Layer Tag Field (#L#) doesn't show when Data Tag is places inside a Symbol

[hihihi]

Hello,

 

I'm using data tags -associated with a door symbol- to show information related to a door (fire-rating, size and a door dumber which is like my room numbers)

Some part of my building repeat a lot so those data tags are sometimes in a symbol that is present on different layers.

 

My space numbers (and thus door numbers) change from floor to floor to include the level we are (I do that by calling the layer name (#L#) into the tag fields, I guess I could also use the floor feature (#ST#).

It all works great outside of a symbol but when I put the tag inside the symbol, nothings shows.

 

Can you help me find a solution to have the layer name -or another way to show the proper door number- in the data tag in the symbol ?

 

Thank you so much,

HD

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

I don't know of a work around for this.

 

This is probably WAD (working as designed).  The DT inside a symbol is not on a layer. It is in the symbol. The symbol is on the layer.

 

Unless someone else has a work around, the best I can offer is to make a post in the Wish List forum to have a function for a DT to return the Layer of the symbol or for the #L# function to return the layer of the parent object.

 

Question:  What happens with your data tag if it is inside a Group instead of being inside a symbol?

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov]

Just to follow up on @Pat Stanford. Let me explain what is a symbol in Vectorworks - you have one true source of geometry that is the symbol definition in the resource manager. There is where the geometry is stored and it does not belong to any layer. Then you have the symbol instances/objects. These are the objects placed in the layers/drawing. They do not have any geometry themselves, they just show a 'view' of the symbol (similarly to how you can have different viewports of the same layer). So, if you have more than 1 symbol instance on different layers with a data tag in it you basically still have just one data tag - the one in the definition. And now comes the question, what layer exactly should this tag report? The definition does not have a layer and the instances are placed on different layers. This is the long answer why this is not reporting anything at this time and why it will not be trivial (if even possible) to make this happen in the future.

[shorter]

Beat me to it.  Very few plugins work as expected/desired inside a symbol when they are looking for something outside the symbol.  This is a huge wishlist item.

[Hans-Olav]

Do you really need to have the datatag inside the symbol?

 

We use datatags reading type, firerating, acoustical rating, size and more, but the tag is always placed in the drawing ( outside of plugin or symbol )

[Pat Stanford]

9 hours ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

And now comes the question, what layer exactly should this tag report? The definition does not have a layer and the instances are placed on different layers. This is the long answer why this is not reporting anything at this time and why it will not be trivial (if even possible) to make this happen in the future.

As a first step what I think might be useful would be a function to return the Layer of the "Parent" object of the Data Tag.  So if it was in a Symbol, it would look at the Symbol Instance and report the Layer the instance was on.  

 

If you used this function it would not operate properly in a Data Tag that was on a Layer and not part of a symbol. But this limited functionality might make it easier to generate the requested data.

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov]

14 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

As a first step what I think might be useful would be a function to return the Layer of the "Parent" object of the Data Tag.  So if it was in a Symbol, it would look at the Symbol Instance and report the Layer the instance was on.  

- That's the problem that I have explained above. The parent of the data tag is always the same in this case -> the symbol definition which is a resource in the resource manager and not in the drawing (aka it does not have a parent layer at all). Currently I do not think there is a way to tell for which symbol instance the data tag is being drawn for as the symbol instance is just displaying a view of the already drawn data tag in the symbol definition.

[shorter]

7 hours ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

- That's the problem that I have explained above. The parent of the data tag is always the same in this case -> the symbol definition which is a resource in the resource manager and not in the drawing (aka it does not have a parent layer at all). Currently I do not think there is a way to tell for which symbol instance the data tag is being drawn for as the symbol instance is just displaying a view of the already drawn data tag in the symbol definition.

 

So the best way is to place the data tag (the 'tagger') in the design layer or associated design layer with the object being tagged (the 'taggee') so that the tagger can acquire the layer name from the taggee.

 

We have similar issues with spaces inside symbols of unit types.

[hihihi]

Thank you all for your responses. I now understand why it behaves this way, and it seems there's no real way to circumvent it. I had finally understood how data fields work and got excited about it but unfortunately, my request may be too ambitious.

 

Quote

 

We have similar issues with spaces inside symbols of unit types.

yes, we're also facing the same problem with spaces.

 

I suppose I'll position the tags outside the symbol, but this means I won't be able to keep all the tags in the same position and won't achieve simultaneous movement when I adjust one. Additionally, I'll lose the ability to read data from the door symbol it's associated with since the door is located inside the symbol.

 

If anyone has suggestions for a workaround, I'm all ears.

 

Thanks again everyone.

Best regards,

Edited December 8, 2023 by hihihi

[BillW]

 You can get this to work by nesting a symbol within a symbol. The outer symbol c ontains another symbol and a Data tag and is set to convert to group on placement - see attached.

 

Symbol DT to group.vwx