We have a highly repetitive series of residential units across a large project including bathrooms, internal partitions, furniture etc. In plain old Microstation we would have used cells to group together these elements and place them throughout the design, enabling them to be quickly updated altogether when needed.
However in ABD if we use cells to group together building elements, such as walls, furniture, doors etc then they cannot be seen by the datagroup explorer without first being dropped. An alternative would to be to put the room elements within a dgn and use references instead of cells but it quickly leads to an unwieldy sets of attachments.
Any suggestions as to how to best to handle repetitive groups of objects rather than just repetitive individual objects?
Thanks,Thomas
ABD SS4 08.11.09.593GB Dataset
Use a compound Cell
Ustn since 1988SS4 - i7-3.45Ghz-16 Gb-250/1Tb/1Tb-Win8.1-64bEric D. MilbergerArchitect + Master Planner + BIMSenior Master Planner NASA - Marshall Space Flight CenterThe Milberger Architectural Group, llc
Would Graphic Groups do what you need?
1. This 'side-effect' should be listed in the help menu. If the BIM components like doors etc are 'hidden' from DGS, will this also skew any quantitative take-off's?
2. Eric suggests using a Compund Cell. What would be the workflow? What Family? If you make a CC that comprises DGS elements like doors etc, will DGS / QTO pick them up? Are there not implications for unification, which can not work across families?
Graphic Groups and Named Groups will not update across the project.
Are there groups and subgroups? Perhaps you can use nested references to get fewer attachments?
regards / Thomas Voghera
Thank you all for your responses.
We have tried compound cells but the datagroup information isn't exposed from within the cell. They're great for individual elements or assemblies but for groups of elements, each their own specific and different datagroup information, it doesn't work.
Graphic groups are good for grouping items but updating a number of them at once, as far as I can see, isn't possible.
I think for the time being we will persist with references and look at nesting them as Thomas suggests.
Thanks,
Thomas
Sounds like a CR....?
Amazing that this hasn't come up as an issue before... or has it?
AecoSim can't very BIM-oriented if a simple Ctrl-G screws up the whole 'Single Source of Truth' thing.