Parts&Families Management Rant

Robert::

Perhaps I am not interpreting your comments correctly, but I believe that a large amount of your complaint (#1) is solved in V8i with Family/Part Concatenation.  The screen capture simplistically captures concatenation where a part "CMU" exists in the family "Wall Leafs" at both the project and corporate level and the project settings over-write the corporate.  The blue "Wall Leafs" indicates that a part from that family is defined elsewhere, and the red "CMU" indicates that the part is being overwritten by a part definition at an other level.  If you are not familiar with this and would like me to elaborate just reply indicating as such and I will go into further detail.  

I hope this helps,

Travis

The problem is it is still too compicated  

The terminology does not even match educaton.  I never heard of a wall in any architectural school but I do know what a wall is and a wall assembly is.

I ended up creating a "configuration level" between site and project where we have like-type project standards (what I call "Facility")  We load Facility above Project, and then load a Project Part Library at the Project level.  Project Libraries have the Project Code for that Project (usually the Facility name, not our internal number, which means nothing to the owner), and then we add the Project Parts as necessary.  Our template Facilities setup and our Template Project Setup are easily editable via an XML editor (like Notepad++).

Once the project is over, we scrub the Project library for content that should be "promoted" to the Facility, so everyone working on that type of Facility in any of our offices can benefit from the content.

Works for us.  Maybe something similar can work for you.

Robert:

I have thoroughly tested the Family/Part concatenation and will admit that I filed 3 or 4 trouble reports related to it early on, but those were all resolved in the Refresh Release 2 builds (08.11.07.80).  If you are still experiencing glitches related to concatenation, let me know and I will make sure to file a TR for it.  If the system that you have in place is working for you, then by all means continue with that process.  However, it appears from your rant that it is not working as well as you would want it to work.  All I can tell you is that their has been a software solution implemented by Bentley that should address your needs if you choose to take advantage of it.  As I said, I have done thorough testing on this and have trained this workflow to dozens of offices in the US and I have not had any complaints from any of them related to the workflow.  

If you configure your workspace to prepend the project parts your project parts will always be read over the office part (if one exists for the project).  TFDIR_PART <  $(PROJECT_DATASET)part/

Out of curiosity could you tell me who the Bentley Consultant was that told you that?  I will check with him and find out why he would make that recommendation.  

-travis

I will try replicate the glitches I was having. But I have probably upgraded versions since then.

I worry that this very much based on knowing how xml works, and even through the dataset explorer there is a lot of cutting and pasting going on that needs to carefully managed. Typically my architects just want to get on with designing, and not have to worry learning "computer stuff" like xml.

Some sort of Sync tool would be useful.

I see - now we are looking at project ecplorer for our teamed work then we will allahve the same dataset if you will.

But for specic items - in our case only a couple does specific to this job we just create a new family.

Otherwise I want to get all brick manif and colors for example.

It is kind of like "Word " with it's dictionaries.  The main that everyone uses.  Then you can open a specific for you office which adds a few and over writes others.

The thing 'i like with there's is it is more transparent.  No programming or XML files.

I know we have a mixed group here but as an Architect don;pt want o full with the behind the scenes anymore I just want to design.  And I spend too much production time working behind the scenes.

It is kind of like "Word " with it's dictionaries.  The main that everyone uses.  Then you can open a specific for you office which adds a few and over writes others.

The thing 'i like with there's is it is more transparent.  No programming or XML files.

I know we have a mixed group here but as an Architect don;pt want o full with the behind the scenes anymore I just want to design.  And I spend too much production time working behind the scenes.