Show/Hide and Search/Filtering is a potentially powerful tool in SU. The ability to enter multiple search criteria and have Outliner / Tags show them as highlighted or isolated elements would be really useful. With a multiple attribute search you could then quickly isolate [Outliner] “Walls” with the [Tag] “Third Floor” and [Status] “Demolition” for instance.
I don’t know Ruby, but the UI would ideally allow selection with multiple criteria combined with “AND / OR” option criteria so a user can pick say [Outliner] “Walls” AND [Tag] Fire rated to “30 minutes” OR “60 minutes” AND [Status] “Existing”.
It is. What specific use case are you thinking of?
Once selected the search, would you just edit it’s attributes?
This has been requested ever since the introduction of Outliner, btw.
Interestingly, the industry is moving towards a system where the (meta)data is no longer hosted or ‘captured’ inside the authoring tool (eg.SketchUp or Revit), but can be added or adjusted outside it.
For instance, one could upload the model to Trimble Connect and use the data table for searches and, even going beyond, use the formula based grouping in the organizer extension.
Thanks for the link. I don’t know why, but I find some of the TC workflows to be less than user friendly. I’m not saying what they are doing is wrong, but it can feel like stepping into the unknown with an almost alien interface. Simplicity is crucial for successful software, if you need a manual to explain the process you are already loosing the battle.
For me S&I it would be a simple and quick way to set up Scenes or find things that are buried in the model for editing. Outliner is great and I use it a lot in preference to Tags but if you add new elements then hiding those new elements in multiple Scenes can become tedious if the Outliner tree isn’t structured. If you are familiar with the attributes in the model then the search workflow should be a simple case of creating a Rule with a few lines to search in “Attribute X” for the value of “My Setting”. Updating the model content in the scene is then just a case of reapplying the Rule.
I appreciate model data management is still on a learning curve, but I also think in the same way as some people don’t need cloud hosting, it should be possible to attach basic attributes in an SU model to assist in visibly breaking down the model & also documenting in LO.
I was thinking last night that this idea bears some correlation with the Diffusion interface, in that it could accept natural language to parse the required elements to display e.g. “Show me all the walls & doors on the second floor with a fire rating”. That’s possibly wishful thinking at this stage, but you get the idea.
EDIT: I have added to my posts in the IDK Compilation thread which may clarify my objective.
Accept, one is bound to the authoring’s software quirks and perks and availability of the modeler who’s more or less capable of dealing with it.
Depending on the hierarchy in the model (nested objects and applied tag-structure) there are many cases in a complex model where even if you have a scene, you won’t be able to edit or change the objects attributes directly (one needs to deep-select or keep clicking and keep monitoring the entity panel).
As for the learning curve with data management, it kind of depends on what role the modeler has in the whole process and his/her experience, we see many coordinating contractors with dedicated ‘BIM’ roles besides the actual modeler who can have instant access to the data and use these rule based formulas all the time to check models for having the right data.
They are used to ‘breakdown’ the model and know were to l look for in software.
Still, they need some training to get along:)