Clipped or Masked References within Nested Cells Appear Unclipped/Unmasked When Placed

Hi David,

I am seeing the same thing. It looks like Mstn does not 'honour' the Ref Clips when it places the Model as a Cell.

The workaround would be to Merge into Master the Ref attachments when you are in the Cell's Model. Should probably copy the Ref attachment first and turn its Display setting off. This should work for both 2d and 3d Cells.

The other option that should work really but doesnt is using a CVE, which creates separate proxy graphics that honours clipping. The Place Cell tool seems ignore the CVE geometry. Even when the Legacy Hidden Line mode is used.

It would be good to update the Place Cell , Cell Library tool to leverage enhancements made elsewhere.

Clipped-Ref-as-Cell.dgn

It’s an unusual concept to want to place a reference file within a cell. It’s not something I’d do myself, and if clips are ignored, it might be an intended behaviour. If updating cells isn’t something you are willing to consider then the only ‘standard’ form of automatic update would be to forget using a cell but instead, for every cell instance, create another reference file. That will give you the auto-update you desire, but might not be an approach you want.

Thanks for the replies!

I am creating a cell (not just placing it), and this cell I'm creating contains a reference.  (I actually just found out it doesn't matter that it's in a different file or the same.)  Some of the reference is hidden with a clip boundary or mask.  It is later when I place this cell in another file to use it, the clip boundary or mask within the cell is ignored.

(Sorry, I just wanted to reword that in case it got confusing.  Seems more of an unintentional result rather than a "feature", but that's just me probably.  Also don't know if it's like this in CONNECT.)

Barry Lothian said:

Depending on the amount of cells

It's more of a general question.  Amount of cells could be zero; could be many.

Barry Lothian said:

referencing a model which has 'Can be placed as a Cell' enabled.

After testing it, it doesn't matter if the referenced model itself can be placed as a cell or not.  The result is the same.

Barry Lothian said:

update the master cell (model) and use the Update/Replace Cell tool to propagate

That won't work the way I want it to.  (Won't be automatic, not like it is if the .)

• If I "copy [and paste] in the content" like it's originally done, there's no automation when the parent model is updated.
• The Update/Replace Cell tool doesn't apply to references, even if the referenced model can also be placed as a cell.
• If I place it as a cell instead of referencing, I will have to drop the cell in order to remove the content I want to remove, causing the Update/Replace Cell tool to be useless.

Depending on the amount of cells you would be placing, what you describe sounds more applicable to placing a cell by referencing a model which has 'Can be placed as a Cell' enabled.

Copying in the content in and then your border I would say is better. If you ever have to update, just update the master cell (model) and use the Update/Replace Cell tool to propagate the new version to the existing outdated cells.

Our agency adopts the standards and the resources/libraries of another.  Some cells they have are full-sheet templates containing their border.  We use the same template sheets, but we use our own border.  My idea is that if they ever update their cell library in the future, ours would be updated sort of automatically as opposed to having to change the content manually.

Currently we do copy the content over, and then delete their border and slap our's on it, which is easy enough to keep doing.  I'm currently updating our libraries and it was a curious idea I had to help automate it a little.