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Finding mis-classed objects


Carl Burns

Question

I'd like a quick good way to find mis-classed objects in a drawing:

I have a class or two which are routinely turned off when printing because they're guidelines (class: gl). And while drawing, they're sometimes the active class. So, objects which should be visible sometimes end up in "gl". However if they're anything more complex than a simple object they have multiple classes and won't display with:

Organize/Class Options/Active Only and "gl" the active class.

Does anyone have a good way to do this?

Failing that, I'd wish for a Class Options/Show non-visible objects only.

Another possible: A Class Option which displays everything with Active Class regardless of other classes attached.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Carl

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Carl, I don't have a solution for your problem, but I do share some frustration with it. This is another concrete example of how assigning a class to container objects, like groups and PIO instances, creates confusion and dysfunction. A basic object should have one and only one class. When it can also be a member of a container object with a different class, confusion occurs both for the user and because you can't write effective code using the class variable.

How to select and fix (en masse) objects that have been inadvertantly "misclassed" and are members of a container object is a thorny problem. It would have to be possible to edit these objects without entering the group. While code could be written to allow this, it would contradict one of the normal and desirable functions of groups, which is to disallow access to the individual member objects unless we are in the "edit group" window.

Would it be possible to override the normal behavior of groups, and to allow selected objects within groups to be edited without entering the group, when the user consciously wants to do that? Plus, we would have to display the object in question even when the container group's class is invisible (that problem would be solved structurally if we could get rid of contradictory class assignments as suggested above!).

[ 09-27-2003, 03:59 PM: Message edited by: P Retondo ]

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Carl,

Are you aware that there's a guideline feature built into VectorWorks?

Select the objects that you want to be guidelines, or guiderectangles, guidearcs, etc., and pull down Edit>Guides>Make Guide.

It's always clear that they're guidelines; and to print without them showing, pull down Edit>Guides>Hide Guides.

If you have a macro utility, or better still, if there were a built-in macro utility, people who use a lot of guidelines could assign a single keystroke to convert any just-created object into a guide.

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P :

(you wrote):"...How to select and fix (en masse) objects that have been inadvertantly "misclassed" and are members of a container object is a thorny problem. It would have to be possible to edit these objects without entering the group. While code could be written to allow this, it would contradict one of the normal and desirable functions of groups, which is to disallow access to the individual member objects unless we are in the "edit group" window."

IF...classes can be thought of as "tags" or "labels" which assign an object to one or (maybe unfortunately as you say) more groups, why can't there be a command, or a query which would result in display of all objects with tag "x", regardless of how many other tags the object also carries? I guess I'm wondering if it's really necessary to edit the object without entering the group...I just want to know it's there, and mis-classed so I don't lose a vital something in a set of drawings. I don't mind in this case editing in the same old fashion.

Jan, Thanks I do remember the guideline option, though I haven't tried it since I started with VW. I only vaguely remember that I didn't like the look and function of them, and perhps(?) you can't print them when you do want to...I'll have to try again.

Carl

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The OIP have an area of information ("data") where you can assign names to the objects (first field). Looks stupid, but if you name a table: "table", or all the objects that make a table: "table" you have another set of information that you can access from queries (or multiple queries) on the Organize/custom selection, or from the scripts (you can even name a group with out louse the names of the objects).

I spend the must of my time scripting, not drawing, and the name is a quite useful tool. He let me select on a class objects with the same name (or same name and attributes) and manipulate them the way I like with out care about classes (or long lists of handles).

Scripts are the only way I found to access objects inside a group and edit them with out edit the group or subgroups: You ungroup with a first script that export a .txt file with all the names of group and subgroups, edit your object and the second script, thanks to the .txt recreate the original group system (I never finish the script).

The one I'm using at the moment takes out of a group the objects with a specific name (ungroup, search, handle+ deselect, group, select h).

Still he will be nice to have a folder like system (drag and drop) for the objects on the OIP, that enable selection, edit or... simply understand what we are looking at!

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i maybe being over simple

but if all the objects that should be on that class have a common attribute like they are all simple single lines ungroup.

with everything visable

a custom selection for

class='gl'

kind = not lines

should get most of your objects.

btw i like the class ablity as it is having different it's really powerful. Maybe more could be made of the tree structure to avoid issues like these, and make it more powerful still.

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