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After using global parameters via the mechanism described in many posts, which requires using favorites and derive, I would like to share my analysis of the mechanism.
1. The documentation does a poor job of explaining this. For example, the derive for global parameters must be either "to a new design" or "pulled into the top assembly of a design". If I have a component other than the root active and then use "insert derive" I will be able to select various items from the source design, including parameters, but the parameters will not be available in the destination design.
2. After pondering favorites for a while, I have come to the conclusion that favorite parameters are really a poor substitute for configurations. They are a way to make some parameters more accessible than the rest of the user parameters. (I realize that they could also be used to temporarily make some more accessible during the design phase.) Using favorite parameters for derive is really a hack, and conflates to orthogonal aspects of the design: accessibility for modification, and marking for export (derive).
Parameters should have a checkbox to mark them as exportable. This is explicit and has a singular purpose. This would also provide the proper list in the derive dialog instead of choosing from favorites. This decouples the reason that a designer might have some parameters marked as favorites at a point in time from those that can be exported. (I wonder what happens currently if I have a derived design using some favorite parameters and those parameters are removed from favorites. Do they stop being exported during the next derive update?)
In addition, the requirement to additionally mark the derived/global parameters in the derived design in order to use them makes no sense. They have been selected in the derive command. That should be all that is needed to make them available for use. (The renaming of the derived parameters with _ref gives them a unique name so name collision should not be a problem requiring marking them in order to use them.)
3. Regardless of the current active component of the derived design, if parameters are selected in the derive dialog they should be imported. I think this not working currently is a bug.
Solved! Go to Solution.