Is it possible to relink windows and doors to walls?

Conham

After a block containing a building was exploaded all the door and windows inserts lost their connection to the walls. Left was only the holes in the wall and unlinked window and door blocks. I tried to use BmLink to relink the parametric window and door blocks to the walls, but they can´t be selected. I was suprised that the links were lost when the block was exploaded and think everything should stay unchanged when a block is exploaded. I need to make some changes and need them to be fully editable in the walls again. Is there some way to relink the blocks to the walls?

Knut Hohenberg

What is your program version? I remember that in earlier releases, including parametric objects in block definitions was sure to break them. In recent releases, this seems to be not always the case, but I would still warn against doing so (and that should IMO also be done in the docs).
Are your windows and doors still parametric, or have they been reduced to mere anonymous blocks? In the first case, deleting all openings (hint: hitting Ctrl shortly while window-selecting will select all included faces at once) and relinking with BmLink should work, while in the second case, you are lost .

Conham

Thanks Knut for your help. My program version is BC Ultimate 21.2.06. My windows and doors are still parametric. I tried to follow your suggestion and select windows with Ctrl+select, but only the window block is selected (frame or glass is marked blue), but no faces of the hole in the wall are selected. When manually deleting/healing the hole the windows are hided inside the wall (I guess), but not visible/selectable after that. Nothing seems to work for me.

If I use BmLink and select the window, the window is not possible to select. If i first select the window and then use BmLink I got this:

BMLINK
Entities in set: 1Invalid selection

I tried BmUnlink, it gived me the option to select the window but explains after hitting enter that "No components selected"

BMUNLINK
Select component instances [selection options (?)]:
Entities in set: 1
Select component instances [selection options (?)]:

No components selected

I attached a dwg with a wall and unlinked windows if that could help to find a solution.

Knut Hohenberg

I guess the whole thing has to be regarded as work in progress:

• when I open your drawing in V20, the blocks are not recognized as parametric - this is what I had experienced before, and thought to be irrecoverable.
• when I open the drawing in V21, the blocks are parametric, but do not get accepted as components (for reasons I don't know), so BmLink does not work.
• when I open the drawing in the recently released V22 beta, I am able to BmLink the blocks to the wall, after deleting the detached openings. However, the blocks will not properly show in the mechanical browser, and when you open the resulting file in V21, the link between the blocks and the wall solid is not recognized.

The semi-corrected file is attached, it might make sense for you to apply for participation in beta testing, but anyway you should file a SR and attach the original drawing - maybe Bricsys has other means to repair it, and hopefully will improve V22 to fully cope with such situations.

Conham

So it seems as this situation is unsolvable at the moment in V21. Nice that you tried it in V22 and that BmLink works even if there is still some problems to be solved. I'm now forced to do some extra hours of work to recreate the walls from an earlier backuped version. Thank you for taking time to check this problem, I will file a SR on this!