Assembly / group naming retaining object info

Hey All,

I’ve been on here rather allot recently. We have multiple assemblies (lets call them groups). Each item in the group has its own individual property such as material type or part number and so on, when renaming the group in the propertied panel is changes the properties name for all of the items which is no good as you can not export out to build a BOM with out that info. I have found the SetGroupName function but I’m not sure how that will work as I can’t do anything BOM wise with the information. If I export to .csv to build a BOM then I see it has an option to export a Object ID, is there a function to export the infor assosiated with object in a Group Name ? Any Idea?

Cheers

Hi Dan -if you are grouping with Rhino’s Group command, that should not change any group-member’s name… How is the other info being attached to the objects, is this UserText, or part of the name?

-Pascal

No it doesn’t but thats not the proble, the problem is we need a way of grouping and then renaming the group to match an assembly name but retaining the information associated with the individual object in the group. Top Level Assembly has sub level assemblies and so on down to the raw material id.

Hi Dan - SetUserText /GetUserText can be used to attach and retrieve info on objects - not sure if that helps - in V6, this info can be exported as part of the CSV.

-Pascal

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pascal,
What can be done with the user text? I’m not sure how that information can be exported or used?

Cheers

Hi Dan - you can add any text info to objects - special names, or properties, or materials etc

! SetUserText Pause “mat” “Brass”

! SetUserText Pause “PartNum” “00523”

etc etc.

GetUserText “Key” will print out the value

I understood you want various types of info attached to objects, this is a good way to do that. This info can be exported via CSV (V5 and V6 , I was mistaken, above, where I said this was a V6 thing)
But I may well be missing the real goal, it was just a thought.
-Pascal

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When using this function can the user spit out additional information in a csv, such as group name, and such? I’m trying to figure out a way of using the host software functionality to generate a workflow for producing a steel cut list or BOM. I have used Peters Tools but our boss is all about using Rhino raw style.

Hi Dan - the basic CSV export has some stuff but I think what you’re after is more detailed or specific info , so I suggest trying SetUserText to set keys and text values that can go out in CSV as well.

It may be that some Python script would be useful in assigning the specific items you care about.

-Pascal

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pascal,

Is there away to view while working in model space, the groups being generated when setGroupName is being used?
I’m looking to see if a list that is updated when I add groups to it.

Cheers

Hi Dan - you can use SelGroup to get the group selected.

-Pascal

Yeah, I found that. It would be a list, that updates as I add new groups. There are a tone of groups / sub assemblies in what I am working on so I’m trying to see how my main assembly is coming along while I name group by their identifier. Oh well.

Cheers

Hi Dan - what would you like to see? What would make clear what you need to see?

-Pascal

pascal is going to hate me for this :wink:

may i resurrect my old wish of getting that old/abandoned “Object Viewer” plugin working again? :wink:

Have you had a read of this and Jordy’s SelNamePanel?:

pascal,
For all intents and purposes, it would be nice to see a dockable list of all of the groups made that can function a multitude of ways. 1. acts as a selection tool for groups 2. acts as a dockable visible list of the group made 3. as a function, when selecting a group once could right click the group and select from a list of options such export / select objects / “whats in group” (a list of named components in the group) - think of it as an extension of the layers panel but for groups - maybe one could add items to the group moving items to being children of the parent groups.

Just a suggestion.

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Hi Dan - thanks, got that-

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-37266

-Pascal

Have you looked at Blocks instead of groups?

djnelson75,
Yeah, I have looked into block but that become problematic with our companies process and just the nature of what we do. We may have a few hundred unique groups in one project but those groups are only used for that particular project so having a file for each group used would be a ton of files and our mgmt is not a fan of that at all. Thanks tho.

OK.

You do know that blocks don’t have to be in separate files, you can create and store blocks directly in the file you are working in.

Ahh I see, I did not know that. When an edit to a block is needed is it much like AC where a block editor panel is opened and then saved and updated in the main file?