Stencils vs Favorites

A question on Favorites and Stencils.

Favorites seems like a great idea but it doesn’t seem to be well implemented:

  • limit on number of Favorite items;
  • absolutely no way to edit an existing Favorite (without deleted and re-adding)’
  • not much info in the Style Well as far as descritpion (ie you can’t see the Object Date value which I use for Name)
  • It is good for a quick selection of a type, as long as there aren’t other similar types.

Stencils seem to have more options, especially being able to edit them and having Object Data value appear in the sidebar.

I was wondering which you use (if either) and why? I am thinking of moving more of my Favorites into my Stencil to simplify things and ensure my naming convention stays consistent.

Thank you for your time.

(I hope this question is for the entire readership, not limited to me.)

I don’t use OG 7, thus I can’t provide meaningful comments.

For what it is worth …

Favourite

From your description, it appears to be yet another implementation by the Omni team, of a duplication of an article, rather than a reference to the article. (The result of duplication is always bad.) And here, it appears they have duplicated only part of the subject article. I don’t have OG 7, so I cannot determine that for you … it could well be a bug.

Further, I don’t see how Stencil vs Favourite is a binary issue: a Favourite is a Stencil, one has to have the Stencil first, before it can be marked as a Favourite. At least in OG 5, it is not possible to have a Favourite that is not first a Stencil. Therefore, just make changes at the Stencil level, not the Favourite level.

In OG 7, the issues (eg. how one navigates via the GUI, the several paths to an article, and what that implies) may be more confused.

Stencil

I use Stencils heavily. For decades, with drawing tools that existed before OG, and before graphical screens. So, yes, I use Stencils in OG heavily. Essential for Grouped Objects. All my real diagrams have Grouped Objects (obviously, excepting diagrams to test some feature or capability), and thus use a Stencil.

I have about 100 Stencils, nicely organised into a hierarchy of folders. Which I use to get to them. Therefore I have no need for a Favourite, or a Favourite menu, or a Favourite menu that doesn’t work as it should.

Cheers