Practicalities that have been overlooked in Bentley Architecture

I am hoping that this post will grow to address some of the
components of Ustn / BA that are in need of minor tweaks to adjust their
functionality in a way that they become more efficient operationally. I am sure
many users have such ideas relating to similar sorts of viewpoints and grievances
on tools and ways that they can be improved.

One of these is the Grid System.

In Microstation, I have always found this utterly useless
and can count the number of times I have actually used it, the reason being its
lack of flexibility in adjustment of individual grid spacing and manipulation
of overall layout. It seems to have been incorporated with good intention but
like a lot of tools in Ustn/BA I think it was left behind somewhere along the
line. Basically It does not allow you to create your own layout and like
AutoCAD AEC (back in the day always) assumes that your design is a rectangular cuboid.

Moving on to BA. There is a lot of improvement in that the
Grid system actually relates to how you would go about setting out a drawing.
It is quite useful in setting out the structural concept of the design from an
early stage, I think this is a very useful tool, as simple things such as
setting out grid lines can be quite a nuisance. You get actual grid lines, Grid
bubbles, and adjustable spacing but it still lacks the flexibility to adapt to
other building forms other than a cuboids. More development in this area
perhaps !!!

There is still however a major drawback in practical terms.
It is a real *** to make adjustments to any of the grid reference spacing’s.
I am not talking about a grid spacing of

    (H) 5 ; 5 ; 5 ; 5

& (V) 10 ; 10 ; 10 ;10

where you want to increase the 2nd horizontal spacing by 1
so that it becomes

    (H) 5 ; 6 ; 4 ; 5

& (V) 10 ;10 ;10 ;10

This as you can see is very easy to calculate. By making
such an adjustment all the other successive grid line remain in place by MANUAL
adjustment to reflect the change. The input method does not allow for automated
adjustment of successive gridlines in relation to the change in grid reference
spacing.

What I am talking about is in the real world and grid spacings that get continuously jugled and where you have decimal figures
say for instance:

    (H) 6.3 ; 6.75 ; 5.85 ; 4.325 ; 4.5 : 4.5 : 4;5 6.445 ; 5.235 ; 4.55

&  (V) 6.15 ; 5.5 ; 4.5 ; 6.55 ; 6.55 ; 2.45 ; 2.45 ; 4.325 ; 4.325,

and it is required to increase the third horizontal spacing
by 1.217 and reduce the 2nd vertical spacing by 0.885 while all other spacing’s
are frozen. Bring out your calculator and start your Stop watch!!!

Having gone through the process of programming complex algorithms
to make up the program, I would have thought it would be very easy to add an
underlying mathematical macro that recalculates the offsets where rather than
being separated by " ; " each grid reference is entered into a
separate input box so that when you adjust one figure the other figures either
move in relation to the new spacing OR, stay in the same position and
recalculate their relative offset.

To get round this problem I had to explode the Grid and use
the offset by distance tool, then use the measure distance tool to recalculate
offsets , then finally set up a new grid when I was certain I had finalized the
grid.

The other thing is, because the grid is not view independent
in the Horizontal plane and doesn’t' move with each successive change in floor
level (like the Microstation type grid does ) being able to visually isolate
each floor level with the grid still showing is not possible. This implies that
you have to keep moving the grid reference file up and down vertically.

To get round this I had to take the following steps :


  • Set up a grid file and reference the Grid into
    itself as many times as there were floor levels (sometimes 20 or more ) This is
    so that you only have to update the live grid once

  • Move each self reference to the hight of a
    specific floor level

  • Reference the nested grid file into whatever
    other file I am working on with a nested level of 1

  • Manually switch on and off the view display of each
    grid reference at each level I am working at.

 

Any other recomendations?

Just one of those things!!!