Importing a Room

If your design work involves clients that use prototypical rooms in many properties, this function allows you to import an entire room, including all the objects and specifications associated with it. You can import a room from any other project, including prototype rooms The Import function is integrated with the Add command on the Room Form and appears when you select that command.

Note: if you need a copy of an existing room in the current project, just use the Clone or Clone Into functions on the Room List screen instead.

These command buttons appear after you select the Add command

This section covers the importing of data from within the FF&EZ database. If you want to learn about importing data from sources outside of FF&EZ, this is covered under Importing Data from External Sources.

One important aspect of importing an entire room is dealing with possible conflicts between object tags and/or spec IDs. For instance, your existing project may have an object tagged as CHR001 that uses the spec CHR001 and the fabric FAB032. The room you are importing may also have a CHR001 in it and it may use CHR001 as its primary spec. What if these are the same? What if they are not?

FF&EZ makes it easy to deal with these situations (however, doing a little bit of preliminary study of the source room will also help). When you select a room to import, FF&EZ compares all of the incoming tags and spec IDs and shows you any that conflict. In the example above, it will display both the conflicting tags and the associated specs. If FAB032 has not been used in your current project, it will not cause a conflict and won't appear on the list (but will be imported).

If you import a room into a brand new, empty project, you will of course get no conflicts. If you import another room into the same project, the likelihood of a conflict goes up. If you are importing again from the same project, you can be confident that these conflicts are simply the same objects you just imported. If importing from a different project, you will want to examine the objects carefully. If you are importing from a project with which you are not familiar, it will be useful to print an Object Detail Report from the old project for review (a PDF file is one "green" way to do this).

First, keep in mind this point: Existing tags and specs in your current project will not be changed in any way. Changes are only made to temporary tables containing the incoming items to allow them to either co-exist with those already in the project or give way to them if they are the same. A full description of the procedure follows the table of fields and controls below.

Room Import Screen Fields and Controls

Choose list options	The list of available rooms will normally show all rooms in all projects. If you instead select one or more of the criteria options, you can limit the items in the list to just a subset of the available ones. If you specify a project when narrowing down the list, FF&EZ will remember it and use it automatically if you use the Import function again (until you close the Room List itself).
Select a room to import	This list displays the available rooms. Click on the room that you want to import, then click on the Select button just below the list of rooms (it will be grayed out until you click on a room). When you select a room, FF&EZ creates temporary files containing the room's objects and their associated specs and then tests to see if any of their original Tags and/or Spec IDs conflict with those already used in your project.
Resolve incoming Tags that conflict with existing object Tags:	This is the list of incoming objects whose tags conflict with currently existing objects in your project. You have two ways to resolve the conflict: 1) by checking the "Use Current" option to substitute the current definition of a tag for the old one or 2) you can enter a new tag so that the incoming object can be imported without a conflict. In addition to these options, if you enter a new tag you can have FF&EZ make its primary spec have a matching Spec ID.
Accept Changes (Objects)	Clicking this button starts a new cycle of checking for and displaying object conflicts. If any are found, the list will update and display them. If not, the list will go blank and you can proceed to the next step.
Resolve incoming source Spec IDs that still conflict with existing Spec IDs:	This is a list of specifications with Spec IDs that conflict with currently existing specs in your project. You won't work with this list until you have resolved all the object conflicts in the list above it (this is the most efficient approach, since spec conflicts are often resolved in the other process). To resolve a conflict, either 1) put a check in the "Use Current" column or 2) enter a new Spec ID to use.
Accept Changes (Specs)	Clicking this button starts a new cycle of checking for and displaying spec conflicts. If any are found, the list will show them, otherwise it will go blank and you can click on the large Accept button to close the form.
Accept	Once all conflicts are resolved (one way or another) this button closes the form and passes the incoming room information to the Room List form. When you later save the new room, the contents and associated objects and specs will be imported as specified.
Cancel	This button closes the form without setting up a room to import.

Room Import Procedure

The basic procedure is this:

On the Rooms List screen, click on Add. If desired, enter the new Room ID, Room Name and select the Area for the new room (however, the first two will be imported if left blank). You can enter any other information if you wish.
Click on the Import button to display the Room Import screen.

Select a Room

If you want to narrow down the number of rooms to pick, you can enter a specific project ID and/or a key word from the room name.
After highlighting a room, either double-click it or click on the Select button below the list of rooms. This will display any incoming objects whose tags conflict with those in the current project. Those that do not have a conflict will not appear on the list but will be imported when you complete the procedure.

Resolve Tag Conflicts

To deal with the conflicts, you need to answer this series of questions: Does the "incoming" item already exist in the project? If not, it just needs to have a new Tag and/or Spec ID assigned to it. If it does exist, does it still use the same tag or spec ID in the current project? That is, is the "incoming" CHR001 the same as the current one? If yes, we can just use the existing ("current") object or spec. If it exists under a different tag or ID, we need to point to that object. These situations are handled in the next steps.

