Thank you for the replies.
I should have noted we tried using the Organizer on a few projects a couple of years ago. While it is functionally close to what I was proposing we just ended up finding it clunky, unreliable, and if it did work it had a tendency to end up breaking links. Re-keying details became a job nobody wanted to do. That was probably around version 15 that we were trying to do that.
So, I just tried the Organizer again since it was brought up. Maybe everything has been improved since and R19 works great?
The attachment is what I got, a failure trying to import a detail. Hitting 'Close', then 'Stop Update' caused ArchiCAD to open a new instance in the background with stalled out 'update' windows of their own in their backgrounds. After 4 additional ArchiCAD instances were open I had to use Task Manager to kill all of them. Sigh... just a crummy as I remembered! How is this supposed to work in a multi-user non-expert work environment?!
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Beyond all the stuff with the Organizer, I still would like ways to address details quickly - like one or two click fast - to create a detail from a template file (a dummy file with office standards set up in it to start drawing in). Creating a new detail and cut/paste is okay, but we usually have 30-60 of them per project (in addition to our ~30 boilerplate details). Try it and count how many clicks it takes. Now multiply by 60. That's why we have bloated our template file up with around 450 details. Honestly, we'd like to add about 250 more , but we are trying to have some level of reasonableness.
Also, we are frequently grabbing details from other jobs in the office and modifying them for our project. I would like a way to quickly import details without being linked to other jobs, i.e. make the details native to my project.
I think there is HUGE potential here with many other aspects that could be implemented with a central detail database:
- detail versioning as details are updated/evolve (so already linked details which are published don't auto-update)
- having multiple detail 'libraries' a project could be connected to(for different contractors, countries, climates, codes)
- managing details with different permissions, i.e. experts can modify/update but new users can 'submit for review'; contract drafters have access to only details they need.
- ability to output catalog of details to PDF
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