We have been toying with the idea that it may be advantageous if rebar can be placed in linked geometry.
It started in older releases where the rebar made our models rather heavy and slow to work with (this is not that much of an issue anymore); and some barrier to automatic changes to rebar to try and manage revisions.
In order to control revisions we would like some form of ability to lock the rebar to a geometry. If the concrete hosting the rebar changes and the rebar needs to update there should be a warning. There should also be an option to assign a revision sequence number to the affected bar.
Would it not make sense to provide an option for the cover to be read from the host (default), or from a user defined parameter in the bar instance?
This will allow greater control when multiple bar layers are required and could also assist in using geometry from a link.
Revision control and unintended updates to rebar is still something we have not properly cracked.
There is too much room for error.