Is there an easier way to hide Revision Cloud, but not the Revision Delta

[Anonymous]

Hello,
When we issue new revisions, our standard is to leave the revision Delta and remove the revision cloud. To achieve this using book settings and and the change manager, we set new issues to show all markers, then manually change all the previous revision markers to show "marker head only".

Ideally, we would set new issues to "show current markers only" and have the clouds of previous issues go away, while the marker heads/ delta tags, remain.

Please let me know if I am missing an easier way (other than changing our standard because I don't control that). And if there is not an easier way, I would like to suggest this ability in ArchiCAD 23

Cheers everyone.

[Riven]

Our office uses the same convention of maintaining previous issue deltas without their clouds throughout the course of construction as explained by Hence in their original post.

Further, as Hence and Richard Morrison wrote previously, the change manager makes it easy to track the variety of change markers throughout the project regardless of their placement in model or layout space. Reasons we've found to place a change marker on the layout include:

• When a sheet name or number has changed; it is quicker to cloud the sheet name on the layout.
• When a variety of drawings appearing on the same sheet have changed uniformly; it is simply quicker to cloud a group of drawings together on the layout in lieu of placing individual clouds on 20 drawings where one cloud and delta might do it.
• When changed elements spanning several partial plans are too large to fit on a single layout, but will span across several partial plan layouts. An example might be a large courtyard with changes spanning across multiple layouts. An overall plan with a cloud surrounding the entire courtyard would be useful here, but redundant clouds might be necessary to call attention to those portions of the courtyard that have changed. Clouds in model space may need to be drawn in such a way as to ensure an associated delta appears with a closed cloud shape on each partial plan. This would give the appearance of overlapping "Olympic rings" of clouds throughout the model space at which point, it might be permissible to place them on the layouts instead.

The change manager does indeed make it easy to "archive" changes and delete existing markers, but the effort to keep the marker and eliminate their associated clouds is another process entirely. In conjunction with the reasons outlined above, our office spends many extra hours "cleaning-up" previous clouds and deltas throughout a file before work can begin on the next issue. It seems entirely intuitive to me, to expect a separate radio option in the "archive changes" dialogue box to: "Keep markers, hide clouds".

Additionally, swapping a marker from "head and cloud" in the marker display option to: "head only" should save the previous cloud shape. The cloud shape is eliminated once the "head only" option is selected and applied. This is problematic where changes may need to be revisited in a subsequent issue; re-enabling the "head and cloud" marker display option seems to be a relevant intuitive feature that would make it easy to remind the next team member of the change extents that previous marker referenced. This is not currently possible, and one would need to redraw the cloud shape, once it was "turned-off" after archiving.

I thought this input might help validate or clarify other user's experiences, but welcome further insight into how others have navigated these change manager use-case scenarios.

[Podolsky]

My usually workflow of revision clouds is - I'm placing all revision clouds on Layout only (without markers), using ArchiCAD layer - that cannot be accidentally hidden. Also I'm showing only last revision - so there is no point of using references as deltas - because it's obvious from revision description what was changed. To hide previous revision clouds I choose "Show Markers of latest revision only" in Issue dialog.

But. If there are different requirements - I think it's manageable too. I'm not sure how revision clouds affected via Issue manager on model views (will global variables like GLOB_CHANGE_SCHEME and LAYOUT_REVISION_HISTORY work in model space), but I'm sure possible to do something with some clever GDL programming. If currently it's a problem - I do recommend to invest some time into custom revision cloud object programming, that will help to solve it once and forever.

Additional automation always helpful for project delivery. Even if it's possible to use Find&Select and different layers to show / hide revision clouds - all these manual manipulations will always take some (even minimal) time from design team. And summarising all these minutes when you click here and there might be, that in total been spent two or three days on only changing revision clouds settings during project development time.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Podolsky,

Just a bit of clarification:
In Archicad, those things are called Changes, so that cloud is called a Change Cloud, not a Revision Cloud.
Even if you place them only of Layouts, they are still placed with the Change Tool, so it is Change Cloud and Change Markers.

Another thing is that in AC24, "Issue" was renamed to "Transmittal", so the Dialog is now called Transmittal Set Dialog, not Issue Dialog.
And "Mark-Up" was renamed to "Issue", do the Issue Manager is what was prior to AC24 called Mark-Up Palette.
The nomenclature can get confusing with these naming modifications.

[rommelsulit]

In my experience, you can track revisions two general ways: by issuance (transmittal, change ID) or by number of revision per sheet. We call the revision number the “delta.” So Delta 01, 02, 03, 04, etc.

I prefer the latter method as it more accurately depicts the number of changes specific to a given sheet which is all code officials or contractors care about. I may have 50 drawings in say Addendum 02, but whereas the plans may be on Delta 02, elevation sheet revisions may be on Delta 01. If we tracked the same Addendum by change ID, then plans and elevations would both be on Delta 02 and give the impression that there were prior changes on the elevations which wouldn’t be true.

The sheet method is also a throwback to when we used paper exclusively in the field. Prior deltas would serve as overlay “targets” and we would literally cut and paste new revisions over the old ones. The sheet method also suggests its better to place revision graphics on the layouts (paper space) rather than in the view (model space) since the same view may serve as a background on multiple sheets and could have different deltas.

But you all should do what works for you, it boils down to how you prefer to track revisions and manage time in coordinating between your staff and your consultants.

I was looking for an answer to the initial question to this thread though and I couldn’t find one. We use the Book Settings, prepare Transmittals and use Change Manager and the Change Tool to generate our clouds and deltas. When it’s time for another revision set,  we typically turn off clouds but leave prior deltas on by toggling to the “marker head” only setting in the Change Tool.

I concur with Eric a couple comments above: The problem is if I ever wanted to turn the old cloud back on to check on prior changes, it doesn’t keep the original cloud shape. And if we tried to manage all the prior revision graphics using layer settings, turning off a revision layer turns off both cloud and marker head which violates our intent to keep all prior deltas on. Is there a work around for this to archive the revision clouds on prior changes, preferably using the Change Tool?