Trimble Business Center

We're working towards completing as many deliverables straight away out of TBC as we can without finishing up in ACAD. However, I'm either doing something wrong or completely misunderstand the functionality (probably both). Anyway, it was my understanding that any text entered/edited in a sheet view level would only propagate downstream. i.e.  Text entered in Plan Set would propagate to the Sheet Set and Sheet. Text entered/edited in Sheet Set would propagate to the Sheet, but not upstream to the Plan Set. And any text entered/edited on the Sheet view would only appear on that sheet and would not propagate anywhere upstream or anywhere else for that matter.

Unfortunately, that is not what I am seeing.

For example;

I added the custom sheet set (D) BURIED FOUNDATION (and spelled buried wrong) with two custom sheets (E & F). I had place holder text "XXXXXX" in the bottom right corner block. I changed the information in that block for Sheet (E) and the text in that block changed on each and every sheet in the plan set (A through H). The only way I can keep the text from propagating upstream or left/right is to completely delete the text at the Sheet level and re-typing from scratch. Is this the intended functionality? It seems it would be much more intuitive to setup the sheet templates with placeholder text at the Plan Set or Sheet Set level and simply edit the text on the Sheet level as/if needed. 

etc.

Please advise. Thanks.

-Rich

Can you share the Project Richard so that I can take a look. You articulated the intent correctly. I have never seen it do anything else - however that is not to say that it could not happen / is not happening. I had one person have a similar issue and when I looked at it they had placed Text on the wrong level although they 100% believed that they had not done that - so it is possible to inadvertantly do something incorrectly - the way that happens is that you have multiple Sheet Views open and the current one you are looking at is not the current active view - and you think that you place text correctly but in reality you are putting it somewhere else - and if you happen to be looming at a Downstream Sheet it shows up making you believe that you did it right - and it is not so easy to tell - because the text is either there or not - the only way to tell is to look at the Upstream levels and see if it is still visible etc.

Happy to take a look if you can provide the project either here or through Dropbox etc.

Alan

Having read what you said I think the following is happening

1) You have your placeholder text at the Sheet Set Level. When you create a custom sheet or sheets, the Sheet Set Level Text is "DISPLAYED"on each of the Sheets that you create - it is however still the same text as the Sheet Set Level (this is for e.g. Title Box Titles that go at the Sheet Set level and Title Box Content that goes at the Sheet Level. If you want the same info on all Sheets or you want a Smart Text like Sheet Number XX of YY then you can do it this way, but if each Sheet is going to have unique text then you cannot place a reference text at the Sheet Set Level - the text on each sheet is still the Sheet Set Text. 

If you want to have text that is editable on Each Sheet then I would create a Specific Sheet Set with a copy of your Title boxes and then have "Placeholder Text" on it, and then I would use Copy to Sheet to copy the PlaceholderText onto the Sheets where you want an "Editable Copy" not a "Reference" of the Sheet Set text. You can use this Sheet Set to hold all kinds of Text Blocks, Notes, Legends of different types etc. so that you can readily copy them over to Custom Sheets when you create them.

Hope this helps

Alan

I just also looked at other methods to see if you could Explode a piece of text placed at a higher level to become a piece of text at the current level and you cannot do that. So my suggestion above is the best approach I think for this at this time at least

Alan

Alan - the "placeholder text" I'm using originates at the Plan Set level when I drag in the drafting template. I anticipated having to make any desired text edits at the Sheet Set level that would also flow downstream to the Sheets, then subsequently make any desired edits to the Sheets that would stay specific to just that sheet. However, as it's actually "referenced text" as you've pointed out, it appears that this method causes any edits made at the Sheet level to propagate back upstream to both the Sheet Sets and Plan Set then down any branches that may also be under the same Plan Set that were created by the same method. So based on what you've mentioned above, and what I've discovered experimenting, it appears that edited "reference text" will propagate the edit throughout all the branches of the Plan Set, which effectively eliminates using placeholder text in the template scheme. So having said that, and if I'm correct, it looks like I will need to rethink my approach.  

Using a store/warehouse sheet to copy from as you've suggested is certainly a viable approach. Or, I can just get better at using and setting up the text styles. (have I mentioned how much I hate drafting annotation yet?)

Anyway - I'd like to suggest that the upstream links (only) be broken when a user elects to modify "referenced" text on the Sheet Set or Sheet level. Or, give us an option/property to do so.

 I'll gladly box up and share the project but I believe we have fleshed out what I was doing incorrectly. Plus, ignoring best practices while experimenting (create a new copy dummy), I've deleted all the text in question by simply deleting the text at the Sheet level, which I'm sure you can guess, deleted it upstream and left/right as well.

Thanks,

Rich

The text is not propagating up stream - it is upstream and when you make an Edit to it in a Downstream Sheet you are actually editing the upstream text in the Sheet Set or Plan Set not Text in the Sheet itself.

Other than the work around I gave yesterday, where you can Copy To Sheet Text from an upstream Sheet Set or Plan Set  and then edit it at the Sheet Level and have it stored at the Sheet Level - which by default means it has to be on a different Sheet Set / Plan Set to the one driving the generation of the Sheet Set you are working on so that it is not filling a space already occupied in an upstream Sheet Set / Plan Set.

Hope this is helping ...

Alan

Yes - understood and it certainly is helping with understanding the system.

Being able to explode the text (or some other means) to make it local downstream would be the ticket then. #enhancementrequest

Thank you Alan.