btgroves

@Conrad Preen and @Pat Stanford Is there a Vectorworks resource that covers complex worksheet creation with step-by-step, video, or long-form teaching on this topic? I do understand the basics of Criteria and Functions but I've only ever been able to successfully create somewhat simple custom worksheets like I showed above with a Criteria looking at a layer and a specific single device record. After looking at the Edit Report dialog in the Device Connections Report a lot of these functions and syntax seem somewhat advanced, and I'm struggling to find content offering help. We do have a need to create custom worksheets and reports for our organization and I would like to do some more advanced report and worksheet creation more like what is contained in the Device Connections Report but with our own formatting and filtering, instead of a very extensive report on the entire drawing like what exists in the Device Connections Report. Any support you all could offer would be greatly appreciated.

@Conrad Preen I can certainly send you this file although I believe some of these bugs could be related to a separate post I made and I've been messaging with Nikolay Zhelyazkov about. This issue I was experiencing seems to have been resolved when I applied a Fill to the following classes CC-Rack3D-Graphics-LeftPanel CC-Rack3D-Graphics-RightPanel CC-Rack3D-Graphics-TopPanel CC-Rack3D-Graphics-Posts CC-Rack3D-Ruler CC-Rack3D-Text-Name

I've spent quite a bit of time building worksheets for our organizations needs with all the different types of ConnectCAD data but I'm having difficulty building a worksheet that will show connected circuits and the associated data but also un-connected circuits? Basically our installers would prefer to see a 1-to-1 table including circuits as well as that devices unconnected sockets. I have a feeling that Data Manager is a tool that can be used to create a record I could possibly pull the relevant data from both the Device Record and Circuiting Record and incorporate data from both records into a custom one of my own. Anybody have experience with this? I've attached a screenshot with what I'm experiencing, as you can see there is a skip from Input 15 to Input 19.

Yet another bug in ConnectCAD 2024... I have a file with seven rack elevations that were already built, I opened this file in 2024 to make edits. All the rack elevations already built, showed up correctly, but it seems the "Equipment Item" records are no longer associated with the Equipment Items in the updated 3D Racks. This also causes the new "Make Rack Equipment Worksheet" to not populate with any data whatsoever. To test this I deleted two equipment items that were in the 3D Rack that had been converted, I used Layout > Create Equipment to re-create these two deleted items, then dragged and mounted then into the same 3D Rack. After doing this these two items showed up in the "Make Rack Equipment Worksheet" and any other worksheets we'd created to look for the "Equipment Item" record associated with this specific Rack ID. I can post screenshots if necessary, or send over a file if needed, can we please get some traction on this? This seems to be a significant issue with upgrading existing 2023 files...

spettitt, This original issue was resolved with a quit and re-launch of VWX 2024, but today I have experienced the same issue when opening a file that was created in 2023 and I'm regenerating the Rack Elevations using the new features. I cannot seem to resolve this issue with a re-launch like my file above, my viewport settings were initially created with Hidden Line although out organization uses color coding on equipment for indications, so I have to adjust these to be Background Render: Shaded Polygon, Foreground Render: Hidden Line. Any help would be appreciated, currently the only fix is to create filled objects or text boxes to make this viewport readable.

I have created a simple 4-Post Rack, 10U, from scratch, loaded my equipment, when I use any of the following commands "Edit Front of Rack" "Edit Rear of Rack" or "Create Rack Elevation" It shows both forward and reversed text for the Rack ID and Rulers. There does not appear to be any class or way to turn off the inverted text. Any solutions here? It seems I will just have to manually draw in text boxes or shapes with fills to solve this? It seems that these new rack features have been released without full bug testing, this is somewhat frustrating because there is usually a relatively long time between service pack releases. Can there be a hotfix released to help address the number of bugs in ConnectCAD specifically? I have attached a screenshot below to show this...

When using the new Rack Elevation tools I placed my racks before laying out a room, I created a rack elevation, then use "layout room" around these racks, after doing this all my equipment item associations with that rack frame where broken and I had to re-build the rack elevation again. It seems this forces all the equipment on the Front and Rear of the rack onto the CC-Equipment-NonRack class breaking all these associations. Is this behavior normal? In 2024 do layout rooms HAVE to be done first? As you can imagine this was quite frustrating having to re-do this work especially with no more 2D tools and only using temporary 2D views. As a point of feedback, the temporary 2D views seem quite cumbersome for rack elevation building, especially when these are per rack frame, is there a way this could be streamlined to edit multiple rack frames in the same area simultaneously?

@Nikolay Zhelyazkov Thank you for the tips! This worked well although I actually had better luck with using "Final Shaded Polygon" for the Background Render setting. When using Shaded, due to the render type or possibly the light emitter and shadows the text and line rendering did not seem as "sharp" as previous 2D rack viewports we would use in VW 2023. I've attached a picture below. On a separate subject I would also add, the new "Show Ruler" toggle and the repositioning of the numbers to centered on rack spaces is a feature we are VERY happy to have! Many equipment rack manufacturers assign numbers to the center of each space, our install team will appreciate the update! Thanks again for the help!

In 2023 we would use different fills to signify different types of rack gear or if an item was Owner Furnished. Now these fills for Equipment Items all go missing when we use the ConnectCAD > Layout > Create Rack Elevation command. It appears this is cutting a section viewport so I tried to change the Background Render to Shaded, this causes the viewport to just no longer appear correctly. If I edit Section-In-Place and rotate off-axis and turn on shaded I can see these attributes. Can someone explain how to display these attributes in the "Create Rack Elevation viewport? I'm attaching some screenshots to show what I'm referring to above.

@Conrad Preen I have sent this file over, thanks again!

Has anyone else noticed since update to SP4 the circuit arrows drawing across two devices seem to "fold back" over themselves? It seems when I have two devices next to each other it tried to draw these arrows on top of these devices instead of to the outside the sockets. This also only seems to happen when sockets are "in-line" with each other, you can see below when I connect sockets that are not on the same horizontal alignment it draws there arrows correctly? I've Inserted a screenshot below

@Conrad Preen I was able to solve this issue, we are using custom params as an organization in our workgroup folder but I also had a custom params file in my own Application Support folder on my machine. This was causing a conflict because the two did not match. I do have a follow-up question though, I think for our workflow using Custom Parameters is a preferred method because it does not require the action of attaching a record to every new device as we build out our ConnectCAD device library. Is this feature being considered for removal or no longer supported? I would suggest Custom Parameters features offer a valuable data field for reports and project data.

I am trying to add a Custom Parameter to the CustomParams.txt file and I have successfully located the new location after the update to 2023. I had added some custom parameters in 2022 before updating about 6 months ago, these appear and function just fine. After editing the CustomParams file none of my changes show up on the OIP. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions?