LiningThickness]
End If

Next, you need to set the "Format" for the Property [LiningThickness] to be "Unformatted" (if you don't do this, the schedule will have errors).

Next, just save the schedule and add Flex Duct and Duct to it, verify that the formula works correctly and then go buy me a beer (http://www.geniusoftllc.com/beer4buzz) :)