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CE - Solid Working Area file .... aka SWA.ma

Ian Lapper
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Does anyone have a Solid Working Area file that works in CE ie SWA.ma

Ian 

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  • 0 in reply to Ron Jones

    The tool that Ian is referring to is part Aecosim Building Designer CE U4

    Brien's info has been pretty cryptic and somewhat  contradictory

    "* You want to model close to 0,0,0 because that's where double precision floating point numbers are most accurate. You setup the global origin to position your model where you want it in the world and use Coincident World reference attachments. This doesn't have anything to do with the SWA, it's just good practice."

    Elsewhere, he also washes his hands of any ABD Triforma solids.

    The fact that ABD U4 includes a tool to visually identify the SWA reinforces previous experience with V8i where Bentley recommends that you do not model outside the SWA. This has been blamed for defective extractions and problems with ABD's Electrical tools.

    It also seems that CE's DV drawing extraction process also suffers from elements being outside the SWA. Still looking at this.

    It may be the case that Mstn solids are not affected (as you could interpret Brien's post as saying) but since most projects require BIM delivearables, ABD's TF solids will need to be considered... especially for those in charge of setting up seed files for others. The potential for disruption is great.

  • 0 Offline in reply to dominic SEAH

    I think there is general confusion on this issue. The current advice seems to be that a 3d object can be modeled  anywhere as long as it is no bigger than the solid working area. My experience is that anything modeled along way from the 0,0,0 can be problematic so I always set project up with the project coordinates mapped to the global origin using the go= keyin. That way the coordinates can be real world but the project is at the origin.

    Even if as Bentley now seem to contend the SWA cube is meaning less it is still very useful to demonstrate the concept of modelling near the origin. 

  • 0 Offline in reply to Duncan Macdonald
    Duncan Macdonald said:
    Even if as Bentley now seem to contend the SWA cube is meaning less it is still very useful to demonstrate the concept of modelling near the origin. 

    Duncan,

    The reason I don't like a tool that shows a cube the size of the SWA centered at 0,0,0 uors is that it suggests that anything drawn outside it is invalid and will prompt someone to take the action of increasing the size of the SWA to try to include all their geometry.

    Increasing the size of the SWA is rarely desirable, the entire purpose of the SWA is to control the linear precision of the solid modeler (i.e. how far apart 2 points need to be in MicroStation in order for the solid kernel to consider them to be distinct), it is literally just a scale from uors to meters in the solid kernel.

    There was a recent internal discussion regarding bringing back this tool for Connect; hopefully everyone that was involved in that discussion is now on the same page and will communicate the best practices for working with solids that were discussed. If some operation still exists that is discovered to be coded to require solids all be inside a SWA size cube centered at 0,0,0, a defect needs to be filed and it needs to be corrected.

    What I suggested was letting people specify the extents for their project, 10 km, etc. and show a cube of that size to help them model inside their specified project boundary. Keep the SWA out of it and don't try to conflate it with the project extents, let the SWA remain 1 km and serve the purpose for which it was intended, to control linear precision.

    HTH

    -B



  • 0 Offline in reply to Brien Bastings

    I'm happy with a project cube. That would be an easier concept to explain to users.

  • 0 in reply to Brien Bastings
    Brien Bastings said:
    If some operation still exists that is discovered to be coded to require solids all be inside a SWA size cube centered at 0,0,0, a defect needs to be filed and it needs to be corrected.

    If ????

    Brien,

    Please do us a big favour and ask your colleagues over at ABD (for that matter, the platform DV team) whether their code needs solids etc to be within the SWA centred at 0,0,0 uors to work properly.

    You seem to be just talking about your own code, but disowning the rest of your fellow coders at Bentley.... which is not really helpful.

    The fact that the ABD team felt it necessary to provide a visual SWA tool is telling.

    ABD recommendation:

    "Where to Model?

    How near is ‘near’ to the Design File Centre?

    A good guide is:

    • Within 5km at 1000 UOR/mm
    • That is within 5,000,000,000 UOR

    The UOR is the critical factor."

    "However, for any solid elements modelled beyond the SWA, MicroStation and ABD behind the scenes mathematically translate and scale them to a location near the centre of the SWA, store that transformation, perform the required operations, then transform the modified elements back to their original position and size. This is known as the floating SWA approach."

    "The Electrical tools require the default 1000/mm resolution so never change the resolution used for any electrical files."

    "If you need to model complete elements larger than the default SWA in extent, the SWA can be increased in project seed files.

    However our recommendation would be to break the elements down to smaller units."

    All superseded now in Connect?

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