Floyd

Just wanted to say thanks again for the input. Having looked into this I see roughly "how to do it" and will hopefully have some time to try to get this running in the next 2-3 weeks, but I agree with Don, it should be easier to automate such tasks and documentation is really really bad... especially the lack of good examples to get you started.

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like I'll have to get familiar with Vectorscript. Is this the only page with examples: http://www.vectorworks.net/support/custom/vscript/example? I have only had a quick look at it, I was looking for a simple example like "go through all objects of a document and count them" or such, I have not seen any information on such loops yet? Is there some other site/community with such basic examples/Howtos? Frank

Hi, I find it hard to figure out a starting point for a little tool I need. Especially, I'm not sure if I need to dig into Vectorscript or if I'd have to use the SDK/C++ for this: I regularly need to make calculations based on symbol types and counts from VW drawings and import reports into a SQL database. What I currently do is, that I manually create a bunch of worksheets (List "objects with a record", but as the symbols have different records, I need to set up at least 6-8 sheets each time) and then export them as CSV files that I adjust manually and import them to our SQL database. This is too time-consuming and fault-likely and I'd like to automate at least most of the tasks involved. I can do the conversions I do manually (field names, factors...) by a little php script on the SQL-Server, but I need to automate the Vectorworks side. Ideally, I'd have eventually have a Button or menu option to click that exports all Objects from my drawings that have records attached including their layer and class information (ideally XYZ positions, too) and save them in one or more CSV files. If the files could be uploaded to the SQL-Server via FTP or maybe HTTP-POST or any other way, that would be even better. I could sort out everything else on the server easily. I do know php and some python. I've also used C++ some 15 years ago, but hopefully would be able to get some c++ code working if I have the right entry points/examples. Can anybody point me to a good example/starting point for this? Thanks Frank