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Parts&Families Management Rant

Robert Jones
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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)

  • Offline

    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



  • Offline in reply to T_Wollet

    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.

    Ustn since 1988
    SS4 - i7-3.45Ghz-16 Gb-250/1Tb/1Tb-Win8.1-64b

    Eric D. Milberger
    Architect + Master Planner + BIM
    Senior  Master Planner NASA - Marshall Space Flight Center

    The Milberger Architectural Group, llc

  • Offline in reply to Eric Milberger

    I don't know what you think is too complicated?  Steps... 1. Copy part from corporate level  2. paste into project XML 3. make changes to part setting as needed  4.  Commit changes.

    If you are being critical of the names of the families in the screen capture that is just one workspace (not Bentley's delivered workspace) and you can call them whatever you like?



  • Offline in reply to T_Wollet

    I gues I am lost to a need for a project level unless you are looking for less parts to scan through.

    Otherwise why not a growing group of parts that will evolve into something for all new projects.

    Otherwise you spend time copying from project and recreating the wheel.

    Ustn since 1988
    SS4 - i7-3.45Ghz-16 Gb-250/1Tb/1Tb-Win8.1-64b

    Eric D. Milberger
    Architect + Master Planner + BIM
    Senior  Master Planner NASA - Marshall Space Flight Center

    The Milberger Architectural Group, llc

  • Offline in reply to Eric Milberger

    I have this need as some clients require client-specific deliverables (not just particular gov't clients, but others) AND they have model deliverable needs as well.  They don't want a jumbo-all-encompassing dataset of every part I've ever created.  They just want theirs.  

    If all you have is a 2D or a PDF deliverable, your single growing-group parts may work.  In my world of multiple offices, synching part libraries, model deliverables, etc.   Project-based libraries are crucial and integral to the workflow.

    Thanks,

    Shawn

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