FIRST: the terminology of this product is lacking as you can build a wall with a Generic WALL (it is a wall not a form as it has top- bottom and 4 side), An Assembly (Which is a group of Generic Walls) and DG Wall (Which adds Date we don't even use yet)(CONFUSING as this is called the wall tool not the DG Wall tool, when the old wall tool is really the Generic form whcih is actually a Generic wall as a form has 6 sides and ignores top and bottom) Well enough for the confusion.
I need a better way to use these tools. My first question to ALL is do you use the DGWall tool??? Do you take advantage of taggin the wall in a section with DG Data?
I WANT 2 (TWO ) tools. One for the Power USe and one for single instance and sometime users.
The POWER TOOLS
The SINGULAR instance Approach.:
Right NOW there is no reason to use or upgrade to DGWalls. I question if anyone is using them. You can build an entire project with Generic Walls and it looks the SAME. The UNIFORMAT walls provided to not have any descriptive infomraiton that can be pulled into a keynote for sections The Uniformat Names if used in a keynote would be unrecognizable to anyone in the construction profession The Uniformat numbers would not match anyone's specifications in the industy. NOTHIGN from the DGWalls Data is utilized yet (Though the potential exists) You canot toggle for 4-hour walls YET. You cannot have it generate graphics for Fire WALLS YET - You cannot view drawings for Existing - Demo - New - YET.
AND it takes so much extra time to duplicate your work by create a Part - then Assembly - Then DGWall - before you can even place that wall that won't even use the date YET.
Ustn since 1988SS4 - i7-3.45Ghz-16 Gb-250/1Tb/1Tb-Win8.1-64bEric D. MilbergerArchitect + Master Planner + BIMSenior Master Planner NASA - Marshall Space Flight CenterThe Milberger Architectural Group, llc
There are people using DG Walls currently, and I will offer these benefits to using them now (and knowing there are more coming).
I am not sure if I completely understand your requests for functionality, but I would recommend a workflow where you start out placing a "generic" wall through the DG based Wall Tool. Then as you develop the project you can 'modify' that wall and exchange it for a more specific wall or compound wall with the data attached that matches the project (or corporate) partition schedule.
I have made the conversion of walls from Family/Part based to DG walls for 2 different companies now, and can attest to it is not nearly as much work as it may seem before you start. If you are comfortable working with the .xml's directly it is even easier.
-Travis
ONE:
My issue is I have over 2000 parts and need to go into Each and every one and no create a NEW DG wall.
I do see the beneift from a Tag - but since my part name is the "SpecNo-Desc" it is just a pain and I will lose so much time just creating walls for tags. And I still asume the tag is for each individual part in a wall and not must the wall assembly.
I've never seen a wall or partition schedule. Talked with several friends this evening with projects from 25 mil down and that is new to all of us. I woul dliek to see an example of someone's schedule as this may be something I can use.
Since our firm has no draftsmen and all are architects or engineers. The time to recreate DG Walls from Parts could be made simlier with a utility to bring all parts into DGwalls.
TWO:
In most packages I use I can manipulate an elment from within one singluar dialog. With parts I must open 5 dialogs to make changes to or correct one PART. Yes there are shortcuts by opening the spreadsheet - scrolling backand forth as they still don't fit on a 27" wide screen monitor., scroll up an down copy al other part then open the five dialogs to make the changes.
This is less user frinding than we had in architectural products 20 years ago when WYSIWIG was considered an important need. I can even remember at least two of the Bentley brothers saying this was why Microstation was so much better than Autocad. We have gone backwards from userfriendliness to geekness.
Emilberger, I originally too had many parts for walls. However, when I transitioned to datagroup walls the number was significantly reduced. With datagroup walls, the part is only used for the graphical display of the wall. For instance, I originally had a part for 2 1/2", 3 5/8", 6", and 8" 1 hour stud walls with 1 layer of gyp board on each side. I also had a part for 2 1/2", 3 5/8", 6", and 8" 1 hour stud walls with 1 layer of gyp board on one side and 2 layers of gyp bd on the other side. In addition to these parts, I also had another 8 parts for the same walls except with batt insulation. All 16 of these walls had a 1 hour centerline embedded. However, now I only have a part for 1 hour gyp walls with centerlines embedded; 1 with sound batts and the other without sound batts. So I have 2 parts to cover all 16 instances. The thickness of the wall is detemined by the datagroup definition. For you reference, I have attached a pdf of our Type A walls. (1 Layer gyp on each side of metal stud) The main tag number would consist of a letter and two numbers. i.e. A31 Also part of my tag consists of two subscripts. One of the subscripts determines if the wall is either a smoke barrier wall or a smoke partition wall. The other subscript would determine if the wall also is lead lined. With this approach the one Type A legend covers every instance of a single metal stud with a single layer gyp board on each side. We have a partition legend sheet that consists of type A thru N that covers all our interior paritition needs. All but 3 of the legends are single datagroup walls. We do have three wall legends for our plumbing chase walls. These utilize compound walls. Note that the legends are for interior paritions only. Our exterior walls are not tagged but described usually in wall sections. HTH Tom