Marks Manager

The Marks Manager tool is a tool that provides a quick and convenient way to manipulate, group, and edit the mark numbers and control numbers of all elements in the model (the elements must be structural framing elements and they must have the material “PRECAST CONCRETE”). Upon opening the manager tool, the user is greeted to a multifunctional window that will act as the hub for the tool.

The center focal point in this tool is the grid in the center of the main window. This will show you all the marks in the project and allow you to edit the mark number and control number. Starting from the left of the grid is the mark number. The mark number can be edited manually if desired, more likely this will change many times based on the rules set in settings along with the group tools. The control number is next as we go through the grid from left to right. This can be manually edited or edited by the tools above, however this is not edited by grouping tools. Family Name and Type Name are after the control number and are useful for setting grouping rules and quickly verifying that no errors have occurred in the tools. The last three columns show the state of ticketing of that mark. These values are read from parameters of the families with the names given in the Marks Manager Settings.

Inside the settings menu is a tabbed collection of settings that allow for custom rules to be set that will affect the verify/grouping and compare elements tools. The rules in the grids are saved “C:\ProgramData\Eriksson Software\Eriksson Sync” under the project name.

Inside the settings menu the tab is used to select custom rules for what specialty equipment should be verified to be the same. These rules are used in the verification tool and compare elements when verifying if elements are the same or not. Each option corresponds to which specialty equipment will be checked in each element. The options are:

Inside the settings menu the second tab is used to input custom rules that will be used to create groupings inside the main hub windows mark grid. These rules are used when running the “Group (Verified)” and “Group (Unverified)” commands in the main window. This grid is broken down into three columns: a column to check the family name parameter on an element, a parameter to check the type name parameter on an element, and what to use as the custom mark prefix before the numbering if an element is found with the parameters. The two conditional rulesets per Mark Rule may use conditions “Equals”, “Contains”, and “Any”. If any is checked all element parameters in the selected conditional pass. NOTE: the conditional value input is case sensitive and will not match if the parameter wording has mismatched upper and lowercase values.

Inside the settings menu the third tab allows for a set of custom tolerances to be set for defining attributes of the element. These tolerances include:

This is a list of all properties that are to be ignored in the verify/grouping and compare elements tools. An option to ignore all parameters on all elements is available to override the parameter table. While retrieving properties to compare on elements and sub elements this list will be checked against and if any parameter name is found in this settings list that parameter will be skipped in the check. This list can be manually edited (added and removed from) or can be modified from the Compare Elements tool. The option to import this setting grid or export it also exists for user convenience.

To compare elements a tree structure is created and used to filter elements down to representative bins where all leaves are their selected properties to compare. The tree structure uses the following levels and parameters to filter the elements:

Each of the above parameters are found or calculated from the Family Instance that is the element. If the element uses values that contain numerical data, these values are compared using an optimization routine that applies either a user defined tolerance or an internal tolerance. This is done immediately before the layer is sorted. The optimization consists of a method that shifts the values a percentage of the tolerance and Floors them to find the lowest bin count for the layer. These parameters allow the elements to all be sorted into collections of elements that all have the same properties and therefore are reported as the same.

This tool will use all chosen elements and group them based on a set of parameters from the tree. When first clicking on the group tool you will be brought to a window that asks if you would like to use all elements or just use the elements chosen in the data grid. This can be useful if trying to only sort a subset of the mark numbers. Regardless of the selection the tool will then create a sorting tree or use the existing one if already created. This tree only uses the following properties for comparison and filtering purposes: Family Name, Type Name, and Approximate Volume. All elements are then grouped by these three parameters and renamed using the grouping rules defined in settings to give them a new appropriate mark number. Each consecutive group found will be named Prefix001, Prefix002, etc. Where prefix is the found prefix in the settings rules or “Mark” if no rules are applicable to the current family instance. If a mark had a mark number previously the old mark number will be removed and the new mark number will be used instead.

This tool will use all chosen elements and group them based on a set of parameters from the tree. When first clicking on the group tool you will be brought to a window that asks if you would like to use all elements or just use the elements chosen in the data grid. This can be useful if trying to only sort a subset of the mark numbers. Regardless of the selection the tool will then create a sorting tree or use the existing one if already created. This tool uses the full range of parameters (as seen in section 4) to check against and sorting may take a while to complete. All elements are then grouped by these parameters and renamed using the grouping rules defined in settings to give them a new appropriate mark number. Each consecutive group found will be named Prefix001, Prefix002, etc. Where prefix is the found prefix in the settings rules or “Mark” if no rules are applicable to the current family instance. If a mark had a mark number previously the old mark number will be removed and the new mark number will be used instead.

Each layer of the grouping tree that uses numerical values to sort will be run through an optimization routine at the end of the initial tree build. Layers that are optimized are as follows:

The optimization layer take the numerical values of these levels and shifts the value a percentage of the tolerance to combine elements that are within tolerance to each other but not exactly the same. With this layer the grouping methods can combine elements that may not be initially combined in the tree creation.

The verify marks tool opens a window where you are allowed to choose all mark numbers from a drop-down box. Once the desired marks are selected, click ok and the main method is evoked. The main method uses the compare elements sub-tool which compares all marks of a certain mark number to the first mark in the collection. This uses the Data Comparison backend which checks tolerances automatically without needing to rely on the optimization layer. If a mark is not reported as the same to the first mark the check fails. Once the checks are completed for each selected mark the tool reports the status of the operation whether it passed all the checks or failed a check. This is shown in two places in the header above each mark number and in the side navigation tree view. If all marks of the same prefix are passing the super header also changes to show a pass or fail.

This tool will close the Mark Manager tool and, using the currently selected items in the main grid, will attempt to select the items on the currently active view. If the items cannot be found in the active view the tool will return a warning dialog and allow the user to choose another 3D view.

This tool allows the user to see specific details about what is different between two control numbers. Upon clicking this tool, a window is brought up and a choice can be made on which two control numbers to use for comparison. Once two control numbers are chosen the tool brings up a new window with two columns and a differences panel at the bottom of the window. This will show all the parameters that are used in the comparison methods (Tree in Section 4) to filter and sort the elements. The first two columns show elements A and B and all their properties. The bottom panel shows the differences between the two columns. If any differences are found, they will be listed here. If a parameter difference is found it will report the parameter and the differences in values. Parameter differences can be ignored using the “Ignore” text link; this will stop them from being used in comparisons. All children will be listed out with their parameter data as well to help visualize the differences easier. Child elements will have an option to view specific data about them that may make comparison easier in a hyperlink.

This tool loops over all marks that are selected in the grid and then applies the mark specified in the opening window to each previous mark. This tool acts as a fast way to rename elements.