Coulter BIM Information Management

​As Information Managers in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry, we live and die by standardized naming conventions. But there is a dark side to rigorous standards like ISO 19650: when you combine long project codes, originator strings, and descriptive functional codes with deep folder structures on a network drive, you eventually hit the dreaded Windows 260-character path limit.

​I recently ran into this while processing a massive multi-discipline data drop. Windows “Extract All” gave up, and even moving files to a C:\temp folder didn’t work because the subfolders were nested too deep.

Instead of manually renaming hundreds of files—and breaking every Xref or linked model in the process—I decided to try a bit of “Vibe Coding.” I described the problem to an AI, tweaked the logic, and built a custom Python tool that handles hundreds of ZIPs at once, no matter how long the file names are.

The Problem: Why Windows Fails

​Windows has a legacy limitation called MAX_PATH. When your file path looks like this:

P:\2026\Project-Folder\Subfolder\Information-Management\Role-Type-Number-Description\Technical-Drawings\Ultra-Long-Standardized-Filename.dwg

…Windows simply stops reading after the 260th character. It will tell you the file “doesn’t exist” even though it’s sitting right there in the archive.

​The Solution: The “Long Path” Python Script

​By using Python’s zipfile library and a specific Windows “Extended Path” prefix (\\?\), we can bypass this limit entirely.

​I’ve shared the code below. It’s designed to be flexible: you can drag and drop multiple ZIPs onto it, or just run it to get a standard Windows pop-up selection box.

​The “Vibe Coded” Script

import zipfile
import os
import sys
import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import filedialog
def unzip_files(paths):
# The magic prefix that tells Windows to allow 32,767 characters
long_prefix = “\\?\”
for zip_path in paths: if zip_path.endswith('.zip'): abs_path = os.path.abspath(zip_path) folder_name = abs_path[:-4] # Removes .zip from folder name full_dest_path = long_prefix + folder_name if not os.path.exists(full_dest_path): os.makedirs(full_dest_path) print(f"Extracting: {os.path.basename(zip_path)}...") try: with zipfile.ZipFile(abs_path, 'r') as zip_ref: zip_ref.extractall(full_dest_path) print(f"Success: {folder_name}") except Exception as e: print(f"Error: {e}")
if name == “main“:
# Support for Drag-and-Drop via sys.argv
file_list = sys.argv[1:]
# If no files dropped, open a GUI selector if not file_list: root = tk.Tk() root.withdraw() file_list = filedialog.askopenfilenames( title="Select ZIP files for Extraction", filetypes=[("ZIP files", "*.zip")] ) if file_list: unzip_files(file_list) input("\nProcess complete! Press Enter to close.")

Why this is a Win for Information Management:

1. ​Maintains Link Integrity: No need to shorten filenames, meaning your Revit Xrefs, CAD links, and COBie references stay intact.
2. ​Bulk Processing: You can select dozens of ZIP files from a CDE (Common Data Environment) export and walk away while it sorts them into clean, individual folders.
3. ​Scalable & Repeatable: Every extraction follows the same logic, making your data intake process consistent and audit-ready.

​How to use it

​If you aren’t a “coder,” don’t worry. This is a great example of a “Low-Code” solution. You can run this in VS Code, or create a .bat file on your desktop so you can simply drag your project drops onto the icon for instant extraction.