Worksheet with summary of objects in referenced files

[FKA]

Hello!

 

first of all, I am from Germany and I am working with the german version, so I may not name all functions with the original wording of the international version of Vectorworks.

 

I am working on a Project that has 20+ VW Files.

Each is containing a building and the design layer have identical naming across all files.

In the drawings are different kind of objects (symbols and PIO) that share the same record format that contains planing information for these objects.

 

I created an "Overall" file, in which I have referenced all the 20+ files and I have viewports of each referenced file on different designlayers.

 

I would like to use a worksheet to see all objects, that have the record format attached to get an overview of all objects and see their individual planing informations.

Therefor I imported my worksheet from one of the files. This WS shows the record format fields of all objects that are linked to the record format.
I edited the filter in my worksheet, so it does also contain objects in viewports placed on design layers (see screenshot of German version).
The filter is set to filter all objects that are linked to the Record format.

 

My Problem:

It does not find any Objects in the referenced viewports (the visibility of all layers and classes in the viewports are all checked)

 

I have tried:

If I change my filter to object type = symbol, it does find all symbols across the referenced files, but the fields in my worksheet that are linked to the record format fields remain empty.

The only data I can see is general Data, like the class in which the Object is classified or the coordinate within the original file.

 

I started a new "Overall" file with the reference method set to "import design layers" and referenced only 1 file. That fixes the problem and everything is there as expected.
BUT this will not work for all files, because the naming of the Designlayers is the same in every File and this leads into a name conflicts when I reference more than one file. Renaming these layers will, not work for all the other people that are working with the files, so I have to stick to the viewport reference method.

 

final Question:

What am I missing? Or is it not possible to get a summary of all objects in referenced files and their record formats in a worksheet while using the viewport reference method?

 

Thanks for the help

 

Florian

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by FKA

[Pat Stanford]

I don't think what you want is possible.

 

Just like a Reference Design Layer Viewport isolates the layers and classes from the current file, it appears that the same is true of Record.Field information.

 

I tried to create a Data Tag to read the information from the objects in the referenced viewport and the data tag could not see the Record.Field either.

 

Hopefully someone will point out what we are both missing and this will be an easy solution.

[John Meunier]

Could the reporting be done in each file, then export the worksheet out of Vectorworks into a master Excel file to sort through the data.

Even with design layer referencing you could only read data and not write.