Plotmaker Relinks Itself to Wrong View in AC

[kevin b]

So I did a search and found similar but different problems so I'm wondering if I missed this in my search or if anyone else is experiencing this problem.

We have AC teamwork projects which contains multiple stories (also occurs with .pln but most of the problems seem to be .plp files) For simplicity lets call them story 1 and story 2. We have multiple viewsets for various phases of the project SD, CD, REV1, etc. Within these viewsets there are folders for each story (1 & 2), then folders for Plan, Elevation, Details etc. and then the views themselves (Demo Plan, Floor Plan, etc.). All of which seems to make sense as a "typical" workflow for our office.

In Plotmaker, we are linking the views from AC, and everything seems to work well except when we have multiple views with the same view name, although the path is different.

For example we have 2 views called Floor Plan, one is CDs>Story 1>Plans>Floor Plan, the other is CDS>Story 2>Plans>Floor Plan. When we first link the views to the layouts all seems OK. The problem comes sometimes during updates or simply closing out at the end of the day and then coming back the next day to work on the file. All of the views named Floor Plan, whether they are pathed to the first or second story are now linked to the same view.

We have even had the problem across multiple Plotmaker files. In one case we have three projects in the same building on different floors (stories). Each project has its own layout book but the ArchiCAD file is a single file for the entire building with different viewsets for each project (which are on different stories). The lbks are set up linked to the correct views but at some point some of views are relinked to the view on the wrong story. Again the views are the same name Floor Plan, but in different viewsets Project A, Project B, Project C. So sometime you go back into Plotmaker and Project A Floor Plan is showing up where Project B Floor Plan was originally linked.

Hope you follow my description of what the problem is. Wondering if anyone else has experienced similar problems? Is there a real fix? Are there workarounds other than the obvious give every view a unique name which defeats the purpose of being able to have a hierarchical folder set-up for different viewsets.

Thanks

[Djordje]

Kevin,

kevin wrote:
Hope you follow my description of what the problem is. Wondering if anyone else has experienced similar problems? Is there a real fix? Are there workarounds other than the obvious give every view a unique name which defeats the purpose of being able to have a hierarchical folder set-up for different viewsets.

Did you try it the other way:

In the View set, sort the views by view TYPE: folder PLANS, then Storey 1, 2, 3 ... then folder PLANS 100, folder INTERIOR PLANS, etc ... makes cloning easier, makes copying easer, management easier?

In your case:

Instead of:

CDs>Story 1>Plans>Floor Plan

try:

CDs>Plans>Story 1 Floor Plan

Computers are stupid things that only do what we tell them to; they can't discern the contents of the files; your views are all published with the same name; so it is probably a question of whether the full "path" is internally indexed or not.

I personally use the previous system, sorting the views by type, therefore not having any problems.

HTH,

[kevin b]

But shouldn't they be smart enough to know that there is the whole path there? It is indexed somewhere in the database because the full path name shows up at the bottom of the navigator in PM correctly (at least when you first attach it) We are using Title Types with autotext to name the drawings in the layouts and they have the view name as the drawing name. And we have in fact gone to using more descriptive view names (Ground Floor Plan, etc) on most projects, especially those with multiple stories in the same building because it does make sense to have that info in the title of the drawing anyway. However it is still a problem with the multiple PM lbks for different projects in the same building which are the same pln file. In plotmaker, since there is only one floor in the project, there is no reason to name the drawing Second Floor Plan, when it is the only Floor Plan in that project as far as the CDs go. But you still have the issue with there being more than one "Floor Plan" in the pln file because we have the entire building as one file. There are some stubborn people in the office who like things the way they always had them and don't want a specific floor designated in the title of the drawing if there is only one floor in that project. I know there are many ways to work around this but the underlying issue is that since the entire path does show up in Plotmaker, why can't it differentiate between CDs>Story 1>Plans>Floor Plan and CDS>Story 2>Plans>FLoor Plan?
I really like ArchiCAD, I like the fact that there are so many ways to workaround problems like this. But as the person in the office people turn to when its not working like they think it should, it gets frustrating explaining all the time that oh its just a bug and here's the workaround. Especially now that are office is growing and it seems we have more and more people coming in with AutoCAD experience, so they are frustrated because they are learning a new software, and you are extolling the virtues of ArchiCAD over that other product (which I had used for years before ArchiCAD) but it seems like every day there is some other work around you need to explain to them.