TOPIC: Selection Panels v Damage Panels

Is there any good reason why you would select a "Selection Panel" over a "Damage Panel" when you are designing your Template , especially when the "Damage Panel" gives you the same plus extra options.

Selection Panels are for Materials/Manufactures, Locations, etc. By separating them you can make the comments a separate color and get a separate description text in front of them over the damage panels.

From my limited experience in using HIP. I always find drawbacks with "Selection Panels" and end up changing the Selection panel option to a Damage Panel option.

When you use a "Selection Panel" it restricts your ability to use black, red and captions.
Therefore, is it not better to use two "Damage Panels" instead of one Selection Panel and one Damage Panel.

In summary, "Selection Panels" do the same as "Damage Panels" but gives you far less options.

If you decide that these extra option would benefit your style of report writing "your ability to use black, red and captions" for any particular section sometime in the future is prevented if you first opted for a "selection panel" instead of a "damage panel"

By default should all options (selection panel) include the features available in the "Damage Panel"

I don't think you see the point of the two. The are meant to work in tandem. Two damage panels are two totally separate items in the report. A selection and damage panel are meant to be combined. For example the selection panel is Floor Material and the Damage Panel is the Floor Condition. When you title the Damage Panel to be Floors you end up with

Floors:
Material Type: xxxx (selection panel)
Observations: xxxxx (damage panel)

Does that make sense?

Hi Dominic

I find for example that when I set up my Template to use the "Selection Panel", I maybe find myself inspecting the floor or roof materials in a property that may contain asbestos.
The "Select Panel" allows me to select the material or product details, but quite often the material or product is known to be defective or has issues, which means that I now need to enter details relating to this material / product in another section (Damage Panel) of the report. If I had firstly set up my Template to use the current "Damage Panel" instead of a "Select Panel" when a material or product has a defect I would not need to further select the defect in the "Damage Panel" as I would have already highlighted the issue in the first selection panel. An average this happens a number of times on each inspection.

If the "Select Panel" allowed you an option to place the product / comment in the Red box (to end up in Summary and allow pictures to be inserted) it would reduce additional clicking and selecting for minor items.

This is not a major issue, but I now automatically use the "Damage Panels" as a first choice if possible, as by default they do the same thing as "select panels" but they give you extra options.

The nice thing about HIP is the flexibility. If you just want to use damage panels then you can definitely do so. We purposely separate selection panels out as comments that are facts, not observations for guys to separate out on the report. Many states require reporting of the material types so being able to clearly separate these out helps with state standards and the appearance of the report by allowing the usage of another color.