You can skin this cat 1000 different ways, but it's essentially an asset management issue.
One possible solution is to apply metadata to your squares as custom properties or userdata blobs to define what type of square it is. The square would likely be exported as an .emdl (or custom file format) and stored in a source control system like perforce, tank, alienbrain, etc... This metadata applied to the square would be entered into a database table recording the square's file name, coordinates in the city, what types of squares its compatible with, and some general data like when it was created, who created it, etc... A different table in the database would likely store the mappings of which squares are used in which scenes/projects. Custom tools would be used to load/save these squares in the various scenes by looking up the square metadata in the database tables and assembling them accordingly per user's specifications. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Christian Gotzinger Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 2:56 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: OT: Organizing files that belong together Hi list, We have a digital city model that's divided up into several hundred squares. Our projects require us to make different versions of these squares for planning purposes. So for any given square, we may have 4 or 5 different versions. The more projects we do, the more complicated it gets for us to keep track of what belongs (and what fits) together. When we need to quickly prepare a file that contains "City model with Project X + Project Y", we have two main problems: a) For squares with multiple versions we need to figure out which of these versions are part of Project X and which are Project Y. b) We need to figure out how squares may be combined. Let's say that the square F003_C belongs to Project X, but square G003 is not part of Project X. We now can't be sure which version(s) of G003 properly match(es) F003_C at the seam. I'm unsure how common a problem this is and whether I explained it properly. Does anybody have any pointers as to what may be a good way to tackle this? Maybe some kind of specialized software? Thank you Christian
