spettitt Posted November 6, 2023 Share Posted November 6, 2023 I’m looking at the workflow of Equipment Items where the appearance on the Eq Item is replaced with a symbol. A while ago, some work was done on automating the acquisition & display of the correct symbol to match the Eq item. I remember that the first iteration of it wasn’t quite there, but it appears that more work has been done since with the ‘Get 3D Symbols for Equipment’ checkbox in the Create Equipment modal. Can you clarify what the current functionality is and how it works please? Should it find symbols from stock libraries and Workgroups? How does it find the association? Just by Equipment Item Name = Symbol Name? Can an Equipment Item be saved with the symbol pre-attached, in a way that I can insert it with one operation and/or Create Equipment will find it? Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted November 7, 2023 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted November 7, 2023 Hello @spettitt, This is a bit hidden from the user and not that easy to edit. We have done an internal research to see which make/models in our database already have symbols for them in the default content. After this, a new column was added to the device database file with the symbol name in it. So basically we have hardcoded fixed symbol names for the makes/models in the default content. This is looking for symbols in the Entertainment folder and I think that it should consider workgroup data too, if it is placed in this folder. If you want to add or edit the symbol mapping, you will have to manually edit the device database file and make the changes there, as there is no UI added for this. As always, editing this file directly can cause issues if you mess up the formatting, so do this carefully with backups and on your own responsibility. If the symbol mapping is correctly set, then the equipment item will be created with this symbol selected when using Create Equipment command. Best Regards, Nikolay Zhelyazkov Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted November 7, 2023 Author Share Posted November 7, 2023 Thanks @Nikolay Zhelyazkov. That works for me using Device Builder and a stock definition. I can see the extra tabbed column in the text file. For a lot of reasons, we store our device library as symbols rather than the text definitions, so adding the symbol name in the text file isn't an option to us. At the point of insertion via Device Builder, is the target symbol name being stored in a hidden record on the Device? In which case, I could inject this field in our Device Symbol library? Or at point of Create Equipment, is it then doing a lookup back to the text file to get the symbol name? If so, I could keep the text file updated in our workgroup even if we don't use it for insertion of Devices. Presumably, as long as the Make and Model match. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted November 7, 2023 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted November 7, 2023 Create equipment uses the data from the text file. Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted November 7, 2023 Author Share Posted November 7, 2023 Thanks @Nikolay Zhelyazkov, this works great from the workgroup. Nice work. 1 Quote Link to comment
Ben3B Posted December 19, 2023 Share Posted December 19, 2023 Hello I tes the equipment item, and have a problem If I put an equipment item who use a symbol, in my case a speaker. So in sheet layer I put a graphic legend but speaker arent recognized ... If I put speaker on my drawing and attached equipment item to it, I can use my graphic legend to legend the speaker on the drawing Graphic legend is by speaker record, so may I can attach speaker record to equipment item but it's loosing time Or I can use graphic legend by nequipment item , but I've to build new one or modify existing one So it will be nice if when using equipment item who use a symbol, it "takes" it record too :) Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted January 2 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted January 2 On 12/20/2023 at 12:08 AM, Ben3B said: Hello I tes the equipment item, and have a problem If I put an equipment item who use a symbol, in my case a speaker. So in sheet layer I put a graphic legend but speaker arent recognized ... If I put speaker on my drawing and attached equipment item to it, I can use my graphic legend to legend the speaker on the drawing Graphic legend is by speaker record, so may I can attach speaker record to equipment item but it's loosing time Or I can use graphic legend by nequipment item , but I've to build new one or modify existing one So it will be nice if when using equipment item who use a symbol, it "takes" it record too 🙂 Hello @Ben3B and Happy New Year! 🙂 Can you share a test file showing this? Best Regards, Nikolay Zhelyazkov Quote Link to comment
