Guide lines drawn on components seem to be referencing some invisible object near the 0,0,0 point. Sectioning the model in a way that excludes this invisible object removes every guideline from every component everywhere in your model. This can be demonstrated by the attached skp. Turning on any of the sections will affect the guide lines attached to the components, but not the one drawn outside of the components. Try moving section 3 along the X axis.

There’s a very useful and popular extension for construction documentation that converts lines to guide lines. This bug is makes it impossible to automate construction lines while copy/pasting components if you need to section the model to create documentation (I do).

ComponentGuideBug.skp

The report generator has 2 soul crushing bugs that are destroying a TON of functionality that should intuitively exist with dynamic components to create templates, copy/paste, and generate reports from the results. Running the default report template on this model demonstrates both.

1. A component that copies itself is counted in the report, but only at the parent level. If a component copies itself with sub-components, the report contains all the parent copies, but only the sub-components from the first instance of the parent. This is demonstrated by the row of 2 small squares. The report counts 3 parents, but only 1 of each child. This makes it impossible to get data on modular sub-component systems (IE a drawer that sizes/copies itself to fill up a space with x drawers).

2. If you create a component with subcomponents, and paste multiple unique instances, EVERY subcomponent is always included in the report regardless of hiding/layering to remove parts from the model. You'll see 3 Dans and 3 Bobs in the report despite Bob being hidden, and Dan's layer being deselected. This makes the intuitive way of using layers to organize parts useless for obtaining data if your models gain/lose parts based on user choices.

These should be simple to fix, and would add incredible functionality. Please make a priority.

Generate Report Bugs Example

I guess I should be clearer that this is regarding components with sub-components. If I make separate components for a cabinet and doors, and put them on separate layers, I can hide one layer and select one of them independent of the other. If I make a cabinet component with a door sub-component, I can still assign layers and view them independently within the model, but a report generated selecting the cabinet component will always include the door sub component whether I hide/layer it out of view or not. Just like if the report was made with "Entire Model" instead of "Current Selection" it grabs everything regardless of hidden/layer status. The "Current Selection" logic is selective only to the parent level. Once it has a parent component, it doesn't care if the children are hidden/layered away. That seems like a big oversight for it to behave differently than the logic users work with in the model, and is currently crushing my dreams.

@dave r said:

Use Layers instead of Hide.

In what way? If I turn off a layer, those objects disappear on screen, but still show up in the report. The report generator doesn't do a visibility check even with "current selection" checked.

Generate report has a problem where it can't exclude geometry in the same intuitive way you'd exclude it with layers/hiding within the model. For instance I have dynamic models with a selector between left/right/double doors on a cabinet. It hides the door that shouldn't exist based on the selection, but generate report includes both no matter what I do. Does anyone know of a solution?