Viewport auto-naming

[Christiaan]

There're a few wishes floating about regarding the naming of viewports, and, after discussing it with various people, including Matt at VW, I wanted to make one that specifically requests auto-naming, and describes how it might work:

• It would be a document setting called Use automatic viewport naming under Document Preferences > Display.
• It would be indented under Use automatic drawing coordination and would require automatic drawing coordination to be turned on (this is because without auto drawing coordination turned on it's possible to have Viewports with the same Drawing Number and Drawing Title on the same Sheet).
• It would be off by default when converting older files, to avoid overwriting Viewport names in older files when being brought forward. But it would be turned on by default in all of Vectorworks' template files etc. from that version onwards.
• Turning it on in an existing file would warn you that existing Viewport names will be overwritten, providing an opportunity to cancel. And maybe a chance to undo the setting if accidentally activated.
• The default naming format would be [sheet number] - [drawing number] - [drawing title]
• But Viewports would have a setting that would allow you to modify the order (so, for example, you could put the drawing title before the drawing number in some instances). You'd be able to apply this setting to multiple Viewports at once (including when you have multiple Viewports selected on a Sheet or when selecting multiple Viewports in the Nav Palette or Organisation window). Each Viewport would remember this setting even if the auto-naming document preference was turned off and on again.
• When mousing over the setting in Document Preferences the tooltip would read "Automatically names viewports with the sheet number, viewport drawing number and viewport drawing title. The order of these can be modified in the settings of each viewport." 
• Ideally there would also be a document setting to modify the divider, with the default being as above: " - "

[line-weight]

Yes to all.

[E|FA]

Yes please.

[Christiaan]

I added a poll about the divider.

[line-weight]

Thinking about how this would be useful to me - it would largely be to make viewports more identifiable in long lists, for example when choosing section line instances, elevation benchmark instances and so on.

 

So, the "drawing title" might be more useful than the "drawing number" (it would be more useful to see something identified as "east elevation" than "3" for example).

 

By the same token, "sheet title" might be more useful than "sheet number".

 

That means I might want to be able to set it to [sheet title]-[drawing title].

 

Don't think I'm too bothered about the divider but not having a space either side of it would be good in order to keep the string of text as short as possible to minimise the familiar VW problem of labels getting truncated in certain lists/menus.

[Christiaan]

55 minutes ago, line-weight said:

That means I might want to be able to set it to [sheet title]-[drawing title].

Problem is you can't have viewports with the same name. The drawing number is needed to avoid any conflicts between viewports on a sheet layer with the same drawing title.

 

55 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Don't think I'm too bothered about the divider but not having a space either side of it would be good in order to keep the string of text as short as possible to minimise the familiar VW problem of labels getting truncated in certain lists/menus.

Yes, that was my initial thought too but the space makes them more readable to my eye (when looking at them in the Nav palette). I think then your vote would be for the third option in the poll?

[line-weight]

17 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

Problem is you can't have viewports with the same name. The drawing number is needed to avoid any conflicts between viewports on a sheet layer with the same drawing title.

 

Ah yes I see. The number would perhaps have to be in there too, then, but I could choose to put it at the end of the string.

17 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

Yes, that was my initial thought too but the space makes them more readable to my eye (when looking at them in the Nav palette). I think then your vote would be for the third option in the poll?

I guess that I'd go for first option, if it was easy to implement. If choosing the 2nd or 3rd option meant we could have this sooner, I'd go for either of them.

[Christiaan]

4 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Ah yes I see. The number would perhaps have to be in there too, then, but I could choose to put it at the end of the string.

 

Yes, that's the idea of this:

 

20 hours ago, Christiaan said:

But Viewports would have a setting that would allow you to modify the order (so, for example, you could put the drawing title before the drawing number in some instances). You'd be able to apply this setting to multiple Viewports at once (including when you have multiple Viewports selected on a Sheet or when selecting multiple Viewports in the Nav Palette or Organisation window). Each Viewport would remember this setting even if the auto-naming document preference was turned off and on again.

[rDesign]

On 3/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Christiaan said:

The default naming format would be [sheet number] - [drawing number] - [drawing title]

I vote for brevity (option 3?): I like the hyphen as divider but I would want the default to be without the added spaces on both sides of the dividers. I keep my Navigation Palette as skinny as possible, so less wasted space is better.

[E|FA]

I voted for simplicity because I think this has the most chance to be implemented.  In an ideal world, I'd prefer to have options.

[Christiaan]

40 minutes ago, E|FA said:

I voted for simplicity because I think this has the most chance to be implemented.  In an ideal world, I'd prefer to have options.

I updated the poll to clarify that the 2nd and 3rd options are 'for simplicity'. Choose wisely 😆

[shorter]

The separator should be '-' to be ISO19650 (UK) compliant.

[hollister design Studio]

I vote for "3" so it would default to "-" with no spaces.

to me, spaces are both easier AND harder to read - but definitely cleaner with less chance of error.

[zoomer]

For me the best readability in vertical listings is still uppercase and underscores

UPPERCASE_UNDERSCORES.

 

This is worked well for all my :

Finder paths, File Names, VW Layers, ACAD Layers, ....

 

It is just for VW Classes, that it needs a "-", in case I want to make use of

"Hierchical Display" - which I never do anyway.

But far worse for most Resource Manager Objects, because otherwise

VW's UI isn't able to break resource names in tile view, when they do not

have "-" but use other separators like underscores "_"   ....

[Christiaan]

13 hours ago, shorter said:

The separator should be '-' to be ISO19650 (UK) compliant.

Good point. But wouldn't it also need to follow container naming codes to be fully compliant?

[shorter]

On 4/22/2023 at 7:04 AM, Christiaan said:

Good point. But wouldn't it also need to follow container naming codes to be fully compliant?

 Such as?

[Christiaan]

Another piece of data that could be handy (besides Sheet Title as Line-weight suggested) is the type of viewport. Ideally this info would convey whether it was a plan, elevation, interior elevation, section, detail or 3D view, but, alas, it would only be able to convey that it is a Viewport (V), Section Viewport (SV), Horizontal Section Viewport (HSV) or Interior Elevation (IE).

[Christiaan]

On 3/24/2023 at 11:25 PM, line-weight said:

That means I might want to be able to set it to [sheet title]-[drawing title].

I said earlier that you'd need to include [sheet number] in that string, but we'd also need to include [drawing number], because [sheet title] - [drawing title] - [sheet number] could produce naming conflicts between viewports on the same sheet. [sheet title] - [drawing title] - [drawing number] could produce naming conflicts across different sheets. So it would need to be [sheet title] - [drawing title] - [drawing number] - [sheet number].

So some examples we'd be able to use:

[sheet number] - [drawing number] - [drawing title] - [viewport type]
[sheet title] - [drawing title] - [drawing number] - [sheet number]

[drawing title] - [viewport type] - [drawing number] - [sheet number]

And you might choose to go with one order early on in a project but then switch to another order later in the project, such as when sheet numbers become more important. My sheet numbers are also very standardised, so they convey the type of drawing.

[Tobias Kern]

Hey,

 

Over the last few days, I've also been thinking about naming.

 

I would prefer an option in the data manager.

 

We would need all viewports as separate objects
and all available data fields of the viewports.

+ a lot of useful new data fields in the data manager.

 

If this were the case, then automatic naming
including more creative solutions, since other data fields can be accessed)
could be done via the data manager.

 

A separate naming field for viewports should be used (and no longer the data field: Name).
The new name field must also be designed in such a way that the names only occur once, of course.
 

Greetings from Germany
Tobi