Smart Purge (Attributes / Attribute Manager expansion)

[rakurs]

There is a lot of overlap with two menu items - "Attributes" and "Attribute Manager."

Attributes is a pallette, Attribute Manager is a dialog box.

It looks like Attribute Manager is mostly being phased out, or is lacking development (folders, anyone?) so one would think that the pallette Attributes should be the one that is being developed going forward.

PURGE is an absolutely crucial tool to remove non-used data. It exists in Attribute Manager, but not in Attributes pallette. However, what I'm proposing is a "smart" purge. It would look into elements, and if it finds they have identical properties, it would suggest to remove one and keep the other, even if both are used, based on user input. All of the object types that are shown in Attributes pallette could be purged this way. Even better would be some granular control over what properties can be "overlooked" while searching for duplicates or potential duplicates, and what properties must be identical.

[Laszlo Nagy]

@rakurs Could you post an example of how this would work?

Also you are talking about attributes and also about properties. When you say 

"It would look into elements, and if it finds they have identical properties, it would suggest to remove one and keep the other, even if both are used, based on user input."

In this sentance do you mean "attributes" when you write "properties"? Or are these two different things? (As you know, in Archicad, Properties are a completely different thing from attributes.)

[thesleepofreason]

So basically the ability to search/filter attributes based on their definition and ability to replace/merge?  

The overlap is due to the fiasco where the Attribute Manager was to be replaced with the retrograde Attribute Palette but had to be reinstated during beta due to obvious user needs. So now we have two and no more developments regarding attributes in sight as centralised attribute management just vanished from the roadmap. As if attribute management isn't a fundamental issue in everyday workflows...

[rakurs]

@Laszlo Nagy  I may be a little bit imprecise with terminology. And when I say "may be," I most certainly mean "am certainly."

Some examples:

Complex profiles

If you have two complex profiles with the same geometry but different names and / or applications (wall, column, beam, object...), the "smart purge" command would suggest that you keep one or the other, with adding certain characteristics, like applications I listed above.

Composites

If you have two composites with the same skins, it would do the same. But, if you had two composites with some differences between them, such as, different pens, different assignments (wall, slab, roof, shell) it would suggest merging with the ability to select which of the... characteristics to keep from which composite.

Layer combinations

Find the same layer combinations and merge them, with the user selecting which instance gets merged into the other, regarding name and application to existing views. A little bit more complex tool would even allow you to ignore certain layers, but this is a bit too complex probably. (However, THIS is exactly what I would expect from a useful AI assistant.)

Fills

Find which fills have the same geometry, with the ability to ignore type (draft, section, cover fill) and merge those if possible. Find which fills have the same geometry, but have different scales, with the ability to select which one gets replaced.

Building Materials

Select a common denominator and decide whether to merge (and which ones!) into which one.

ANY of these characteristics of a building material could be selected to look for or ignore, and merge it into the one a user deems right.

The thing is, you shouldn't need to select a material to look for its "double," you should be able to smart purge the whole building material library (or whichever part of your file you're looking into - composites, surfaces, layer combos, fills...) and based on the criteria (ALL, some, one or two...) it would give a report and suggest what to do with each "conflict" and the user would then decide whether to merge or not, for each individual case. Kind of like when you copy many files from one folder to the other, and then Windows Explorer lists all the same names and gives you dates and sizes to choose which file to keep.

I hope I made it a bit clearer.

[Laszlo Nagy]

@rakurs Thanks for the clarification.