custom reports

[mattryan]

Ok I feel like these reports are way to complicated.

I am trying to produce a simple wall area report for exterior walls.

That part seems easy enough.

The report displays the total area of the wall both gross and net at the top of the spreadsheet when in edit mode.

When you place the report on the drawing the line containing the total areas is not visible which makes no sense. I want to see the total area.

I have tried a work around to recalculate the total area of the walls which seems like it should be a simple =b1+b2+b3+b4+b5 but this function disappears once entered?

 

What am I missing?

 

 

Understandably the functionality and customization in Vectorworks is huge but I would like to see some processes streamlined.

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

The values are automatically summed in the database header row (2 in your your case, versus the database data rows (2.1, 2.2, etc.).  Many people don't like the summed number of times that shows in the database header row for field that are text, so they hide the database header row as you show in your first screenshot.

 

You can add the summed value from the header row by just accessing that cell. you don't need to add or sum the individual database rows, and in fact you can't access the data in a database row directly.  The data in the database is dynamic and could change, so what is row 2.1 now could be in row 2.4 later and the worksheet would not know if the you wanted the new data in row 2.1 or if it should still be related to the item in row 2.4.

 

But to answer your short question the formulas you need to display your sums are:

 

=B2

=C2

=D2

 

[mattryan]

Thanks Pat, so how does one go about hiding or unhiding the database header row?

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

From the Worksheet View menu.  Make sure there is a check next to Database Headers as shown in the following screenshot to have the headers be visible.

 

[mattryan]

Thanks Pat

So there is no way to simply make that header row 2 visible on the sheet layer? So I manually have to sum the cells to display a total?

 

[Pat Stanford]

You can just go to the Worksheet View menu and make sure that Database Header is checked and you will get the sum at the top of each column.

 

But you have to be willing to have data show up in every column.  For cells that are not summed, that will be a count of the number of items in the subrows. But it should give you the correct value for the summarization in the other columns.  You may need to also check the Sum Values button in the column header.