Favorites..... Style Sheets

[Anonymous]

howdy

i have a number of favorites set-up for various tools

handy for maintaining consistency

i notice that you can redefine a favorite setting based on the currently active settings

HOWEVER.... if i have already applied a favorite to an item... then redfine/ change the favorites parameters.... the items that have already been placed on the drawing and assigned the favorites parameters DO NOT inherit the new favorite definitions

would be nice if the favorites sort of worked like Style Sheets in a layout program so that if you change a favorite definition then the style is applied thru-out the set of documents

or does this already exist & i am missing something?

thanks for any insight

yukioMishima

[Anonymous]

Favorites do not work like style sheets. They are just predefined settings that can be applied to elements but are not remembered by the elements. I think this has been suggested on the wish lists. I'm not sure it would be such a good idea though. Much the same effect can be achieved with Find & Select and this has the advantage that the user knows exactly what is happening.

Changing instances automatically with changes to the favorites seems potentially very risky. I can imagine ways that it might work well, but there needs to some significant improvement to the Favorites before this makes much sense to me.

[Link]

Favorites just save the settings of a particular tool.

That said and favorites aside, if you have nothing selected and edit the settings of a particular tool, you will just be changing the Default - changing what you create next. This is why the word Default appears in the Info Box and Tool Setting dialog. Once the default is set you can choose to inject those settings into existing elements of the same type.

Alternatively you can select the elements first and change their settings. This time the Info Box and Tool Setting dialog will tell you how many elements you have selected and how many are editable. This method will change just the selected elements, not the default.

A quick way to do this with favorites is to select all the elements first, then double click your favorite. This will inject the settings from the favorite into the selected items. If you redefine your favorite, it will inject the current settings of the favorite into the elements.

Cheers,
Link.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Link wrote:
A quick way to do this with favorites is to select all the elements first, then double click your favorite. This will inject the settings from the favorite into the selected items. If you redefine your favorite, it will inject the current settings of the favorite into the elements.

Cheers,
Link.

I wished many time to myself that the Parameter Transfer functionality be extended so default parameters can be injected into multiple selected elements and not only into the one CTRL-ALT-clicked. One could select all those elements and inject with one click. Would be faster.

I actually developed a workaround for myself for this:
1. Select element from which to transfer settings.
2. Save as Favorite (only temporary Favorite).
3. Select elements to be transferred to.
4. Double click saved Favorite to apply to selected elements.
5. Delete temporary Favorite.

[Link]

Yep, exactly the same thing. Works a treat!

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

thanks everyone for your replies and tips

i have been following the same sort of working methodology... and whilst it does work.. it does not really give you the same sort of "global" control that a "style sheet" approach would

i can understand that there might be instances where you would not want it to apply to all instances..... but just like in inDesign/ Quark... you can choose to apply/ not apply styles to things.... styles where you know you want them to be changeable/updatable...

i can see nothing but positives to having an approach like this.... seems like if you go to the trouble to "assign" a favorite to something that it should have a little more intelligence to it than it does

thanks

yukioMishima

[Laszlo Nagy]

Maybe there could be a solution somewhere between Favorites and Styles the following way.
We would have Favorites and all the flexibility but whenever we select elements ArchiCAD would know that their settings match the settings of a certain Favorite. Then we could select elements that match the settings of a Favorite and redefine them by redefining the Favorite, or something like this.
But to elements the settings of which do not match the settings of any Favorite this would not apply so we would still have the flexibility of not having to create a new Favorite (or Style) every time we want to place an element with settings different from the settings of already placed ones.