Profile manager

[Tom Krowka]

My profile manager is getting pretty big. I have profiles that have migrated with projects. Is there any way to export certain ones into a separate file or library that will stay with the project file. Otherwise, I just keep adding to the manager.

Do all the profiles stay with the .pln or are they loaded through the PM.

Thanks.

[Karl Ottenstein]

All Profiles are just attributes, and so can be managed with Attribute Manager (Options menu). They exist only in the project itself (PLN or TW).

So, like with any attribute, you can import/export Profiles using Attribute Manager.

Consider saving AAT files for each group of related Profiles into a common Profile folder in your office standards.

WARNING: profiles, like most (not all) other attributes, are stored by index number. So, if you keep your PLN lean by only including the profiles you use, you may one day find yourself in the following situation: You have two buildings that you want to hotlink into a master file: if you have different profiles in each PLN at the same index number with the same name, your results will not be as expected - the version from the hotlinked file will be ignored. If the hotlinked file has a different named profile at the same index number, though, it will be appended to the profile list in the host file. Same behavior is you copy/paste elements from one file to another.

Cheers,
Karl

[Tom Krowka]

Any way to manage the index numbers?

Tom

[Karl Ottenstein]

Tom wrote:
Any way to manage the index numbers?

Only tediously. Link has a write-up here somewhere describing the process when you need to have an attribute at a certain index number. For example, if you need one to be at index 120 and you have existing attributes that include 119, then you can append the new one to your attributes temporarily, then clear the right panel of Attribute Manager. Select 119 on the left and OVERWRITE it on the right - it will still be 119 there. Now find your attribute at the bottom of the list on the left (you appended there, and APPEND it to the list on the right - it will then get the next number, 120. Delete the temporary copy on the left, then select the one numbered 120 on the right and OVERWRITE back to the left. Other times, you'll duplicate an entry in the list just to bump the number up for your append so that you get the number you need, then overwrite it back to the host file.

Ideally, one works in a way that does not require this messy solution ... reserving it for when a mistake has to be corrected.

[Link]

Karl wrote:
Ideally, one works in a way that does not require this messy solution ... reserving it for when a mistake has to be corrected.

Amen.

Unfortunately that's easier said than done. Most problems occur when files are pasted/hotlinked/merged into other files. I've got a lot of unpublished notes on this somewhere, i havent published them yet due to the complexity of the subject and the time it takes to test it all. It can generally summarized by saying that attributes which are assigned to elements are referenced by ID and attributes which are assigned to views are assigned by name.

There's a couple of exceptions to that rule, and it gets tricky when 'nested attributes', such as the fill referenced by a complex profile, are pasted/hotlinked/merged into other files. And don't start me when one of those nested attributes changes in one of the files.

It's a management nightmare and the best thing to do is create everything in 'holeless' order as soon as possible, because once you've started projects from a template and then change your template, copying data from old projects into new ones becomes very tricky. I hope it's not too late for such advice.

Cheers,
Link.

[Tom Krowka]

Thanks for the info. I'm going to avoid all those issues if possible and simply live with a profile manager that is going to get bigger and bigger. I beleive GS needs a way to manage this feature more effectively over the long term. I could see a profile manager with a hundred or more profiles. Hey, it could happen.

[Barry Kelly]

Plus GS changed the way new attribute index numbers are created.
Version 12 and before they used to find the lowest missing index number and use that for the new attribute.
Can't comment on 13 as I never really used it but in 14 it now adds the attribute as the next highest number - skipping any "holes" you may have in your attribute list.

Because of that I have now added an attribute (of each type) in my template with a number that is quite high (say 500).
My template has its main attributes starting at index 1 and increasing without too many gaps.
When a user creates a new attribute they will start indexing at 501.
If I want to include that attribute in my template or I want to create new attributes in the template then I make sure that I re-number them to as low an number as I can below 500.

That way if anyone copies or merges a file with their own attributes into the template then the attributes should never over-write each other - they should all come in as new attributes.

Of course this doesn't help when copying and merging between two user files with custom created attributes but at least I can control the template and ensure that anything copied into that is fine.

I hope this makes some kind of sense.
Barry.