I'm interested in hearing what would be the best approach to parring back the UK dataset somewhat?
The out-of-the-box Dataset_UK is very buildings & architecture focussed, whereas my clients' organisation is a multidisciplinary site construction company. I find the dataset content is too detailed for our needs in areas, and then virtually non-existant in other areas.
Every piece of help or guidance I've found, as well as every consultant I've spoken to has told me that AECOsim is great for *ADDING* content, and has shown me how to do that. And they've told me that the datasets are intended to be tailored to suit particular needs. However, I haven't actually seen anyone successfully *REMOVING* dataset content, at least without errors & instability ensuing, I think simply because the various tools & procedures AECOsim relies on are so interdependent.
Lets, for instance, say that I want to remove all datagroup content where the uniclass code is 3-digits or longer (i.e. retaining everything under the G0 & G00 level tables, for instance). How would I approach this? Is there a particular order I should tackle the Level Library, Family / Part libraries and Datagroup catalogue definitions? Are those the only things that would need changing, or have I overlooked something? Which config or PCF files would maybe need amending?
The end goal I guess, is that I want to vastly simplify the AECOsim user experience for our staff, who are mostly very new to AECOsim. It presents them with too many options, most of which are irrelevant to their needs as designers and engineers. If we could par back the level libraries, define our own set of useful families/parts, and ensure that our datagroup catalogues contain only the most basic & most-used items for our firm, then we would be able to slowly build & develop content from there.
I'm told, "oh you just need to make a Dataset_Company" for your own standards. But this doesn't stop all the Dataset_UK content seeping through into things from people's local C-drives.
Any help / advice / pointers would be much appreciated, as not being able to *subtract* out-the-box content seems like a fundamental flaw in AECOsim's supposed capability & flexibility (which is why my client invested in Bentley in the first place).
Thanks in advance.
Hi Thomas,
If you have a Dataset_Company with your own custom settings, and if the folder hierarchy is as same as the Dataset_UK, then by changing the TFDIR variable to point to Dataset_Company folder and not to Dataset_UK folder will stop Dataset_UK from seeping into your project. This can be done from within the application (Workspace -> Configuration). But please note that if your custom dataset is missing minimum required files (for example, DGNLIBs etc.) then AECOsim would not be able to work correctly.
Please let me know if this is of help!
The configuration scenario where the default dataset is used with company/user content separated into company/project dataset locations is intended to be a relatively simple solution that offers some performance benefits by using the local copy of the default dataset (an aspect that we are reviewing while compiling similar guidance for CONNECT Edition) and to simplify the application of future dataset updates.
If one of the primary requirements is to reduce/minimize the delivered content a different approach is required.
One option would be to copy the UK dataset to your network, remove unwanted content, then use that as the location for your own custom content. I would not do that as your custom content would be mingled with the remaining delivered content.
A better option is to copy the UK dataset to your network, remove unwanted content, but have a Company dataset location to maintain the separation between Bentley and custom content.
To reduce DataGroup content you could try the Catalog Item Manager. This tool moves xml content from the delivered dataset to a library file, so the content still exists but is not present in the UI. In its current form the tool ahs limitations. It only move the xml content and does not affect related resources such as cells used by DataGroup items; but in your context where you wish to simplify the user experience should provide the required outcome.
The way I would use this tool is to modify a copy of the delivered dataset, treat that as the WiP source for the operational dataset.
Steps:
There are some details to fill in around this, but that is the overview.
Are you considering moving to CONNECT Edition? A point of change like this would be the best time to do so.
We have minimized the content in parts of the CONNECT Edition UK dataset.
Regards
Marc
Answer Verified By: Thomas Hartley
Hi Marc,
Thanks for the answer, I will try this in my test environment & see if it can be deployed to my clients' live environment in due course. Sounds promising. I had tried moving the whole Dataset_UK to our network and redirecting TF_DATASETS before, but performance was quite poor. Perhaps it will be somewhat better though with a stripped back dataset (and various other optimisation tweaks I've made since last time I attempted this).
On CONNECT...
I am keen to move to CONNECT Edition as soon as possible, as I think it will solve many of the problems & niggles we've been seeing. We are still, in the grand scheme of things, new to AECOsim, and do not have any major legacy projects in SS6 (although we do work with Network Rail and may need to run SS6 alongside CONNECT so that we're able to delivery work to them compatible with their systems?).
The main thing holding me back from a full-scale migration is that I've been lead to believe that whilst Microstation CONNECT is complete, some elements of AECOsim are still not yet fully operational? My client requires the use of the basic tools within Arch, Struct, Mech and Elec, as well as cut-from-the-model draughting, schedules, linksets / project explorer, and soon also automation using a C# or VBA API.
It would be good to see a completion schedule for AECOsim CONNECT, so that I'm able to assess if/when to migrate?
Also, I don't suppose it would hurt for me to install CONNECT on my own machine to start testing with.
I've drafted some notes on Catalog Item Manger which I hope will be useful.
Not really sure what the suggestion that "some elements of AECOsim are still not yet fully operational" means. Could that be filled out with some details? Obviously there are features that we will be developing further, both ABD specific and at the MicroStation platform level.
Our release schedule consists of:
Note that there isn't a simple migration path from V8i to the CONNECT Edition UK Dataset as we made significant changes to content naming to accommodate Uniclass 2015 classification, particularly removing classification codes from object names wherever possible.