Some great vids have been popping up on Youtube, showcasing OBD's powerful modeling tools and workflows.
The one on the Profile tool is an eyeopener for me. The use of the 2d section Drawing Model as a 'sketch plane' is really cool. This is in many ways a lot better than the standard R*vit workflow which requires the user to pop up into the Family Editor or sketch mode and back again, which is a pain. When in the the 2d Drawing Model, the user can Ref attach other CAD info etc to trace over or copy through etc; something that is pretty difficult to do in R*vit's FE. A natural advantage due to OBD's CAD origins and R*vit's 'CAD is bad' stance, conversion etc overheads.
The CAD geometry > Cell > BIM data > Swept Solid pipeline workflow is great. But I wonder if there couldn't be anyway to make the process more compact. A lot moving between disparate tools. Maybe the 'Create Cell' dialog should have a 'Profile' or 'Door' or 'User Defined Component' etc option drop down to allow some pre-defined settings or filters for the corresponding F&P and DGS information to attached. Doesn't flow very well at the moment.
1. As mentioned elsewhere, the Mstn Cell creation dialog should provide the option to automatically delete the geometry used or substitute the Cell in place... as ACAD has done for decades.
2. Depending on the type of object is chosen in the Create Cell dialog, the predefined Catalog Type (Profile) should be filtered or offered up and the Cell Name automatically inserted in the required parameter field.
3. ??
I think that the Create Cell dialog should also have an option to allow the user to define a Graphic / Named group to the Cell. Why? More on this later.
I was about to create a new thread when I saw this. I think my question would follow nicely on what has been written by Dominic.
For a lot of use cases I can see an enormous potential for this tool. On the top of my head I'm thinking about structural joints, even electricity cables, ...
One thing I do wonder, and I just tested without getting the correct result: Is there a way to have a full path (think smartline) converted into a single "profile" object? What I mean is that I could draw any (planar) smartline with rounding, ... and have the profile tool create a single object based on that. Right now when using the 'path' placement, the tool splits at every smartline vertex. This results in a lot of sub-parts.
What I do like is the ability to use IFC Override. I tested with one of these profiles classified as 'ifcMember' which works perfectly. Then even the mapping to the corresponding 'QTO_MemberBaseQuantities' is done properly. Well done Bentley!