peter_h wrote:
I have to disagree. IMO, this is another example of one GS's good ideas crippled by its bad habit of not following though and finishing things properly to make them REALLY useful (Take the Selections palette as a classic example).
The "pin" you refer to is the "Show on this renovation filter ONLY" button. Which means that a "pinned" element can ONLY be shown visible in ONE filter ONLY. It's a very inflexible one-to-one relationship. As an example of why this doesn't work, take the "building phases" example: phase 3 needs to include elements that have been "previously built" in phase 2 and phase 1. With the "pin button" used as you described, an element can only exist in one phase.
Likewise with design options -- an element may need to be present in multiple options, whereas at the moment, it can only be visible exclusively in one.
A the very least, it would have been way more useful if GS had changed this button to "Exclude selected element(s) from this filter" rather than "Show only on this filter". In which case the button could have been used to successfully implement phasing and design options (though it still feels like a work-around solution, compared to being able to add your own custom "tags").
As it stands, yet more frickin layers have to be added to the project -- including updating all your layer combinations -- a really 1990s solution, IMHO.
On the topic of the Renovation Filter although I think it is great for certain use cases it is also another of those (admittedly rare) cases where i think they could have looked at what the competition was doing and come up with a better (more flexible and powerful) solution. Anyone familiar with the power of Revits Filters will understand:
1. Filter elements by criteria (Layer, ID, Wall Type, IFC Properties like Fire Rating, Thermal Rating, etc)
2. Show/Hide or Apply overrides to that filter (Fill, Pens, Linetypes, etc)
Simple concept, super flexible. Can do everything the Renovation Filter can do but way more. Color code particular element types, Fire Rating plans, Thermal plans, Phasing plans, etc. Control the appearance of your linked MEP models based on their IFC properties (Cyan begone!)
Thats proper BIM and it would remove sooo many 2D workarounds and hacks we have to do currently
peter_h wrote:
As you can guess, I'm a big fan of the dream of adding custom tags to elements and implementing tag filters to define their visibility on any view. I think this should programmatically be an easy feature for GS to add, and would MASSIVELY simplify the current layer mess we have decended into. The more you think about it, the more you realise its potential, and wonder why on earth this wasn't a priority ten versions ago.
above would sort this too, but you can sort-of do this already if you are willing to do a little GDL scripting. We have developed labels that change their content/appearance dependent on the drawing type as assigned in the Model View Options (drawing type is another custom parameter added in our in-house Library Globals script).
cheers,
Owen Sharp
Design Technology Manager
| francis-jones morehen thorp
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