Hi there
I have been experimenting with (and loving!) the new VCGA components available at 2026.0. However, as I build more complex rules I am running into a slight usability challenge when configuring inspector attributes for my VCGA rule. Specifically, there seems to be no way to group or re-order attributes in the inspector directly in the VCGA configuration itself. Here's an example of an instance where this is an issue:
- I want to allow users to choose between using a rectangular balcony or a round balcony for a given facade. To do so, I add a radio button selector that connects to the ESRI.lib nodes Rectangular_Balcony and Round_Balcony. The selector appears in the Inspector window for the rule, as expected.
- However, I additionally want to allow the user to choose the type of railing used by the balcony. The Rectangular_Balcony and Round_Balcony nodes both allow a different menu of options for this setting. My preference is to have two different attribute selectors available in the inspector, one tied to round balconies and one tied to rectangular balconies. To accomplish this, I have basically two options:
- First, I could click the "Show component attributes in inspector" toggle for each node. However, this is not ideal because it both exposes more attributes than I actually want to expose (I only want the railing type!), and groups these new attributes under separate rule headings in the Inspector window. This would mean the user needs to scroll down, identify which heading is relevant to their current balcony selection (there is no visual indicator of which is active until you expand a heading), find the relevant attribute, and modify it. Not super ideal from a usability perspective.
- Second, I could use the "Link attribute in the inspector" option to expose just the Railing_Type attribute for both Rectangular_Balcony and Round_Balcony. This has the advantage of keeping both attributes listed under the primary rule's heading in the inspector (and being greyed out when not applicable to the chosen balcony type). However, there is no clear way to order or group these attributes at this stage. Instead, it seems like the order/grouping of these attributes comes from the source CGA rules - if the source CGA rules has @group or @order attribute tags configured, then those tags are used to arrange the attributes in my VCGA rule. This becomes a usability problem when my rule becomes more complex, with dozens of different attributes. See the attached image for an example - balcony-related attributes are spread throughout and groupings appear arbitrary and incomplete. I could theoretically go through and modify the source CGA files for each node to achieve better groupings. However, this means changing my core ESRI.lib nodes, presenting challenges if I want to share this rule with others, or when I eventually upgrade my ESRI.lib to keep up with future releases (which will presumably reset any modifications I make).
Am I missing some easy way to re-order attributes associated with a VCGA rule?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