Note: If you import a room into a project before you create any other objects and specs, you will have no conflicts. If you import another similar room from the same project, you will probably have many conflicts, because the second set of incoming objects and specs will likely include many that you imported in the previous step. This should be expected and would be a good example of when to accept the "Use Current" option for the objects and specs listed as "conflicts."

If the old and current objects are the same items, then you can tell FF&EZ to use the "current" version. For that item, the new room will contain new occurrences of the existing object, using the old room as the quantity template. This is the simplest way to resolve the conflict, because it leaves behind the old object and spec and just records the quantity needed in the new room for the existing object.
On the other hand, if the incoming object is not the same as the current one, you need to give it a new tag. To do this, you simply type in a new tag on the conflict list. If you also want the primary spec to have a matching ID, you select the "Spec ID = Tag" option next to the new tag.
If you know that another object (with a different tag) is the same as the incoming one, enter that existing object's tag as the "new" tag. It will create a new conflict, but on the next round of conflict checking, you can tell FF&EZ to use the other object.
Once you have either accepted the use of the current object or changed the tag of the incoming one, click on the Accept Changes button to write the changes to the incoming data (the original room is not changed). If your changes resolve all the conflicts, you will be able to click on the large Accept button. If not, or if you assigned tags that created conflicts with other existing objects, you will see a new (but probably shorter) list of conflicts. Once you resolve all object conflicts, you only need to resolve any remaining spec ID conflicts (if any remain).

Resolve Spec ID Conflicts (if any)

A similar procedure is used to resolve conflicts with the Spec IDs (but note that most spec conflicts often get resolved when the object conflicts are resolved): First, decide if the existing spec can be used for the incoming spec. If so, put a check under "Use Current." If not, enter a new Spec ID to use. After making all entries, click Accept Changes just below the spec list to have the conflict check run again.
If you get "no conflicts found" message, the large Accept button at the button will be enabled. Click on it to save the import setup and return to the room form. The new room will be imported when you click on the Room Form's Save button.

Duplicate Objects With No Tag/Spec ID Conflicts

One situation which the import function cannot detect is when an incoming spec content matches an existing one but there is no conflict in the Tag or Spec ID (that is, the items are identical but use different Tags and/or Spec IDs in the two projects).

In this situation, the object and spec will be imported. If this happens and you want to consolidate the duplicated items into single objects and specs, you can simply edit the FF&E Worksheet to switch the incoming duplicate to the existing item. For instance, suppose you imported a room and found that CHR001 and CHR053 are actually the same chair frame and fabric. For take-off purposes, it will be less confusing if we eliminated CHR053 in favor of the existing object.

This procedure assumes that the two identical objects are used in different rooms:

First (if not already done), identify any other incoming objects and specs that are identical to those already in the project.
Open the FF&E Worksheet and sort it by Vendor by clicking on the header of that column. This will tend to group the identical objects close to each other and make it easier to see the results.
Use Find to locate the vendor for the two objects, highlight the first row with CHR053 (the imported duplicate) and click on Replace. Then change the object being used from CHR053 to CHR001 (the existing object), leaving the quantity unchanged.
When you click on Replace (in the command), that use of CHR053 will be changed to use the existing one in all affected rooms. Note that this occurrence will move to the CHR001 "group" at this point.

That is essentially all you have to do. This is because only items used in the FF&E Worksheet will appear on client and vendor-oriented reports. You have the option of then deleting the objects that are no longer being used from the Object List itself, but it's not necessary: All the objects in the rooms now point to the correct objects (which already pointed to the existing component specifications.

If you only had a few specs that were duplicates (for instance, an existing chair and an incoming chair used different chair frames but the same fabric), the procedure is similar, except you use the Objects List screen instead of the FF&E Worksheet.

For example, suppose that in our previous example, CHR001 used a chair frame from Shelby Williams with fabric COM013 from Artex and incoming chair CHR053 used a different frame from Chaircraft with an Artex fabric with the Spec ID COM053. If you realize that COM013 and COM053 are actually the same fabric, you may want to consolidate the fabric into a single spec to avoid discrepancies and confusion. Here is how:

Open the Objects List screen and use Find to locate CHR053.
On CHR053's component list, click on the entry for COM053.
Use the "Attach or replace selected component" tool to select COM013, then click on the Replace button.

That is all it takes to replace the duplicate spec with the original one. As before, you do not have to delete the duplicated spec from the Specifications List itself, since it is no longer being used in an object (that is, in turn, being used in the FF&E Worksheet). If you notice that COM053 had some verbiage that would be good to have in COM013, you can copy and paste it with normal editing on the spec screen.