Marc, nice to meet you last night. I am trying hard to convince myself that I can remove all my 'extra' levels. the guys from Fosters were quite clear in their view that having done it it is possible, however, on pushing them, I still don't think I would be entirely happy with the results their workflow would produce. I have been thinking about this quite a lot the last few days. I want to remove as many levels as possible from the level library to make it as clean an environment as possible for working. I don't want to provide extra cut/fwd/ref/hidden levels for each and therefore allow users the possibility of mixing everything up. BUT, I need the extra layers to allow me to structure my outputs as I want them. All I really need these levels for is to allow me to separate out the different parts of the same element so I can control the symbology of them. Once this is done they can all be on the same level for output or export as far as I am concerned. Dominic, your suggestion of sublevels is a good one and would work well with an 'on the fly' level assignation of cut/fwd etc etc. At export, these could all be mapped back to the original level? On further thought, it may be possible to get the functionality I want by some additions to the dataset part options or to the way in which dv's make themselves. First suggestion is to allow DV's to lever some of the functionality that the old DEM group models had. ie you would set up a group model and say set your levels for forward view in view 1, cut in view 2 and fwd in view 3. I could turn on and off levels which i don't want to be considered in the forward and reflected views, (make these as saved views in my seed file in the first instance). I would like DV's to be able to select a level set for each part of the view. Ie we could set a level list from a view and save this, allowing the views to reference the different level lists. This would allow DV's to be created where I didn't have to go round and select objects, right click it and select DV level off for each item I don't want shown. This would allow much greater control of drawing output standard, allow forward and reflected symbology(in the DV) to actually work without turning everything the same, and hopefully, maybe speed up the process slightly. Alternatively, and this may be simpler. Is to add dedicated reflected and hidden part settings to parts in the dataset. This way you could much easier assign reflected (different to forward, which it ALWAYS will be) or hidden symbology and also select whether an object is active in forward, reflected and should be shown hidden. (for example, i don't want the majority of parts to show in reflected or hidden, but what I do want to show are things like, downstands, ceiling openings/edges, overhangs, stairs, light fittings. Things like floor build ups/most wall elements or most elements that are hidden in reality do not need to be able to show in reflected, but do in forward. Hope all that is clear?
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