IfcDistributionPort

Comments

• sjb007

  January 9

  (With the caveat that I haven't played with this PR so far.)

  The flow direction is an operator so clicking on it allows you to cycle over the possibilities, giving a warning for not reasonable combinations

  Don't know about others, but I dislike cycling over multiple states like that. The next state is not obvious, I may have to click more than once to get to the state I want, and lastly I have a twitchy trigger finger - too often I'm trying to go too quick, and I often overshoot, making it worse.

  The way it currently is working, it does not seem to be possible to create an unreasonable combo. I switch between Source and Sink and the other port flips. I set to Source/Sink or Undefined and the other port switches to match. So having the possibility to make them mismatched seems to be a step back.
• falken10vdl

  January 9 edited January 9

  @sjb007 thanks for the feedback!
  Actually I was doing that because it looks to me that the current implementation does not allow for valid combinations which make sense but maybe I am not interpreting this correctly.
  My understanding is that cables or pipes do not have source or sink ports since they do not create or consume "energy". Their ports are sourceandsink (or not defined I guess). So if we have the simplest circuit: Generator - Cable/Pipe - Load the port arrangement would be: Generator with Source Port connected to Cable/Pipe with SourceAndSink port 1, then the SourceAndSink port 2 in the other side of the cable/pipe connected to a sink port in the Load.
  The current implementation forces connected ports to be always source-sink (or the other way around) or sourceandsink-sourceandsink or undefined-undefined. This has the implication that the pipes/cables segments connected to either source or sink ports, have their connecting ports matching as sink or source, but to me that looks weird/asymmetrical since both ports of a cable/pipe are conceptually? equal.
  I have not been able to find a clear explanation in ifc to verify if my understanding is right or wrong...
  What do you think?
  Cheers!
• falken10vdl

  January 9

  @sjb007 I have read more carefully the documentation and actually I was not properly interpreting left and right in the picture below:
  
  Now it is clear that a pipe is meant to have a pair of ports, one being the source and the other the sink. Weird to me as it makes them not symmetrical, but it is what it is :)
  Thanks for the feedback, Let me change that behavior so if one changes one port to source automatically the other becomes a sink and viceversa and if one changes to sourceandsink or undefined, the other is copied with this type.
  Thanks!
• falken10vdl

  January 9 edited January 9

  I have updated the PR #7543: Simplified handling of Ports in MEP (you can test it in bonsaiPR release BonsaiPR v0.8.5-alpha260109-881846a). Now one can walk from source to sink with intermediate source-sink pairs as in the example from the doc above.
  
  This also answers the question about decorations. with this approach no need to add in general decorations between connected ports since the pipes/cables will already define the direction
  Thanks!

  
• falken10vdl

  January 9

  I have done some small refinements with scaling the panel and also when clicking show ports that it also shows the ports of the connected objects:
  
  
  Cheers!

  
• walpa

  January 9

  Thank you again!
  It's much better now.
  The flow icons always confuse me, but with "System/Should draw decorations" enabled, it's easy to choose the correct port/flow direction. :)

  If a port is missing a connection, a field is given for the user to add it either by eyedropper or selecting from the free, not-hidden ports

  It didn't work for me. (bonsaiPR_py311-0.8.5-alpha2601090235-linux-x64)
• walpa

  January 9

  A significant limitation for MEP in BB is still the issue "Import IfcDistributionPort together with IfcProduct from a library #6687"
  Cheers

  
• steverugi

  January 9

  @falken10vdl
  thanks so much for listening to our prayers! Will try asap
  could you please elaborate on

  Weird to me as it makes them not symmetrical, but it is what it is

  In some cases an element might have more than two ports (Tee, Wye or a manifold for instance) maybe the switching might not be so straightforward?
  ..and yes AFAIK all elements in a distribution system have ports to allow the flow
  looking forward to trying your update
  cheers
• steverugi

