Adding New Subclass by Right Clicking Class

[sdziki 6]

It would be great to add a new sub-class by right clicking the class you want to add it under and have an "Add New Class" right there rather than having to retype "class-subclass-subclass" every time.

[Boh 33]

Duplicating a class does this doesn't it?

[sdziki 6]

I tried that then renamed it and it created its own class which was odd.

So i had a Class structure like this originally:

 

Concepts

   Concept 1

   Concept 2

 

Duplicated Concept 2 and it added Concept 3.

I renamed Concept 3 to Test.

It took it out of the main Class and dropped it down as its own Class in alphabetical order.

 

So in order for me to create a Concept 3 I have to add New then type Concepts-Concept 3

And if I wanted a Concept 4 I have to repeat the procedure over.

Instead of right-clicking Concepts then adding Concept 3, Concept 4, Concept 5, etc under that Main Class.

 

I'm a year into this program so I may be doing something wrong but from all the people I ask that is the only way to do it.

 

Thanks for the response...

[Rob Books 97]

I just tried it in 2018 and a right click duplicate on a symbol with a number at the end just added a class with the number increased by 1.  if I did it with a class without a number at the end, it created a nested class of the previous class name-2, causing a new level of classing.
There was another Thread on classes where I mentioned that I put in a innovation on doing similar things in classing where there would be a more classical approach of Parent-Child Class system.

[markdd 258]

@sdziki‘s request is great.

 

It would be good if a right-click on an existing class could bring up an extra contextual menu item of “add nested class”. All this would do would be to open the existing "create new class" dialogue box but with the class name pre-filled with the “Class-“ of the item you right-clicked on. Simple?

Edited April 20 by markdd

[Markvl 97]

8 hours ago, markdd said:

@sdziki‘s request is great.

 

It would be good if a right-click on an existing class could bring up an extra contextual menu item of “add nested class”. All this would do would be to open the existing "create new class" dialogue box but with the class name pre-filled with the “Class-“ of the item you right-clicked on. Simple?

This is the crux of the matter.  It's about reducing the amount of clicking.  I myself generally just duplicate a class (provided that it's already nested) and then edit the class to fix the naming.  Another "little" thing that would go a long way to speeding things up.  Gets my vote.

[klawson 4]

How about just being able to double-click the class, or layer, name and be able to edit it in-place, instead of a dialog box?

[Tom Klaber 346]

One of the issues here is that the Sub-Class - the Class distinction is not really real.  It is just a display trick to give the illusion of sub-classes - but really VW does not treat them as such.  

 

[grant_PD 104]

hats to go in the ring:

when making a new class from the OIP, have the option to "add subclass to existing" and then pick the class. 

OR

when typing the name of the class you want, have VW auto fill (kind of like how excel does for entries into a cell), which would let you type less/draft more.

 

Wholeheartedly agree with this thread though.  Once you commit to the world of classes, a percentage of your time is spent classing and naming.  The whole process needs to be faster.  

[Boh 33]

 

2 hours ago, grant_PD said:

.

Wholeheartedly agree with this thread though.  Once you commit to the world of classes, a percentage of your time is spent classing and naming.  The whole process needs to be faster.  

 

Yes however if you are spending a good amount of time creating classes then I would recommend building up s set of standard classes that you use and developing project templates which already have these classes in them.

 

If you don't always need every class for every project then you can create a "myclasses' file that is kept in the VW user folder Called "standards'. When you want a new class you can then right click on the classes tab of the Nav palette >New class>import and your "my classes" file will appear in a drop down list among a bunch of other default VW standard files. Select your file, choose one or more classes that you want  Done.

