I haven't had a chance to return to this problem which is still unresolved but expect to get back to it later this wk. Here's a thought I just had and would like a feedback response from the Bentley folks please. If the "compound part" which is int wall A was created using 4" mtl stud "part" which is defined in "parts" family which is named per the Uniformat nomenclature for int walls but the "compund part" which is int wall B was created with an identical copy of that 4" mtl stud "part" but within a "parts" family which is named per the Uniformat nomenclature for ext walls. Am I correct in assuming then that the 4" mtl studs in the two intersecting int walls will not clean up where they intersect since they are actually two different (although identical) parts (ie: from two different "parts" families)?
Although I haven't tested this yet I'm guessing that it may not necessarily be intuitive to our users that one should only pick "parts" from the family with the corresponding Uniformat designation. And since we're using the USACE XM workspaces right now and I haven't thoroughly investigated this yet I'm not sure yet whether this cataloguing of "parts" using the Uniformat system rather than MasterFormat2004 categories is relative to the USACE customization or the Bentley delivered libraries. We like the Uniformat system very much when it comes to "compound parts" but I think this may be a good example of why we struggle with this system for cataloguing the basic building blocks (ie: CMU, gyp bd, mtl stud, etc.) of those "compound parts" assemblies.
Could this be the source of the wall cleanup issue described in this thread?
Brian, I was referring to the Drawing Symbology checkboxes in the Family/Part definitions accessed from Dataset Explorer.
Yes I did try checking and unchecking the box at the other tabs within DEM (Forward view & rcp view) and have not yet come up with a combination of checkboxes checked that produces the desired result. Is there some setting within the compund parts themselves in the dataset which we need to address - I have not looked there yet for a lock/unlock key/setting.
Our ideal workflow would be to allow the schem single walls to morph along; switching from simple parts/forms to various compund parts/walls. Creating the indiv wall components (ie: gyp, brick, studs, etc..."parts" in Bentleyspeak) and the complex wall assemblies (ie: "compound parts" in Bentleyspeak) in the dataset seems pretty straightforward to us but so far our experience has been that once placed these compound walls/parts don't continue to understand themselves to be grouped together as assemblies at all. This is a BIG productivity downer for us so I'm hoping you'll tell me that we're simply not "getting" something here. Our users have reverted, instead, to a workflow in which each time a wall needs to evolve/morph it simply gets deleted and replaced with a new wall assembly. I played a little with the build wall assembly command which seemed to be trying to accomplish this morphing along workflow but I didn't get that experimentation to a point where it worked satisfactorily. It's more important in the bigger productivity picture of the project to create each partition type in the dataset anyway so we continue to "do over" our walls assemblies.
Incidentally: for the walls to be able to morph along as we'd like it'd be best if we could just change them with a mouse click from being one compound wall previously defined in the dataset to another. I'd think that for this to work properly, though, it would be necessary to have the actual 3D entities that are those schem walls to understand where they are to be joined to adjacent walls and where they are not. Sometimes differences in the widths is sufficient to communicate the boundaries of the different adjacent wall types but not always. Hence the reason initially for me to be trying to get my walls to clean up properly at the model itself
Brian, just to be sure... do the parts used by those wall assemblies have unification turned on in the Cut Plane and Forward/Reflected View? It sounds as though when you went from single walls to wall assemblies the behavior changed, but the parts are likely to change along with them.