Reports able to span 2 pages

[Joe Golden ENT]

Please make reports that are on a design layer or part of a VP annotation layer be able to be slit amongst several "pages". Most of my reports are so long that to make them fit you need a magnifying glass to read them.

[_James]

Worksheet "pagination" is on the roadmap under "Active Research". Although it's been on there since at least April 2019 when I referred to it here.

 

I really hope this gets some more attention soon because the current worksheets are incredibly difficult to work with due to this and a few other simple things such as how difficult they are to format.

[Stephan Moenninghoff]

7 hours ago, _James said:

how difficult they are to format.

anything in particular you need?

[spettitt]

9 minutes ago, Stephan Moenninghoff said:

anything in particular you need?

- Split across pages

- Functionality/control to have certain rows/database headers etc repeat on each page 

- Ability to place logos/images/data/properties in headers/footers and within the worksheet

- Formatting bar rather than pop up formatting

 

In a dream world, database rows would work more like a proper database reporting engine:

- Group headers (large flat table splits in to multiple table chunks based on the data - i.e. Group By Field x)

- Hierarchical group headers - group on X field, then group on X field.

[GatRed]

19 hours ago, Stephan Moenninghoff said:

anything in particular you need?

By the way,

 

I have difficulties to set borders : if I want to remove the down border of a cell, sometimes it does not work. I have to select the cell below and remove the up border.

For big worksheet, it drives me crazy.

 

Also I saw that even if I have unchecked the “Auto-recalc” option, the functionality is still enable, if you make a Copy/Paste of on or multiple cell(s), or if you make a «Clear Contents»,  the worksheet is recalculated whereas the option is unchecked.

Again, it drives me crazy for big worksheet with many calculation within, I don’t want to spend hours waiting in front of my computer…

I think the way to make the calculation of values (searching into the drawing) has to be optimised, it takes several minutes for a surfaces worksheet on my Macbook Pro M2 MAX… that’s not normal.

 

Direct access to format functionalities would be a huge amount of time gain (without having to open a pop-up window).

 

Worksheets are really one of the better functionality of Vectorworks. But their ergonomics have 30 years old…

Edited December 16, 2023 by GatRed

[Jesse Cogswell]

I wrote a plug-in a while back that can split up a worksheet into multiple parts.  On normal worksheets, all of the data in the created worksheets are referenced back to the original worksheet so they will all stay up to date (on recalculation anyway).  On database worksheets, the data will be made absolute and will break reference from the original master.  But it still might prove useful to you.

 

I very much agree that worksheets and worksheet formatting is very handy to have in Vectorworks but feels very outdated.

[Stephan Moenninghoff]

On 12/16/2023 at 9:47 AM, GatRed said:

I have difficulties to set borders : if I want to remove the down border of a cell, sometimes it does not work. I have to select the cell below and remove the up border.

I tried to reproduce this but I was not successful. In a Vectorworks worksheet, adjacent cells seem to share borders. You can turn the border on and off between any two cells from either of the two neighbouring cells. This is not the same as, for example, html, where each cell has its own border (and that comes with other quirks, like border-collapse properties etc.).

If this does not work for you reliably, that sounds like an edge case or a bug. Do you have a sample file that demonstrates this? Could you share this file?

Thanks!

[Stephan Moenninghoff]

On 12/15/2023 at 5:37 PM, spettitt said:

In a dream world, database rows would work more like a proper database reporting engine:

- Group headers (large flat table splits in to multiple table chunks based on the data - i.e. Group By Field x)

- Hierarchical group headers - group on X field, then group on X field.

I would love to understand your dream world a little better 🙂 . Could you post/DM with an example?

[Pat Stanford]

@spettittIf you do document your dream world, please post instead of DM. I am certain there are others who would like to comment on your dream and how it compares to theirs.

[GatRed]

57 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

your

 

2 hours ago, Stephan Moenninghoff said:

I tried to reproduce this but I was not successful. In a Vectorworks worksheet, adjacent cells seem to share borders. You can turn the border on and off between any two cells from either of the two neighbouring cells. This is not the same as, for example, html, where each cell has its own border (and that comes with other quirks, like border-collapse properties etc.).

If this does not work for you reliably, that sounds like an edge case or a bug. Do you have a sample file that demonstrates this? Could you share this file?

Thanks!

Hi @Stephan Moenninghoff, as soon as I’ve got an example of this issue, I will report it here.

Thanks.

[_James]

On 12/15/2023 at 4:23 PM, Stephan Moenninghoff said:

anything in particular you need?

Thanks Stephan, a toolbar that has text and cell formatting would go a long way. It's painful to open up the dialogue to format cells. Essentially just copy the Google Sheets toolbar - that would be great!

 

[MarcelP102]

Yes please! 

 

Edit: It's already on the roadmap: https://www.vectorworks.net/en-US/public-roadmap?url=worksheet-ui-modernization

Edited December 19, 2023 by MarcelP102

[spettitt]

On 12/17/2023 at 6:11 PM, Stephan Moenninghoff said:

I would love to understand your dream world a little better 🙂 . Could you post/DM with an example?

 

Here is a chatgpt-generated dataset in flat table form. Unfortunately this is just sample data I put in to a blank boring database template as I don't have anything from our system that I can share here.

 

 

For the reader to understand and action the data (assuming a real world report could contain many more rows), it requires a lot of column-scanning and brain power. I add a group by country:

 

 

Let's say I would like more granularity, so I then group on City:

 

 

Not really applicable to this contrived dataset, but for an installation with 1000 ConnectCAD circuits and 13-14 data fields per circuits, suddenly this kind of grouping takes an impractically huge 'flat' table of data and breaks it down in to something people can action on site. I.E. for pulling cable - group circuits by source, then the containment type, then the destination.

 

This kind of functionality might be possible by writing a script that generates multiple Database worksheet rows with the sequential criteria...but it would be a challenge and clunky. Database platforms do this dynamically - change the grouping criteria and the report changes.

 

What these platforms also have is the ability to insert data fields in the group headers as well as the record rows. So rather than repeating the same data on every row in a column, it can just show it once in the group header instead.

 

I'm sure this would be an enormous refactor of the Worksheet engine. But given the desire for a formatting toolbar, better pagination (with repeating headers), and other such things, I can't think of a better time to look at this kind of functionality.