Rabbit Abbott Posted May 3 Share Posted May 3 On 11/7/2023 at 8:34 AM, spettitt said: Thanks @Nikolay Zhelyazkov, this works great from the workgroup. Nice work. @spettitt How did you get this to work from the workgroup? I've just recently started to create realistic rack views and trying to have my symbols used for equipment items in the workgroup folder. Tried following what @Nikolay Zhelyazkov recommended but doesn't seem to be working for me. Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted May 4 Author Share Posted May 4 Find the file ConnectCAD Devices DB.txt located here in your Workgroup folder: \Libraries\Defaults\ConnectCAD\ConnectCAD_Database I strongly recommend getting ModernCSV to edit it, which lets you edit it in a spreadsheet interface to avoid accidentally messing up the syntax. The first column is Make, second is Model. These must match what is listed for Make and Model on the schematic Device. The 23rd column is the name of the symbol that will be retrieved from the Workgroup library. It will only look in the Entertainment Folder, so make sure you're storing your symbols in there. The ones in between are the ones you would use if you were storing devices in this way for use by Device Builder. We store as Symbols instead, which helps as we have signal types not covered by the stock definitions. 1 Quote Link to comment
Rabbit Abbott Posted May 10 Share Posted May 10 On 5/4/2024 at 8:13 AM, spettitt said: Find the file ConnectCAD Devices DB.txt located here in your Workgroup folder: \Libraries\Defaults\ConnectCAD\ConnectCAD_Database I strongly recommend getting ModernCSV to edit it, which lets you edit it in a spreadsheet interface to avoid accidentally messing up the syntax. The first column is Make, second is Model. These must match what is listed for Make and Model on the schematic Device. The 23rd column is the name of the symbol that will be retrieved from the Workgroup library. It will only look in the Entertainment Folder, so make sure you're storing your symbols in there. The ones in between are the ones you would use if you were storing devices in this way for use by Device Builder. We store as Symbols instead, which helps as we have signal types not covered by the stock definitions. Ahhh gotcha, you're having it do it automatically with the 'Create Equipment' command or 'Get 3D Symbols for Equipment'. I have my file with my 3D symbols in the Entertainment Folder, I was just trying to see them within the Equipment Item OIP after checking the 'Use Symbol' box and then selecting the symbol. If you look at the screenshot you'll see that it doesn't give me my file as an option to select 3D symbols from. Do your 3D symbols show up here as well? Or have you only been able to get it with doing it like you stated above? Quote Link to comment
t-bud Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 Is there a place that shows what each field of the database represents? Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted May 15 Author Share Posted May 15 33 minutes ago, t-bud said: Is there a place that shows what each field of the database represents? I don't think so - it's not a database that is really designed to be interacted with directly by the user. It is the database that is used as the source for the device builder, and if you were to click 'Save to Database' in the OIP of a device, it would go there, too. You shouldn't need to do anything with the intermediate columns as any of your changes using above tools/buttons should be dealing with that for you. Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted May 15 Author Share Posted May 15 Just now, spettitt said: I don't think so - it's not a database that is really designed to be interacted with directly by the user. It is the database that is used as the source for the device builder, and if you were to click 'Save to Database' in the OIP of a device, it would go there, too. You shouldn't need to do anything with the intermediate columns as any of your changes using above tools/buttons should be dealing with that for you. If you did want to see what the columns store, you could write a device back there and have a look what appears in the columns. I know it's physical data and socket data but have never had a reason to look at it myself. Quote Link to comment
spettitt Posted May 15 Author Share Posted May 15 On 5/10/2024 at 2:57 PM, Rabbit Abbott said: Ahhh gotcha, you're having it do it automatically with the 'Create Equipment' command or 'Get 3D Symbols for Equipment'. I have my file with my 3D symbols in the Entertainment Folder, I was just trying to see them within the Equipment Item OIP after checking the 'Use Symbol' box and then selecting the symbol. If you look at the screenshot you'll see that it doesn't give me my file as an option to select 3D symbols from. Do your 3D symbols show up here as well? Or have you only been able to get it with doing it like you stated above? Mmm, what folder in entertainment have you put them in? Unlike the Create Equipment command, last time I tried the OIP picker seems filtered to just a few named folders for some reason - audio control, lighting control and a few others. Really, it should show everything in Entertainment. Quote Link to comment
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