  January 9 edited January 9

  @walpa

  The flow icons always confuse me, but with "System/Should draw decorations" enabled, it's easy to choose the correct port/flow direction. :)

  yes, took me a while the get familiar with it, but considering the O (utlet) in Source and I (nlet) in Sink helped me a bit..

  see link
• walpa

  January 9

  Thanks @steverugi, good trick!
  I always forget the meaning of the right and left arrow icons... :}

  
• walpa

  January 9 edited January 9

  @falken10vdl

  Weird to me as it makes them not symmetrical, but it is what it is

  Don't think of it as a physical object (a cable conducts electricity in either direction), but rather in terms of how that object is used (a pipe can conduct a fluid in one preferred direction or in both directions, depending on whether it's being pumped, for example).

  
• falken10vdl

  January 9 edited January 9

  @steverugi and @walpa Thanks for the clarification. My idea about "Sources and Sinks" was coming from math/electromagnetism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_and_sinks) and thought it would be the same but here is clearly more a logical convention :) .
  I have just made some small changes to the PR so it can load (bpy.ops.bim.append_library_element) the Project Library assets keeping the ports. Please bear in mind that it will load the ports if they are attached to the productType as the append operator is for the IfcProductType.
  
  The updated bonsaiPR is available at PR #7543: Simplified handling of Ports in MEP
  Cheers!

  
• theoryshaw

  January 9

  ping @Cyril
  might interest you. :)

  
• sjb007

  January 9

  Yeah, those icons are terrible from an obviousness point of view. I wonder if they couldn't be improved. I've very rarely seen custom operator icons before though. I think this is partly because any custom icons will be bitmapped only - not scaled dynamic svg like the builtin ones - so they will probably look awful. This is likely why everyone tries to overload the crap out of the Blender default icons.
  I did find several images searching on "source sink fluid flow direction icon" which looked like variations of the following:
  
  The red-ringed icons here seem to match this concept quite well and tie in fairly well with the UNDEFINED:
  
  ...but then I couldn't find a satisfying combined SOURCESINK icon... So, my answer is to totally change them all:
  
  Maybe I'm strange, but they are more obvious than the current left/right arrows.

  
• falken10vdl

  January 9

  @sjb007 To me those icons you are proposing are great. Very easy to understand.
  Cheers!

  
• walpa

  January 9

  @sjb007 Yes, more user-friendly.
• walpa

  January 9

  Project Library assets keeping the ports.

  @falken10vdl Oh! You're a real ninja! Thanks a lot!

  
• falken10vdl

  January 10

  @sjb007 Added:

  FLOW_DIRECTION_TO_ICON = {
      "SOURCE": "FULLSCREEN_ENTER",
      "SINK": "FULLSCREEN_EXIT",
      "SOURCEANDSINK": "CHECKBOX_DEHLT",
      "NOTDEFINED": "QUESTION",
  }
  

  
  You can test it in latest bonsaiPR: https://github.com/falken10vdl/bonsaiPR/releases/tag/v0.8.5-alpha2601101035
  Cheers!

  
• falken10vdl

  January 11 edited January 11

  I have updated the PR BonsaiPR v0.8.5-alpha260111-b5f7bd3 as there was a bug (thanks @DrInfiniteExplorer ! for the insights) and also made suggestions to have both the object and the port name which I think is more useful (I have removed the eyedropper as I think it does not allow to have this type of suggestions and it was not adding any other extra capabilities).
  Here yo see it:

  Cheers!

  
• KoAra

  January 16

  @sjb007 said:
  
  Maybe I'm strange, but they are more obvious than the current left/right arrows.

  That's great. Another idea.
  source : Rightwards Harpoon With Barb Up From Bar, Unicode #x2953 ⥛
  sink : Rightwards Harpoon With Barb Up To Bar, Unicode #x295B ⥓
• sjb007

  January 16

  @KoAra Unfortunately the pictorial unicode characters have pretty appalling legibility with Blender's default font and size, and you have to blow the resolution scale up pretty big before they are. Of course, this blows up everything, so it isn't really practical.