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
Is this just simply an issue where Cells need to interact with the model items?
(ex. two forms - one in a cell and one not but both the same part set for unify. Should they not unify?)
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
Cells (Type 2) have been around since the beginning... apparently part of Mstn's basic file format which is based on 'linked lists'.
I think this way of organising things can already be achieved using the Project Explorer.... almost.
The Cells are nested in a dgn... so you have three kinds of parenting... or assemblies 1/ Attachments parenting Attachments, 2/ Attachment parenting/containing Cells, 3/ Cells parenting/containing other Cells.
If you want to view 1/ use the Ref Dialog. If you want to view 2/ use the Project Explorer. If you want 3/ use an enhanced Project Explorer or an enhanced OpenPlant Aeembly Manager-type dialog?
A tree of nested references would be my approach also.
Top level "assembly model" being the whole building- comprised of a series of referenced floor models (some of which hopefully repeat).
Each floor "sub-assembly" model would then reference the actual models: units, bathrooms, cores, etc... (many of which hopefully repeat!)
It requires a lot of discipline in setting up the nested referencing tree. But by nesting the references you have the control of a sub-group, say an entire floor, which you can move around, switch on and off, etc... without getting confused with a huge list. It's effectively the same as using cells, but ultimately with more sophisticated control.
Note if references do not need to unify then then 100's are no issue
Do note that you can speed up certain work by combining the original room plans (Plan types a,b,c etc) into subsets of the entire plan and then even reference these.
That way for speed you might work in a room
then go to a Sub drawing referencing room and do the tie togethers
Then go to another plan and reference the sub reference
Compartmentalize the dgns
Have you tried using TF_UNIFY_CELL_CHILDREN=1 ?