I am attempting to build some relatively simple 3D parametric cells. Unfortunately Feature Cells can't build the geometry I need. Which leaves me with GC.
Before I start I have a few simple questions.
1) Can I build cells with GC that are driven by parametric tables like Feature cells.
2) Can the cells be place using vanilla MicroStation or does GC need to be loaded to place them.
3) Are there any GC cell examples out there I can play with. The GC example file has one cell lib one square cell in it. Not sure what thats all about or if there is a special command I'm supposed to use to place it.
Thanks,
DavidG
Hi DavidG,
For GC's parametrics to work you do need to run GC. Depending on the context in which you want to place the GC "cells", you could reference that context into GC and generate what you need to generate in GC. Then export it to DGN geometry that you could reference back into the context where you need it. For updates you start GC again and run the script that would regenerate the GC content within any changed or updated context, and/or with new parameters. Parameters are most easily read from Excel, but could also be read from an MS Access database, or from a text file.
HTH,
Volker
Volker,
Thank you very much for the information. That is what I needed to know.
Regards,
Hi Volker,
It would be good if GC Cells could run 'headless (as a handler) to do the parametric updating (as does PCS)'
See also Allplan's Smartparts which use GDL, which is much older and less expressive than GCscript.
Dominic, Thank you for this suggestion. It definitely would be quite powerful if Generated Feature Types / Generated Node Types could be placed in other Bentley applications and behave parametrically nonetheless. The mid-term strategy for content creation for Bentley applications may converge on that type of capability taking under consideration other content creation mechanisms in Bentley applications to reduce the number of approaches and simplify creation and maintenance of content libraries.
Unknown said:The mid-term strategy for content creation for Bentley applications may converge on that type of capability taking under consideration other content creation mechanisms in Bentley applications to reduce the number of approaches and simplify creation and maintenance of content libraries.
Sounds hopeful, I think! :-)