 

If you find yourself often creating the same classes on different projects then this is definitely the way to go. Added benefits are:

• The class attributes can be set up exactly how you want them. I.e . No further editing is needed
• the classes can confirm to your class-sub class naming system to seamlessly be incorporated into your project files
• Standardised classes can be integrated into your symbol library, wall, roof, slab styles etc

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21 by Boh

[Markvl 97]

On 21/04/2018 at 9:37 AM, Tom Klaber said:

One of the issues here is that the Sub-Class - the Class distinction is not really real.  It is just a display trick to give the illusion of sub-classes - but really VW does not treat them as such.  

 

While I understand what you're saying that really a sub-class is not different than any other class, is there such a thing as a real sub-class and what would it look like or behave like?

[Rob Books 97]

In order to have a real sub-class classing would need to be restructured.  you would want a Parent-Child type or relation, where the child can inherit any/all of the parent class attributes, which can then be altered as needed in the child.  We had a bit of discussion on this last year the the Design Summit, mainly dealing with Spotlight, but it would spill over to all aspects of Classing if we could get momentum going in it.

[Seth Thomas 4]

On 4/21/2018 at 5:37 AM, Tom Klaber said:

One of the issues here is that the Sub-Class - the Class distinction is not really real.  It is just a display trick to give the illusion of sub-classes - but really VW does not treat them as such.  

 

On 4/23/2018 at 6:43 AM, Rob Books said:

In order to have a real sub-class classing would need to be restructured.  you would want a Parent-Child type or relation, where the child can inherit any/all of the parent class attributes, which can then be altered as needed in the child.  We had a bit of discussion on this last year the the Design Summit, mainly dealing with Spotlight, but it would spill over to all aspects of Classing if we could get momentum going in it.

 

I think @Tom Klaber & @Rob Books are stating the real crux of the situation.

 

I setup a master list of classes for our Workgroup in Standards.vwx, which is also pre-loaded in our templates, so rarely need to create new classes. When I do, I find the easiest way is to simply create a new class and carefully name it to appear where I want it in the classes list. Duplicating works too, but I find little advantage to that over starting new because I would have to right-click once to duplicate, and once again to go in and rename it. Creating new brings me straight to the naming portion without additional clicks.

Edited May 10 by Seth Thomas

[Andy Broomell 424]

2 hours ago, Seth Thomas said:

When I do, I find the easiest way is to simply create a new class and carefully name it to appear where I want it in the classes list. Duplicating works too, but I find little advantage to that over starting new because I would have to right-click once to duplicate, and once again to go in and rename it. Creating new brings me straight to the naming portion without additional clicks.

 

I tend to Duplicate only when I want the new class to have matching Visibilities across all of my viewports as an existing class. (Or if I want it to have the same class attributes/textures). Otherwise, creating from scratch is fine.

[Seth Thomas 4]

52 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

I tend to Duplicate only when I want the new class to have matching Visibilities across all of my viewports as an existing class. (Or if I want it to have the same class attributes/textures). Otherwise, creating from scratch is fine.

For visibility, I think this depends on your Creation Options settings, but yeah, that makes sense for attributes.

[Andy Broomell 424]

1 hour ago, Seth Thomas said:

For visibility, I think this depends on your Creation Options settings, but yeah, that makes sense for attributes.

 

I think you can only choose to make classes Visible/Grey/Invisible across all existing Viewports/Saved Views, which is fine most of the time.

 

But say for example that you have a class for 3D figures that's on in some of your rendering viewports, but not in your plan or elevation viewports. If I wanted to then create an additional class, say for lights to illuminate those 3D figures, I'd duplicate the figure class so the lights are only visible in the viewports which already contain the figures.

[Seth Thomas 4]

1 hour ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

I think you can only choose to make classes Visible/Grey/Invisible across all existing Viewports/Saved Views, which is fine most of the time.

 

But say for example that you have a class for 3D figures that's on in some of your rendering viewports, but not in your plan or elevation viewports. If I wanted to then create an additional class, say for lights to illuminate those 3D figures, I'd duplicate the figure class so the lights are only visible in the viewports which already contain the figures. 

 

Yep, makes sense.