Content Center Editor (making a custom content center)

[matt.smeraglio]

Our company uses a lot of content center parts. So about a month ago, we decided we were going to customize the content center, using the content center editor. We decided to change the description, part number and file name, as well as adding a few of our own custom parameters.

Going through this process, I found quite a few problems. For one, I would make a change to a field, then save it, and try to insert that part into an assembly. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, and I would have to go back into the content center editor, and make the same change to the same field. I had to do this at least two or three times for each library that I modified (ie Angles, Channels, I-Beams, etc) to finally save the iproperty.

Another problem was that sometimes, no matter how many times I saved a change to a property, it would not save. I still have content center libraries that are missing descriptions, and they just won't save.

My third biggest problem is that the "Change Size" tool does not work on most of my customized parts. I cannot replace my custom content center parts with different sizes.

Has anyone discovered the tricks to make the content center really work? It seems to have a ton of power, but is too unstable to trust.

Thanks for looking

[matt.smeraglio]

I suppose that I should reply to my own post, because I was able to make content center editor work for me. Here are a few tricks I discovered.

I realized that it is NEVER a good idea to delete an existing column within the content center editor. There were times where I did not want a parameter to show in the placement of the content center parts. In this case, within content center editor, I simply removed the mapping of that field to its parameter.

In general, if something isn't working within the editor, don't save the changes, just close it, and re-open. I had to do this numerous times. For example, when you add a new column, then fill that column with data, often times the data would fill a completely different column altogether, and overwrite important data. When this happened, I would close the Editor without saving, re-open, and insert the data again.

I hope this helps someone.