Guidelines for Parametric Cells in ABD?

Interesting thread on the Chinese ABD forum about the problems of mixing and matching parameters using ItemTypes versus DGS.

Apparently, the Placement tool in ABD (CE3?) has not been hooked up to recognise the Item Type parameters, eventhough they appear in the Placement tool's dialogue box.

What are the official recommendations here? Ideally, DGS would be replaced by a beef'd up IT and F+P replaced by an enhanced ET that accommodates centrelines etc...(by 2020, if we are lucky?)  In the meantime...

1. Mstn Parametric Cells with parametrics via ItemTypes; and business info via Item Types; with Symbology via Element Templates. ABD Placement tool to use Mstn's placement tools behind the scenes.

2. Mstn Parametric Cells with parametrics via Item Types; and business info in DGS (converted from Item Types); with Symbology via Family+Parts (converted from Element Templates). Cell Library conversion tool?

3. Mstn Parametric Cells with parametrics via Item Types; and business infor added by ABD tool using DGS; with Symbology added by ABD tool using F+P. Need to enhance the existing Add/Modify Instance Data tool to recognise nested elements, fix any Element Properties panel synching problems, fix the F+P attachment problems etc.

Strategically, it would be good to migrate DGS and F+P to something at platform level like IT and ET. As mentioned in this year's YII, Aecosim seems to be used almost exclusively in support of other Bentley civils, plant etc products. Currently, all these verticals have their own versions of IT and ET (or DGS and F+P) leading to huge compatibility problems and overheads, and sub-standard drawings that can only be produced using large amounts of expensive manual correction when information from the different apps need to be cobbled together for drawings etc.

Bentley's cloud-based Components Center would make a lot more sense if the type of problems listed above can be avoided. Common Modeling Environment: Coming soooon....?