one thing that takes me ages to setup in each project, because I’ve not set up all the libraries I am using in most of the projects, is the va object styles setup.
By default, all attributes are byobject. And every time I am clicking 18 times to set the attributes for a layer. By the way, the dropdown order of linetype is different from the rest (byobject is first when in the others bylayer is first). Imagine having to change attributes to 3 or 4 styles of one object type. But you have 8 or 9 objects. So it’s like 4styles8objecttypes*18 clicks, it’s not very productive.
Let’s say, someone is not very organized and has no templates, no .val files etc to pick what he/she wants to add in a project. The va object styles dialogue, is a bit restrictive.
A thing that could benefit us as users, would be the ability to dublicate ready layers (for a slab for example) and drag them from one style to another. Right now the layers are restrictively living only in their parent style and cannot be transfered.
I bet other users have their own suggestions. What are the plans for the styles dialogue (based on the votes) and does anyother have to suggest anything similar for future development?
yes this is a great suggestion, and i would add with option to be a copy or a reference, meaning copy as simple properties transfer and reference meaning if i change initial concrete all others would follow changes. This would enable to make changes in section style and/or other properties (while i do prefer for section styling to be done in layer manager, if available in the future).
best
alex
edit* i would also want and prefer to have the default properties by layer not by object.
Hi @GabrielB and @ng5_Alex, I take note of your suggestions to improve the user experience when setting attributes to object styles.
Dragging components from one style to another to move or copy them is something we can consider. Also having a kind of “Match properties” tool has been requested already.
Another option is to allow a multiple selection of components to assign common attributes at once.
We can also change the templates, and assign the attributes of components by default to “By Layer”. But I’d only do this for those components that are located in a specific Layer (for example a Wall Layer located in the “Walls-Structure Components” Layer). For the other components (like a Door frame, for example), I’d leave the attributes to “By Parent” by default. What do you think?
Hey @fsalla . this opens up another discussion, templating is a user personal preference. Of course VA offers templates, with default options and settings. Why not to give the option to the user for the entire system? For example, attributes ByLayer, ByProject, for each va object type. Someone is going to select ByLayer for everything, some other ByProject and some other person maybe is going to mix up things.
Let me explain:
The default templates, have sublayers only for walls (if I am not wrong). If we would like to have consistent structure logic, then all layers that correspond to the va objects, should have sublayers too.
For example in my case I have been building a template for months - because of the lack of Global - high detail options like for the sublayers too not only parent layers, with the sublayers system below:
I’ve been falling into inconsistences of course, because I have sublayers for walls per scope (structure, substrate etc) when in a railing per assembly (handrail, post etc).
I’ve tested everything in terms of organization. Everything is connected unfortunately.
if we had the global multi-level setting (not only parent layers but also sublayers), then the global setting could be applied in all va object styles automatically. If a wall has the sublayer Structure and I want to change it globally there is no option for this. I have to change each wall style to match the preference I might have later on.
I have worked with a MAT layer with all the available sublayers as Materials. And there I set walls, windows, slabs to point to one single sublayer of Materials like Wood. Then if you want to preview on and of the walls with wood layer, you cannot. So that’s why I’ve decided to have sublayers for each va-object/va-object-assembly.
There if a material manager UI would exist, which could be enchanced with material parameters like Uw etc then the changes over the materials that are per sublayer of va-object/va-object-assembly would be easy. Right now it’s a disaster if you decide to go this way.
I apologize for the chaos above, but all are connected. I believe a refactor for various features and how things work, should follow a unified workflow, not pinpoint changing things here and there, because constantly we will lead to personal preference breakpoints.
I was about to write more or less what Gabriel suggests, ie no need to change templates, maybe add the option (unless there is one and i have missed it) for us to set defaults through options.
Do you mean that we provide a document setting to decide whether the style component attributes are assigned by default to By Layer or By Parent?
