And don't get me started about about autotext in the publisher...
Firstly, who thought it was a good idea to exclude the project number, (or even the project name if you like long file names!) from the list of available autotext options? Project names/numbers are as critical to document management in a file system as dates, revisions and status in
any industry not just architecture.
And then there is the age-old 80% complete publisher feature that makes a nonsense of the whole automation process: If you add a new layout (or any publishing item), to a publishing set
after
you have set up custom naming rules / print options / export file types it still just comes through as a plain-old vanilla, built-in automatic conventions.
This is a HUGE issue right the way through the project navigator which makes a mockery of trying to automate anything in ArchiCAD: cloned viewpoints with custom view settings are ignored if a new Viewpoint is created when different settings are active; cloned layouts or even the entire cloned layout book in publisher sets default to standard print settings, file types, etc if a new layout is created after the publishing set its created and customised... want to print a reduced A3 set of your documents? Great except that all of the layouts created after the publisher set is customised to 'Fit to page' in the printer still print as 8 tiled sheets... want to quickly publish a DWG batch to send to a collaborator? Of course you can, except for all those PDF files you created by accident because any newly item item to a "Save files" publisher set automatically default to PDF... Want the custom naming conventions of published>saved files in AC18 to be applied to any new layout added to that publisher set? Of course you do, except that it doesn't.
Want to know what's worse than manually managing the publishing and file saving requirements of a complex and large system? Managing a half-automatic/half-manual complex system, that's what. I've lost count of the amount of times I've recreated entire view subsets, and complete publisher sets because I've lost track of what's working automatically and what's new and requires manually adjusting. I've lost count of the times I've printed a reduced A3 set and had a batch of tiled A1 drawings (8xA3 sheets with mostly blank and cropped information) appear half way through somewhere.
Here is the
really easy principle
to fix the publisher and actually bring true automation to ArchiCAD's file management - which is especially critical with the launch of Revision Management. Ready?
A child item inherits the rules of its enclosing parent unless it itself has been manually modified.
How difficult can it be?
b e n f r o s t
b f [a t ] p l a n b a r c h i t e c t u r e [d o t] n z
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