Parts&Families Management Rant

Is it just me or does it seem that the managment parts&families is lagging behind other aspects microstation.

1. I would like to see parts&families being handled more like the material palette
   • general networked Office Libraries, overidden by local Project Libraries sycronising with local file parts&families.
   • syncronistation of librar(ies) and local parts within a file are clearly indicated.
   • only parts in the project library can be accessed by the placement tools. (office libraries get updated periodiaclly)
2. Parts (or should I say element templates?!?) need to concentrate just on styling (presentation) geometry
   • include different styling for plan, section and elevation inheritantly. I can live with the idea of sub-parts (eg. froward view) being being used to create complete parts, but need to be expanded to include elevation/plan/section and work in DV. (in the beta release it looks like forward view hatching is going to handled by the material palette?)
   • Parts shouldn't need any sizing or reporting as those are handled by the the DataGroup system.
3. Parts have two uses, styling and function. Parts need to be able to unify to parts of a different familys so that fuctional parts can refer to styling parts.
   • eg. I might have a "styling_unifiers" family with a "aluminium" styling part, to which lots of other functional parts, belonging to different families families, can link to. eg. ie the same "aluminium" style is used to style window frames, door fixtures, and lampshades from different functional families.
   • at the moment I have to copy and syncronise the "aluminium" style into lots of different families.
4. Compund parts should behave a LOT more like multilines styles.
   • ie. an update to a library compound wall automatically cascades to compound walls placed in the file.
   • They shouldn't change thier placement / baseline when being swaped out or update
   • Compound Floors?

next weeks gripe... making productivity tools more efficient / intuitive (stairs, handrails, PCS etc)