Currently only wall layers, slab layers and the glass component (in curtain walls, doors and windows), have their own Layer/Sub-Layer. In those cases, I think we could set their attributes to “By Layer”. The attributes of the other components would be set to By Parent by default.
We could also change the templates and create a Layer or a Sub-Layer for each type of component, but I’m not sure if this would be suitable for everyone. As you say, we provide some simple object-type layer structure in the current VisualARQ templates, and each user can expand it, as you have done, modify it at their own taste, and save it as a custom template to have it ready for a new document.
Do you mean that you want to select all wall layers that are assigned to a (Rhino) Layer and change them to a different layer at once?
Are you asking for a method to show/hide objects and components based on their material?
Why don’t you manage this By Layer? I mean, all wall layer components that have a wood material can be located in a specific Layer, with the corresponding material assigned. You can apply quick changes to the material, and show/hide that layer easily too.
There is no such an option right now. But if we implement it, is this something that you would apply to the new styles only, or that could be used to change the current styles?
Personally I would apply to all styles, new and current, maybe per document and by loading a global setting schema. All parts of the document in sync via options per document (related here the ifc schema dropdown we were talking in the other topic). The changes should change the layers too IMO. Of course there should be investigated the block’s locking the layers etc.
Per working file. For example open new project, go to options/VisualARQ options and set project settings globally, similarly to the settings you have for the layers and overhead curves (curve which by the way the need to go on a per case setting and not global , for example other settings for overhead beam curves, other for slabs etc)
yes, this way VA does not deal with personal preference.
I agree, there is no point for giving bylayer, when no children layer exist. But what I am saying is that in my personal preference, I would prefer sublayers per assembly or per scope in all layers. But we hit again a personal preference thing here.
I agree. We cannot limit the VA workflow to how users prefer. But the problem with templates is that it is static all the way. Making minor changes in the templates, will not lead to updating this minor changes to 3 projects you currently work throughout the month, even though you would like to apply thos minor changes to them as well.
Giving the ability to the users to adjust everything is the best. Of course this is not applicalbe everywhere. But a global per document setting - and with the ability to load a schema from the drive to be applied for all documents - can follow the expandable options table below(where a user can add more hierarchy levels with a + button for rows:
vawall → MODEL::WALL layer (or whatever the user wants to use)
vawall/Structural layer–> MODEL::WALL::Structure[1] (or whatever the user wants to use)
vawall/Structural layer/METALSTUD–>MODEL::WALL::Structure[1]::METALSTUD
and so on
Yes something like that. Every time I want to do this, on an ongoing project, i have to change the layers settings in the VA options dialogue, create the new layers, go to each va object style, change from the attributes per object style/object style assembly/attributes layer, then go to delete the unneeded layers. If I will not get warnings about locked layers in blocks (va objects) then ok, otherwise i have to continue digging inside styles etc.
Not exactly. I am saying that we need control of previewing for example wood leaf parts of windows. I had tested having a simple materials catalog with one parent materials layer and many children. For example let’s take wooden leafs of windows. I have concluded that the structure below:
window/frame/wood,leaf/wood, handle/wood is better than having:
materials/wood, concrete etc
because i do not want to preview all wood parts of all objects the materials/wood, concrete would not work the desired way because it is going to show walls, windows, beams etc with wood. So nesting materials under components is better.
But there syncing all different layers with the same materials in the layer manager is getting difficult. Also wood for handle and wood for beam should not have the same 2d line attributes or the same hatch. So we are talking about two different materials in terms of 2d representation.
That’s why I am suggesting a very comprehensive material manager where you can apply global changes to materials, to layer names, structure of layers similar to the global options we are discussing above. VA could benefit from it because there would be a dialogue dedicated to BIM material data such fire resistance, centrically driven and not by style or by object parameters. I am talking about applying parameters to materials which then could applied to components of objects.
That’s what I am doing by nesting multiple same name materials for each assembly of va objects, but maintance is a disaster for this. You forget to change the wood layer settings for window frame while you edited the wood layer settings for the window leaf etc.
