Mass change plant tags

[Jack Wallington]

I have set up a plant library file but realise I set up the tags on the plants incorrectly and would like to make a change to all of them in one go. Is this possible? 

 

What I want to do is just set the ID to be shown in the centre of every plant on the library, so this is the default view for me when putting plants on design layers in planting plans. 

[Amanda McDermott]

Not sure I understand the question sorry - we don't often label individual plants in the way you're describing...for individual trees, we'd label them using a data tag as an annotation on the viewport.

 

Does your plant symbol definition automatically include a particular data tag in the centre of the symbol, is it a 'data tag style' thing? I wonder if you can create a new data tag style and set all of your plants to use that... you can copy graphics from other symbols, but I don't think there's a way to do that as a batch.

 

I do think @Katarina Ollikainen has told me before how to make batch changes to plant symbols (e.g. change a particular field for a number of them), but can't remember it off the top of my head.

[Amanda McDermott]

p.s. sounds related to my q I never had an answer to:

 

[Amanda McDermott]

Hi @deadtomorrow - Not sure I've fully understood, but I wonder if @michaelk's 'cool trick' described at

could be repurposed somehow to help with your issue...  (If you work it out please report back!)

[Jeff Prince]

On 2/8/2024 at 8:39 AM, deadtomorrow said:

I have set up a plant library file but realise I set up the tags on the plants incorrectly and would like to make a change to all of them in one go. Is this possible? 

 

What I want to do is just set the ID to be shown in the centre of every plant on the library, so this is the default view for me when putting plants on design layers in planting plans. 

 

When you say "plant library file", do you mean you have one or more instances of each plant style in a single Vectorworks file?

If so, there is an easy way to achieve what you need.

If not, describe how you have built this library and there is probably a method of dealing with it via a script or other programatic method.

[Amanda McDermott]

@deadtomorrow I'm watching the 'worksheets' coffee break - wonder if you could use a worksheet to batch edit plant tags... we're about 35 min in, @michaelk is talking about doors but if it's an option to get data tag styles in a worksheet column then maybe you could do the edit there...

[Piotr Karczewski]

On 2/8/2024 at 4:39 PM, deadtomorrow said:

I have set up a plant library file but realise I set up the tags on the plants incorrectly and would like to make a change to all of them in one go. Is this possible? 

 

What I want to do is just set the ID to be shown in the centre of every plant on the library, so this is the default view for me when putting plants on design layers in planting plans. 

Hi, this thread may help You with mass edit of Plant Style records by Katarina Ollikainen

 

Edited February 26, 2024 by Piotr Karczewski

[Jack Wallington]

On 2/16/2024 at 11:08 PM, Jeff Prince said:

 

When you say "plant library file", do you mean you have one or more instances of each plant style in a single Vectorworks file?

If so, there is an easy way to achieve what you need.

If not, describe how you have built this library and there is probably a method of dealing with it via a script or other programatic method.

 

On 2/22/2024 at 4:39 PM, Amanda McDermott said:

@deadtomorrow I'm watching the 'worksheets' coffee break - wonder if you could use a worksheet to batch edit plant tags... we're about 35 min in, @michaelk is talking about doors but if it's an option to get data tag styles in a worksheet column then maybe you could do the edit there...

 

On 2/26/2024 at 10:07 AM, Piotr Karczewski said:

Hi, this thread may help You with mass edit of Plant Style records by Katarina Ollikainen

 

 

Thanks everyone! Sorry for the slow reply, I posted this and then forgot to check back in the following week! 

 

I think the answer is probably here in one of these points about the styles, I'll explore further.

 

Essentially I have a saved document called Plant Library where I've created all of my 2D plant symbols with data. I then made this a favourite in my Resource Manager so that on new projects I can drag in plants from this central file.

 

The way I would like to use them, is for the ID to appear in the centre of the 2D graphic on all of the plants in the Library file, so that's how they appear in the design layer of a planting plan. Then, in Viewport, I'll either keep the central ID or switch it to a data tag.

 

The reason I want to do this is because, with lots of different plant types on the 2D planting plan, it becomes hard to keep track of what each plant is while I'm designing without some data clue visible. I've included a screen grab of a design layer work in progress to show you how I'm working. 

 

Back to the problem and my question to explain more: in my plant library I now have hundreds of plants, but they aren't set for the ID to appear on them in a design layer in their centre. I can go into each individually to change this, but wondered if there's a way of selecting them all and going "show the ID in the middle on all these plants"? 

 

Thanks, hopefully that makes more sense! 🙂 

[Tom W.]

I was hoping that the @michaelk-patented PIO style editing technique would work here but it didn't: using =Style.'tag display' in a database to edit all the Plant styles + change this parameter to 'Center'... 

[michaelk]

14 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

I was hoping that the @michaelk-patented PIO style editing technique would work here but it didn't: using =Style.'tag display' in a database to edit all the Plant styles + change this parameter to 'Center'... 

You know, I never actually applied for that patent.  Probably wouldn't have gotten it anyway.

 

I am horrible with plants, both virtual and real.  Can you post a file with a few actual styled plants and a worksheet with data you would want to edit so I can see what you're trying to do?

[Tom W.]

If you were going to start applying for patents you'd have no time to write any scripts! 😁

 

See attached: Plant Style Editor.vwx

 

The tags are set to left + right but you should be able to write/paste 'Center' into the cell + the style be edited accordingly right? What actually happens is that the style setting changes to 'None' whilst it says 'Center' in the worksheet. If you instead change 'Right' to 'Left' the worksheet value changes + this time the style value changes but the instance in the drawing stays the same...

 

Thank you

[michaelk]

I see.  So it changes in the worksheet, but the actual position of the tag doesn't move.  Right?

 

[michaelk]

I just tried price - because I know what price of a plant means - and it works as expected.

 

It's possible that tag display isn't actually direct parameter (?).  The data for that parameter is in pulldowns, but you have to type Left,Right,Center,None.  So it may be a just for display parameter.

 

 

[Tom W.]

1 minute ago, michaelk said:

It's possible that tag display isn't actually direct parameter (?).  The data for that parameter is in pulldowns, but you have to type Left,Right,Center,None.  So it may be a just for display parameter.

 

That sounds a plausible explanation

[michaelk]

Interesting.  Maybe it's a bug?

 

Show Root Ball (I know what that means) has a pulldown in the worksheet with the defined choices.  I would expect that the plant tags would do the same thing.

[Jeff Prince]

1 hour ago, deadtomorrow said:

Back to the problem and my question to explain more: in my plant library I now have hundreds of plants, but they aren't set for the ID to appear on them in a design layer in their centre. I can go into each individually to change this, but wondered if there's a way of selecting them all and going "show the ID in the middle on all these plants"? 

 

Yes, you can do it.  You have to change all of your plants so the tag stuff you would like to change is "by instance" using the plant editor script that has been floating around here.  Then, you can grab all the plants and set the tag in the OIP.  Finally, you run the plant editor script again and switch the tag back to "by style", if desired.  Personally, I would want the tag control to be by instance to give me some freedom for turning them off or repositioning them on a plant by plant basis.

 

Hope if helps...

[Jack Wallington]

2 hours ago, Jeff Prince said:

 

Yes, you can do it.  You have to change all of your plants so the tag stuff you would like to change is "by instance" using the plant editor script that has been floating around here.  Then, you can grab all the plants and set the tag in the OIP.  Finally, you run the plant editor script again and switch the tag back to "by style", if desired.  Personally, I would want the tag control to be by instance to give me some freedom for turning them off or repositioning them on a plant by plant basis.

 

Hope if helps...

Great thanks Jeff, I will give that a whirl. Thank you! 

[Jeff Prince]

5 minutes ago, deadtomorrow said:

Great thanks Jeff, I will give that a whirl. Thank you! 

 

My pleasure.

 

Here's the info about the plant editing script.

 

 

[Tom W.]

Ok that script is very cool! You can actually very quickly edit the Display parameter for all your styles in one go directly from the dialog:

[Piotr Karczewski]

16 hours ago, michaelk said:

I am horrible with plants, both virtual and real....

🤣