CR: Linear Compound Cells?

Hello!

ABD has had Compound Cells for a while. The idea is that 2d plan 'symbols' or proxies are used by the Drawing extraction process (DEM or BV) to avoid having to boolean/generate the cut geometry.

This works fairly well with discrete singular objects like doors or windows but a linear version of this would be useful in bringing down the processing times even more?

Structures and Mech have their single/double line resymbolisation Drawing Rule.

F+P has its centreline option.

Mstn has its Linestyles and Multilnes.

??

Do TF Wall Forms have this built in? They have been reports that Forms are extracted quicker by DEM. Not sure about BV.

I wonder if a cached mode using the CVE functionality would be useful. When a 3d element is cut for the first time and produces a CVE, Mstn/ABD would cache the generated 2d elements. This would include the results of unification and priority based connections etc in addition to the Compound Cell's 2d proxies. Incremental CVE updates would be needed.

Or, do we simply allow users to quickly generate 2d proxy stand-ins without the hassle of generating a Compound Cell. Say, as in this VW example, we have a particularly complex 3d object that would take ages to cut through and will in any case need to be cleaned up. The user would select the 3d objects, select the BV Drawing style settings and BV would generate the resymbolised graphics in context (hiding the 3d originating geometry). The user would tweak the settings to get the best possible results for the Cut, Forward, Back, Outside etc views. he would get the option of course to save the display settings. He would then tweak the CVE elements to make it look right... the junctions may but up against a similar material so the 'seam' line would need to be omitted etc. Additional geomtery or even annotation/dims may need to be added.

When the user is satisfied with the results, he ends his session and ABD automatically stores the results as an internal 'Compound Cell without the 3d bits' that is linked to the 3d elements in the model. The hybrid CC would have its display settings saved with it. When BV comes along again to do a cut.. the earmaked 'difficult' 3d objects are re-symbolised / replaced by the 2d 'CVE' proxy. There would need to be a need to define a 'alpha channel' clipping shape so that the anything under the 2d symbol can be obscured properly.

Linear:

Multi-lines are already quite powerful. They have a start and end point like TF Walls or at least the Compound Walls have a Function line? They also have a lot of the tools for dealing with end caps, junctions etc. Linestyles even allow placing cells at the start/end and on intervals along the line.

It would be great if the linear TF Forms like Walls could be harvested of their 'workline' or 'functionline' coordinates so that they can be re-symbolised as Multi-lines or Line-styles. A TF Beam of Column might leverage their Analytical node geometry information.

Settings saved as Drawing Rules?