Differences between Chorus and NBS Building/ Landscape

NBS Chorus can import files produced using NBS Building and Landscape. This article explains some of the little differences between Building/ Landscape and Chorus.

Topics

• Titles are sentence case instead of ALL CAPS
• Clause title inserts are imported as a 'description' row
• Revisions are replaced by suffixes
• Clauses are parked instead of excluded
• Headings are imported as groups or clauses
• Groups are retitled when all of their clauses are parked
• Clause text/ items/ rows are numbered instead of bulleted

Titles are sentence case instead of ALL CAPS

NBS Building/ Landscape presents section and clause titles in ALL CAPS. NBS Chorus uses sentence case. When files are imported from Building/ Landscape into Chorus titles are changed into sentence case. 

This has been done so that as the specification is developed further, sections that were imported are consistent with sections added in Chorus from the CAWS content sets. 

Clause title inserts are imported as a 'description' row

In Building/ Landscape some clauses have an insert (blue square brackets) after the clause title. They look like this:

When this is imported into Chorus the description row is used to accommodate the insert. It will look like this:

Further information:

• Many specifiers enter text into the insert (blue square brackets) in ALL CAPS so that it matches the case of the clause title. When the clause is imported Chorus changes the text from ALL CAPS to sentence case. This is done to avoid the description text looking inconsistent with the rest of the clause.
• If text is entered after the clause title without using an insert (blue square brackets) in Building/ Landscape, the text will be imported into Chorus as a row without a description label.

Revisions are replaced by suffixes

When a clause is copied in Building/Landscape it is given a 'revision' letter. This is positioned at the end of the clause code. In Chorus different types of the same clause are identified by a suffix which is after the clause title.

When files are imported into Chorus the revision will be appended to the clause code in Chorus. This has been done so that references and annotations in design documents and drawings continue to be correct after the specification is imported into Chorus.

Please note: As clauses are duplicated in Chorus, they will be identified as different by a suffix.

Clauses are parked instead of excluded

Clauses exist in 3 states in Building/ Landscape; Included, pending and excluded (with green tick, yellow question mark, brown cross icons). In Chorus there is only two states; included or parked. 

When a new section is added to the spec all of the clauses are included. To hide a clause that is not required it is parked. 

Parked clauses are not published.

Headings are imported as groups or clauses

Heading clauses in Building/ Landscape are imported as groups or parts in Chorus. 

The exception to this is when a heading in Building/ Landscape is followed by another heading clause or the heading clause has been given clause text. In these cases the heading will be imported as a clause in Chorus. The hidden heading number in Building/ Landscape will become the clause number in Chorus.

In Chorus groups can be collapsed and expanded in the editor to make it easier to navigate between parts of the section.

Screenshot of headings in NBS Building, section J10

Screenshot of a heading that is imported as a clause in NBS Chorus, section J10

Groups are retitled when all of their clauses are parked

In UK - CAWS a section e.g. F10 is made up of several groups (referred to as headings in Building/ Landscape) e.g. 'Types of Walling', 'Testing', 'Additional requirements' and so on. Groups contain clauses.

In Chorus if all of the clauses in a group are parked the group title will automatically change to indicate it is not used.

E.g. 'Additional requirements' will become 'Additional requirements - not used'. The group heading will be published.

For the UK - CAWS Work sections, groups will be renamed with the addition of 'Not used'.

For the UK - CAWS Preliminaries, groups are renamed with the addition of 'No amendments'

Clause text/ items/ rows are numbered instead of bulleted

Clause text/ items in Building/ Landscape are identified with a bullet and hyphen (depending on level of indent). In Chorus clause rows are numbered.