What I want in a label for dealing with building materials of composite elements:
- show me the list of skins associated with the composite element
- let me hide the skins I don’t want to see with a check box next to each skin
- give me access to all of the baked-in Building Material data such as ID, Name, and Description
- give me access to any custom property data that is attached to the building material
- give access to any classifications that are attached to the building material, and let me drill down to whatever level of any classification that i want to display in the label.
And of course i want the option to display the "value" or the "name of the data" and the "value".
Preferable I would like to do this with autotext and not via a custom label, but i am willing to start with any you have got.
And of course I want to be able to schedule all of this information with ease a clearity.
I have spent the last 6 hours working with all of the relevant label types and schedules and it is not that all of this capability is impossible to drill down to and or hack, but really it just falls apart and double entry of data is simply still required get the work of annotation and schedules accomplished.
..... Seriously the annotation of Building Material Data is just a mess and this aspect of Archicad should be its shining star - I know that a lot of changes to BM has been in the works - It is clearly getting better and i know that there must be a great vision here and a lot of things are hanging off of building materials ..... but
At this moment in time I personally believe that the most prevailing problem in archicad is resolving annotation issues of building materials to let us control the BIM data between annotation and schedules in a smooth organized manor.
All I want is for annotation and scheduling of building material data to be flexible, intuitive, powerful, and beautiful. I want to be able to get my hands on all it, and I want to stop trying to hack my way through a problem that just needs to be fixed.
Just in case you do not understand what i mean by the double entry of data....
If i have to use the BM ID for sorting a schedule instead of sorting it by the attached master format classification, that is double entry.... Or if I have to use the BM description to display the master format number and description instead of getting this from the master format classification that is attached to the building material, then this is double entry. There needs to be "One Source" for all of the bits of data - so when that data changes we only edit the one source, and then all of the annotation and schedules will be up-to-date.
Clearly Classifications, Custom Properties, and Building Materials are the key.
Lets get the BIM
Thanks for reading my hopefully constructive rant.
Gary Ford
Gary Ford
Self Employed - Modeling, Estimating, Construction
Archicad 12-26
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