Hi @CFNBen,
Thanks for your posts and suggestions. I've been a bit wrapped up over the past week, but managed to find a couple of minutes. I've used your proposed workaround before and have a few things against it, which is why I find this idea to be valid...
Someone once asked me why a plausible workaround is so bad, and I went on to us the following example:
Imagine buying a car, and you’d expect to get into the car via the driver side door, buckle-up and drive off… Simple right, that’s what you paid for.
Now imagine buying a car, only to realise that the driver side door cannot open, so you have to enter from the passenger side door, struggle over the centre console, finally get in, buckle-up and drive off.
The output is similar, but the first scenario works as expected while also having the option of using the workaround (getting on on the passenger side door) and the second scenario limits you to one choice which is the workaround, causing much frustration and wasted time along the way. Now imagine if this happens to a significant amount of people globally...
Saying that something is a viable solution for you is great because it works with your workflows, that does not mean that it’s a workable solution for everyone. Let me explain some of the reason why, from past experiences (bullets below). Please refrain from using user training as the solution for what I mention below because we have on average quite a few new users weekly, same with various other multinational organisations where constant training is unfortunately not feasible. Even experienced users make mistakes, and human-error is not something which will go away, so potential workflow risks need to be mitigated where possible.
- When a user accidentally changes detail lines to model lines, said model lines are associated with the active Workset. All might look fine for user A, but then user B does the batch printing and might have closed certain Worksets (which model lines are now associated to) before printing. Now information is missing from the schematics and rework is required.
- Also, now the model lines show up in other discipline models, and they need to ask the MEP engineer to adjust, causing rework and time wasted between both parties. Other disciplines are either required to wait for the updates, until the next share/package or they need to update all their view templates to mitigate this going forward.
- Users forget to Link CAD files to only be visible on “current views”, with obvious rework implications.
- When you delete a level (or copy/monitored level), you do not receive a notification of all the elements which will be deleted, only that the level will be deleted. i.e. User might delete a level not knowing that they are about to delete 1000’s of detail lines & items.
- The reason why I mentioned this is because there are multiple things which need to be managed to ensure that schematic plan views aren’t deleted, not just a direct deletion of a plan view, but also levels which can be deleted via a coordination review, section, 3D views etc… which can essentially lead to the deletion of your schematics. Drafting views is a single element which needs to be managed to mitigate deletion.
- It has happened that an architect generated an unnecessary level, this was copy/monitored on our side and then said level was removed by the architect, the architect notifies design teams that there is an unnecessary level which has been removed in their model. We receive a coordination review and a user not involved with the schematics accepts the deletion. Guess on which level all our schematics were developed on? Everything deleted… Only realizing this in the 11th hour as the schematics were completed…
- I’ve had other scenarios where the deletion of schematic elements in a plan was not a problem, but where users ended up deleting 3D model elements. This pretty much happened where for some reason (once again, human error) people applied a different view template to a “schematic plan view” which exposed the 3D model elements and where a selection of a certain area was done and the user continued to press the delete button, thinking that it was clutter (as everything looked like lines… Coarse Detail Level).
- These are some of my past experiences bouncing off the top of my head.
I hope this helps clarify things and why I feel the idea can be looked at. There is already the functional capabilities within plan views. Getting the same functionality over in drafting views is a quick win with noticeable benefits to all disciplines.
Cheers,
Rudi