What Do the Catalog's Columnheads Mean?

To view the catalog, open the catalog in a spreadsheet editor like Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets, and manually edit it.

You can access Open Catalog here.

Here are explanations of what each column in the catalog does. In default order:

Column AUTHOR

AUTHOR determines who authored the item. Typically an organization or an individual. Stating the author is useful for identifing the source of an item, especially when mixing assets from different sources, and the sources need to be tracked.

This field may be used in a future update.
This field is optional.

Columns BRANCH-A, BRANCH-B, BRANCH-C

BRANCHES determine the category tree branches through which assets will be accessed and reported in Compfire. Best practise guidelines for branching and branch naming are articulated elsewhere in this legend. Thoughtful catalog branching will considerably facilitate overviewing, managing and working with large asset libraries.

This field technically is optional, but highly recommended.

Column ITEM

ITEM is the most important column.

An Item is simply a Sketchup Component which has been Forged in Compfire and then exported by Compfire to the Compfire Library. A regular Sketchup component is not forged, and it will be ignored by the Compfire Library.

The Item cell determines the unique item ID – an identifier that connects each Catalog entry to a Sketchup component definition. The Item must be identical to the as-forged Sketchup component definition for Compfire to work.

The Item ID works similarly to a social security number for Sketchup components. The item ID may be anything that is a valid filename. It is highly recommended to keep filename identical to each as-forged component definition.

It is is advised to give items compact and descriptive names, and to stick to the initial given name. It is also possible to change the definition anytime after forging. To do so, in Compfire, Edit the item, and in the Edit dialog change the Item name, and then export.

If you separate initial item name characters from following item name characters with a - then Compfire will automatically suppress the display of the initial part from the Finder and from the Takeoff. This can be useful to prepend your components with e.g. your name to keep them grouped together in lists in other contexts, such as Sketchup's own Components dialog, while keeping a compact item name in Compfire.

The Item field is required.

Column DESCRIPTION

DESCRIPTION is a text that may describe and differentiate assets in fuller detail. It can include any number of keywords. The description can be used for identifying and reporting individual assets, including the practise sometimes called multitagging. This field may overwrite the Sketchup component's description. Compfire's Finder text searches will search and find any words contained here.

This field is optional, but often highly useful.

Column TAG

TAG determines which visibility tag that Compfire should automatically apply to the item when imported into Sketchup. In Sketchup, Tags are useful to control visibility states per object type. The tag structure should reflect common visualisation and scene differentiation needs. Compfire will save the tag material as a material to the Library folder named Tags for reuse.

This field is optional.

Column MATERIAL

MATERIAL determines which Sketchup material that Compfire should automatically apply to the item shell when the item is imported into Sketchup. When an item has a shell material, and Compfire exports it, Compfire will save this material to the Libray folder named Materials for reuse. When this field is empty, the item will be imported with default shell material.

This field is optional.

Column INSTANCE

INSTANCE determines which instance name Compfire should automatically apply to the imported component instance when the item is imported into Sketchup. This is useful e.g. to identify containers in the Outliner. When this field is empty, the item will be imported with no instance name.

This field is optional.

Column VIEW

VIEW determines which view – meaning the camera, style, shadow and fog properties – that Compfire should apply when creating or updating this item's thumbnail.

In professional workflows, it is often highly useful to differentiate view per type of item. For instance, door thumbnails are most charateristic when viewed from a Front view, whereas carpets may best be identified from a Top view.

Pick a view that makes your items look more characteristic and easily identifiable.

The view will be applied when refreshing a thumbnail. The default view is Default. Other valid views include Front, Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Top-Fill, Quad-1, Quad-2, Quad-3, Quad-4.

Compfire ships with some dozen views built-in. It is also possible to load, edit and save custom views. Do so via menu posts
Compfire > Edit > Load Item View
and
Compfire > Edit > Save Item View

This field is optional.

Column FIRE

FIRE controls which tool or mode the item should initiate when imported from Compfire into the Sketchup model. The default initiation mode is Place. This will start Holygon's Place. The same is true if the field is empty. If Placify is installed, Placify's Place will be used. Otherwise, Compfire will fallback to a simpler Place.

Compfire is designed to work well in tandem with Placify. Having Placify installed affords Placify Place at item import, which is more powerful than Compfire Place.

An alternative import mode is values None or Native, which starts Sketchup's built-in component place. Note that Sketchup's build-in component place will bypass and not apply Compfire's automatic tags, materials, names, or other instance transformations.

In the future, Holygon plans to add further Fire modes for powerful import features.

This field is optional.

Column COUNT

COUNT controls which item property to count, where Instance sums number of in-model occurrences, Length sums all item instances' bounding box red axis distances, Area sums the items' largest single face, and Volume sums the volumes of item solid containers. Values Ignore, Skip, None, will make Compfire ignore Count altogether. Currently, unit display is handled by Sketchup. The default is Instance, and this will be used if the field is left empty.

This field is optional.

Column PRICE

PRICE determines what the item costs. The price must be a valid number. The Takeoff, or Bill of Materials, will calculate costs based on this price. Pricing can be based on the number of components in model, or also on their area, length or volume. Currently, unit display is handled by Sketchup. In Sketchup, the item Price corresponds to the Component value found in: Entity Info > Advanced Attributes

The default is blank.

This field is optional.

Column META

META is Compfire's own column. Compfire uses it to make some internal features work. For instance to make Finder sort items by box dimensions.

Please do not edit META cell content. You should never need to manually edit META cell content.

Compfire will automatically update and write this data for you at item export.

When you move an item row across the spreadsheet, always bring its META cell along.

Column IGNORE

IGNORE determines whether the item will ignored or included in Compfire. This enables you to use the Catalog to plan, list, and oversee items that are not currently intended for inclusion in Compfire. Ignore enables to temporarily or permanently deactivating items from Compfire, whilst keeping all components and their metadata intact.

This can be very useful e.g. when making room for future items, or for keeping records of discontinued items. Enter Ignore or Skip to make Compfire not show the item in the Finder or in Count. The default is blank. When the field is blank, Compfire will include the items.

This field is optional.

Column STATUS

STATUS is currently unused. It may be activated in a future update.

The default is blank.

This field is optional.

Column COMMENT

COMMENT lets you freely record per-item text comments. This can be useful e.g. for describing the item or its metadata to colleagues, without exposing them in Sketchup. The comment can thus take the role of metametadata.

The Finder and the Takeoff will ignore any comments.

The default is blank.

This field is optional.