Question: "Export gbXML" button

[EvgenyK-SO]

Hi,
Probably it is not the best place to ask a question, but the Ladybug forum works for patrons only. And I am not :-)
The Spider viewer has a lot of tools to fix a gbXML model. So I upload my file, fix it, but I can't get it back to my desktop. Is there a way to do that?
I found that the gbXML Export is available for the Build Well module. Even it is experimental I believe it should be workable for 99%, and I extremely need it. Can the button be placed for the Spider gbXML-viewer R12, R13, etc.?

Thank you.

[mostaphaRoudsari]

but the Ladybug forum works for patrons only

This is a wrong statement. The forum is for everyone. See here: http://discourse.ladybug.tools/t/welcome-to-ladybug-tools-forum/8

[theo-armour]

@EK-CEL

This is a wonderful place for feature requests, bug reports, pull requests and the like,

R12, R13 and R14 have two methods for saving your edits:

1. In the top of right side menu.

'Save edits' save all current changes to a new gbXML file.

2. In the left menu.

This method is much trickier. This creates a list of actions to take in order to fix the file and lets you save the actions to a file. The goal is that each time you get a newly updated gbXML file exported from the CAD program you can load the saved actions file, click the button and - bingo - everything is fixed again.

I hope that I understood your question properly and provided a response that helps. I note that neither way of saving has had extensive testing, so please always keep an original copy in a safe place,

[EvgenyK-SO]

@theo-armour
Thank you for the reply. I have seen those buttons, I tried them and it is not what I need. The "Save edits" works for a single selected surface. Is it possible to download the entire model with fixed surfaces?

[EvgenyK-SO]

@mostaphaRoudsari
Sorry, I couldn't find a registration page without paying money for membership. Can you suggest one?

[theo-armour]

@EK-CEL

Please indicate: which release are you working on?

In the recent releases, the 'save' buttons on the two menus have very different functions.

I just tried the 'Save edits' button in the right-side menu in R13 and it created full, new gbXML file

[mostaphaRoudsari]

Did you read the link that I provided above? http://discourse.ladybug.tools/t/welcome-to-ladybug-tools-forum/8

You need to send an email to the address that is indicated in the page to receive an invitation link.

[EvgenyK-SO]

@mostaphaRoudsari
My bad, I didn't read the page. I just clicked links trying to find the word "Register", didn't expect I should send an email request. It's an old fashioned style. :-)

[EvgenyK-SO]

@theo-armour
I can't replay the scenario when I got a single wall update XML file. Following your suggestion I was able to save the "entire model". The size of the file is twice smaller and unfortunately I can't open it with the FZK viewer. I should explore the resulting file - hope the lost is not dramatic. Thank you for the suggestion.
The button is located under the "Edit Surface" header. I believe it is not a good place for it. As it works for the entire model I expect to see it near the "Choose File" button.

[theo-armour]

@EK-CEL

Smaller file size: Aragog strips out a lot of the white space from the imported gbXML files. So far this has not caused any issues

FZK viewer not opening saved files: Interesting observation. I will download FZK and have a look

'Edit the surface': good observation about this item being unclear about this handling the entire model. Do note that what the left side menu saves is not related to what the right side menu saves.

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Thinking out loud:

The Viewer is growing up, it's more than just a way to browse files now. It's getting to be a full app. Perhaps we should start thinking about having the user interface become a standard menu bar with file, edit, select, preferences, help and so on.

[EvgenyK-SO]

@theo-armour
I have submitted a new issue to address the FZK viewer problem.

---

I agree with your thoughts that the app menu should be better organized. Probably the interface should not be classic with drop-down action lists, but it should be oriented to contemporary techniques working with touchscreen devices.

[theo-armour]

@EK-CEL

Thanks for new issue #138

Probably the interface should not be classic with drop-down action lists, but it should be oriented to contemporary techniques working with touchscreen devices.

Maybe we should have more than one Viewer. One for desktop and one for 'communicators'?

Also - looking at FZK Viewer I see that a lot of the settings are available vie a context menu in the display screen. Do you like this UI? Should we do similar?

[EvgenyK-SO]

Maybe we should have more than one Viewer. One for desktop and one for 'communicators'?
I believe we need a full functionality desktop Viewer, and then we can decide if the 'communicator' version should be equal to desktop or have reduced to basic functionality.
What about the app menu - I found that contemporary Ribbon menu (Word, Excel, AutoCAD, and especially Revit) makes sense for applications which have a lot of commands. And the the contextual menu is good - it appears on the Ribbon and displays tools related to the selection. Autodesk invests a lot of money in developing UI prototypes, testing and listening users' feedback. So we can (and should) borrow from their apps' interface as much as we can.

[theo-armour]

Autodesk invests a lot of money in developing UI prototypes, testing and listening users' feedback. So we can (and should) borrow from their apps' interface as much as we can.

I know this well. I was Program Manager at Autodesk and helped write the spec for three releases of AutoCAD. ;-)