I need to place a custom cube-shaped parametric cell as a Catalog item to input the correct dimensions and display other required properties in a schedule. However, the parametric dimensional properties I've mapped to DataGroup properties in the Catalog Editor don't seem to stay mapped:
So when using the Object tool there are two property groups, one which works and one that does not:
And when I change the Depth property value in particular, the cube doesn't retain its shape:
The "Parametric Definition" properties are being read directly from the parametric cell while the "Opening Dimension" properties are from the DataGroup definition/.xsd file of the same name.
To help address the mapping aspect, in addition to a custom catalog .xml that includes the Catalog Item data you should include a "*_catalogtypeexts.xml" file to define the component's schema. This is how components placed using the Object tool (formerly known as "User Defined") are handled when using delivered OpenBuildings Designer datasets:
In this example, "Workset_catalogtypeexts.xml" is created for the custom cube parametric cell component:
For the parametric Depth property that was not working correctly, the base shape used for the parametric cell definition should be auto-constrained before adding dimensional constraints (Width and Depth) and then extruding it into a solid (Height):
Once the above steps are complete, you can use the Duplicate command in Catalog Editor to create a new Catalog Item, select the modified cell, and then (re)map the three parametric properties as shown above.