I have noticed these commands on the right click menu - they look useful but also a little scary to manage on larger projects.
Could people tell me how they use and manage these function and what the consensus is on them - a good thing or a bad thing?
We have concluded that for making quick and dirty save as sketch option studies there is no obvious drawback, but when you you start to look at using it on final drawings of larger buildings that might have things hidden and then re-hidden it starts to become difficult to manage consistantly.
In our office we have debated the question and comeback with wide ranging opinions from not using it at all to thoughts about careful use of it. The nub of the debate has ranged around the nature of the model and whether it is ever truly a finished entity, and as such whether downstream drawings can be truly finished.
One use I've seen is to hide some bit of detail that doesn't appear exactly as needed, and then manually draw (right in the drawing/sheet model) the desired geometry "over top" of the CVE. You could also try out quick alternate ideas (as you mentioned) without needing to change the 3D model.
I'd be curious to see how others use this feature too, outside of the above.
A few months ago I know I made the Drawing "cashed" and did a few hides+edits because I was in a hurry. And that haunts me now as I have, of course, forgotten where that edit was done, and I have no idea of how later changes to the 3d will come through under/over the CVE "hide".
When I first met CVE it was as a solution to Drawings not being "look through" as a wireframe is. Dynamic Views Drawings are all shapes and the cover everything "below".
But surely Bentley have had it cooking for other reasons. It is not a perfect world>not perfect models>not perfect Drawings > need for last minute edits, touch-up and I have heard the word "embellishments".
One could argue - heck, then we are back to DEM-cuts anyway.
Unfortunately not all the way back to simple lines I sometimes which.
(What if there was a fourth alternative in the CVE drop-down: EXPORT TO SIMPLE LINES IN NEW MODEL WITH TIME STAMPED NAME)
I am still puzzled about the nature of this CVEs and its content. Not 3d, but surely not simple lines easy to export to dwg drawings.
I begin to think I want a second/third alternative of it > > a pure (DEM-like) export to simple lines !
Simple to understand for everyone, simple to edit. No problems with dwg exports or hiding shapes that also stealing snaps all the time!
The drawback is of course it is a one way action and edits have to be redone.
Or could it be so that any touched and added element in this DEM-export remains, and only untouched elements are rewritten when re-cached ?
Robert, I don't know how to manage this, and have all the opinions you mentioned in my head.
At least some of us will need to fix the output. We need fixing tools.
regards / Thomas Voghera
I have used them as Steve describes to show things slightly (or very) differently than the actual geometry presents itself. Since hidden cached elements reappear if you uncache the view this is not viable for drawings 1/4"=1'-0" (1:50) or bigger, but is viable in my opinion to create your detail cuts (hypermodel locations) and then Cache and Hide elements. You could even go as far as to hide all elements in the cached drawing and reference in your standard detail that you have used for 10 years.
-travis
A possible use, but I can't imagine that was the driving force behind creating CVE.
Gino?
There were many reasons for it, but one was for performance - since it's not a live feed it's like working in a 2D drawing. You don't even need the reference chain and can open the CVE in plain MicroStation with full resymbolization.