Chris Curtis

I found that there were several aspects of the standard Vectorworks plant database (I'm using the Australian version) that didn't suit us - many of the data fields were of no use to us and there were others that we wanted that weren't there. A big limitation was not being able to search properly for a height or width range. Using Filemaker, I added the extra fields we wanted and then created our own layout that provided the formatting we needed. Thus we have a customised database that integrates with Vectorworks. There was a bit of a glitch in the upgrade to VW2017. There must have been some internal changes within the database that meant we couldn't automatically convert out modified database to the new version. I had to re-create our new database fields and layout in the new VW plants database, but that wasn't too big an issue. I've been assured that the upgrade path should normally work properly Doing this, we have al the power of FileMaker for reporting when we need it. The big enhancement I'd like would be for VW to store the tag id in the database so we can use consistent and unique tags across all our jobs. Cheers! Chris

I've never written vectorscript but I've programmed in lots of other languages. What I'd like to do is take a text file containing a list of plant names that I've extracted from my plants database and create plant objects in the resource browser that I can then manually place on my drawing. I've full control over the creation of the text file and the database it comes from. The file can contain any information required and be in any format that makes the import easier. Can anyone point me towards some documentation that explains where I should start with this? Thanks.