Chad Hamilton HAarchs

Thanks Pat and Wes for the worksheet - this looks great.

Perfect - that's exactly what I was looking for. thanks!

You are right, you don't understand my question. This is not a question about two way editing. But the "Finishes Schedule" above is listing data from the Finish Key field, I think, and that's what I'm after. Look in the finishes field in your schedule - the wall finish reads "[W-1] TBA". You don't show the W-1 finish on your finish legend, but if you did, you would see in the key field "W-1" - no brackets. The finishes field in your "Finishes Schedule" does not have the brackets. The sample Finish schedule VW provides in the resource browser fakes this - if you expand their finishes column, you'll see that the data is a concatenation of data from the finishes editor - it adds the key and the description of the finish into the finish record field in the space database, and reports it in the finish schedule. They hide the finish description by narrowing the column width, but the brackets still show up. If you would upload the second worksheet called "Finishes Schedule", I would like to look at the header definitions.

Does anyone know how to access the Key field from the Finishes database? For example, [CT-1] would be the key with the description Ceramic Tile, 4" x 4", etc. In VW we enter finishes by editing a database and entering these values, but in a finish schedule report, we only have access to a concatenation of Key and Description (which would be Floor Finishes Edit, or Space.Finish Floor and read as "[CT-1] Ceramic Tile, 4" x 4", etc." in the finish schedule), or alternatively the finish description only (which would be Static Floor Finishes, or Space.Floor Finish and read as "Ceramic Tile, 4" x 4", etc." in the finish schedule). Ideally, we would want to use the Key field in a finish schedule, not a length description.

If there is much repetition in unit types, you might try creating unit types as symbols - this should save crunching geometry. Another different strategy would be to separate core and shell into one model, and residential units into another. I'm not a fan of separating models by floor, because then coordination between floors becomes more difficult.

Nice!

Yes, you are right - here is the formula pasted from the file - "I3" would be "A" from the written example. =IF(I3-INT(I3)>=0.01, (INT(I3)+1), INT(I3))

From the date of the post, I'm pretty sure this is a VW 2017 file - we tend to stay up to date. Here is a copy of the file exported to VW 2013. But you should upgrade, the enhancements are worth it. Space_Label_v2013.vwx

Is there a reference file available that provides definitions for ifc data fields? I've looked on the BuildingSmart web page, but can't seem to find it. The page http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/ifc/review/IFC4Add2/ifc4-add2-rv/html/ has definitions from ifc to english - it would be very useful to have an index from english to ifc, to give a sense of where to look for something.

Note that the worksheets that appear on each sheet layer are set to report only keynote records on that sheet. If you edit a keynote from the worksheet on the sheet layer, you won't be editing all the keynotes if any show up on a different sheet layer. We find having a keynotes worksheet on a separate layer, set to report all keynote records throughout the file, is a good way to implement this. You could do it other ways - you could put the keynotes editor worksheet on every sheet layer, or you could just open it from the resource brower.

Here is an actual file that has the worksheet, plus the symbol elements - this later version works bi-directionally. A couple of caveats - when placing the worksheet on a drawing to act as keynotes, edit the database criteria to return keynote records from that drawing only (edit the criteria for the sheet or viewport name). When editing keynotes - we set up a design layer in our files called "Notes Management", with a version of the keynotes worksheet set to report all values for keynote symbols. Values in all keynote fields must be exactly the same - this is relatively easy to monitor and correct in the Notes Management layer. To change the text of a particular keynote globally - edit the keynote in Notes Management. 17070_RES_Model_171029_Stand_Alone.vwx

Yes, common info on title block file. We create a viewport reference to the common title block. Then a viewport of that reference for each sheet layer in a drawing file.

We set up a title block file for each project, and use a viewport reference of that title block in each other file we set up for the project. We usually have a separate model file for each building (of a campus, for instance), and with some larger buildings, we may split the building into multiple files. We separate 2d details into separate files, also referencing the same title block file.

We keep the building model in one shared file, which tends to approach 200 mb as a file. We keep the title block in a separate, referenced file, and 2d details in individual files. We keep alll sections, elevations and schedules derived from the model in the model file. Due to sheet size (typically we stick with 30 x 42 inch sheets), we will frequently split our models to follow what fits on a standard sheet - this also tends to keep our models within the same storage size range. For publishing, we link related files, so we can publish the entire project from the model file. Other than periodic file sharing bugs in the conversion from VW 2017 to VW 2018, this system works well with minimal problems.

To set basic parameters of Doors, Windows and other objects, you can set up a standard template for future use – 1. Create a new, blank document (or use a previous template if you have one) 2. Review the parameters of each object and set them to normal dimensions or values. 3. Do this for all the tools you want to affect. 4. Set default line weights, text size and formatting, etc. 5. Under the File menu, select "Save As Template" - navigate to your User Data and Preferences folder, which is defined under the User Folders pane of Vectorworks Preferences (User/Libraries/Application Support/Vectorworks/2018/Libraries/Defaults/Templates on a Mac - similar for Windows. 6. Once you save your template, create new documents by selecting "from document template" rather than "create blank document" in the new document dialog box. Your standard preferences will show up in documents created from this template.