I am modeling a building with prefabricated concrete facade elements. One element consists of a wall and one ore more windows. In my mind the most natural approach is to collect these parts in a cell. As the design evolves I can edit the facade elements cell by cell. And update the whole building, where the facade is modeled in a series of floor plan models, by updating cells as needed. Then I have to count and annotate both windows and concrete walls.
But DataGroup Explorer can not reveal the contents of cells! I have to drop the cells. But after that it is really cumbersome to edit the facade elements...
How am I supposed to design this kind of facade using ABD?
Correct - once nested within a cell, the sub-component DataGroup info is not accessible to DataGroup Explorer (or any other fashion). This has always been the case, though.
*Edit: Ignore the below - I see Travis has replied with an alternative method using reference attachments instead.
Aside from grouping as a cell, placing as a single unit, and then dropping for reporting/modification purposes, I'm not sure there are many other options for the scenario you've described. But I am curious to know how others might approach this type of thing.
Or Bentley should just overhaul the Datagroup system. Seems like a huge oversight in the spec in this BIM-crazy world that we live in, where assembly:component modeling is pretty upfront and in-your-face every day. Using Ref's is not a long term or sustainable solution. The Ref Dialog already slows to a crawl when we have more than 50+ Refs.De-cell-ing will mean thousands of Refs. Also don't forget that the assembly:component way of modeling means that there will be a lot of nesting. Something else that will slow the Ref Dailog down. We also have to publish to Navisworks weekly for coordination. Having everything as separate files will be a problem. Yes, you could probably merge all of the Refs that would normally be Cells before converting, but better to just fix the problem. Harry, I would be interested to know: 1. if the cell info is available if you publish the model as an i-model. This might be the better workaround. 2. if the Annotation Tools can access the nested cell's DGS info. Say you have a door handle Cell that is nested in a Door Cell, will ABD's Annotation Tool be able to extract and label info tagged onto the door handle?