Data Visualization - Just make it blue

[Stefan B.]

Hey,

 

I want to start out by stating something about the entertainment industry where i work. Some projects are huge and the work on a drawings goes on for months. But very often complete drawings and final prints made in just one day or two. Meaning that time is of the essence. So to the post:

 

I often find the need to make some items in my drawings stand out. Both during drawing but also for the sheet layers and final prints. Like this is a special part or to separate many  different parts in a crowded area. Like scaffolding, stages, fixtures, where many items are very similar and you want to make it easier for the reader of your drawings to see what is what. And to do the mounting correct the first time.

 

Data visualization is a very good tool to make this work. I have used it a lot, and it works very good in many ways. It gives a good overview of color settings, it is easy to change visualization settings and it updates instant if a new symbol is added to the drawing. This is very good. But when you just want those symbols to be blue, the data visualization tool is very tedious. The filter system is quite horrible and quite counter intuitive. I admit this might be for a newbie as myself and this will ease up with time. But still, the process of just making those symbols blue are quite overwhelming when that is all you want.

 

I can only guess and imagine why the data visualization tool is made, but i would imagine one of the reasons for this is to make it possible to actually color those symbols without having to navigate trough to all the classed the items in the symbol is placed and change the color settings. But one thing i cannot understand, is since the data visualization tool is able to "override" all color settings trough the objects found in via the filter, why I cannot do the same thing via the attributes palette.

 

Why is there not just a checkbox in the attributes pallet that says "Override"?

 

If you then select a symbol and chooses blue fill and nothing happens, one can select "override" to make the selection act like the data visualization tool. If one selects to use the class settings, one can make the same override selection in the class settings.

 

This is just as much a discussion and a wish. I cannot imagine that I'm the only one finding this data visualization cumbersome, and wishes for something easier.

 

While I'm on the data visualization tool, it would be great to also have more options on how to "automate" the color settings. As the list is sorted and not possible to sort differently, similar items often is over/under each other. Very often one needs to separate those parts particularly. So a option for random, and not rainbow color settings would be great. 

 

To the very last, it would be great to be able to filter out data visualization for items not in the drawing. Constancy is something many value, and therefore i made a complete data visualization for all of our scaffolding matching the actual color code they real items are marked with. But, the legend in a view port lists absolutely all lines of the data visualization and not only for the symbols/items in the drawing. Giving a lot of unwanted information to the reader of the final print.

[markdd]

The AutoCAD behaviour you describe with reference to Symbols and colour has been extensivly requested on these forums by many users over the years including me, especially when transitioning over from AutoCAD and I have often wondered why it has not been implemented as it is certainly possible. I suspect that the answer lies in the fact that we have Class Overrides in Viewports and that adding this functionality will add an extra layer of confusion for (ironically) less experienced users. I imagine there are also deeper program engineering concerns with this and it would be interesting to hear about them.

 

However the functionality you describe with Symbols is available for Lighting Devices and Truss objects and can be enabled in Spotlight Preferences. As to straightforward Symbols, then for now we will have to wait or continue to be creative with filtering options when choosing criteria.

 

I agree that the Data Vis colour variables could be more extensive and I would love to be able to import a colour palette into Data Vis rather than just being able to export it, and a few more options including a "random from palette" option would be great.

 

Just a few thoughts.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by markdd

[LenLindhout]

Hi Stefan,

I use datavis a lot as I prep productions. And I think it's one of the easiest ways of making drawings readable for the people on the floor.
In my case I get a lot of truss symbols via DWG and redrawing them is not possible time wise and simply the library is not even remotely complete. Not to mention the issues you get when I convert symbols to Truss Plug-In Objects. 
The amount of redraws and updates is also immense. Offer starts with drawing version 14 and by the time production took off we were at version 27.
Updating everything all the time is not what we want. So the way I do it is as follows:

- Create Data Viz Plan per Truss Type and Color

- Set criteria to All Objects and make sure to also check Plug-In Objects

- Colors: Objects using Function Symbol Name
- Then just select all trusses that are EuroTruss HD34 Black for instance and color them the way I want

For the next truss type I repeat the same steps, and so on.
Make sure to name everything, so you don't get confused (my first mistake when I tried haha)

Then I made my viewports and selected the types of truss in the drawing and put that particular Dataviz on.
Some objects needed more Datavizes to be on and the way to do that is, click on the DataViz Icon on the top right hand side of the drawing field and click "Select Multiple Data Visualisations". Check the needed DataVizes and you're his good to go.

This way I could keep my lists short so the legends wouldn't get to big.

Hopefully this helps.