Vectorworks 2025 worksheet seeing phantom symbols

[MGuilfoile]

In Vectorworks 2025, my worksheet that calculates and lists the quantity of symbols on my Design Layer is finding eight of a symbol that is not in the file anywhere. I have checked my criteria and the layer is selected and "is symbol" is the only other criterion. Oddly enough, when I do a Custom Selection for that symbol it finds none. Even odder, when I do a Custom Selection--a tool I've used many times before--to find something I KNOW is in my drawing it can't find it. I have depended on these worksheets to count the symbols in my drawings for some time and it is all of a sudden not working--not reliable. It seems that the entire system that performs these operations has failed. I've tried restarting, importing worksheets, duplicating worksheets, nothing works. 1., The phantoms still appear and 2. real objects cannot be found. This happens now in several files. Thanks for any help on this.

 

MHBrown

[bcd]

Yikes,

Is this a file you could share?

[MGuilfoile]

OK, so while I was deleting confidential objects to create a file I could send, I noticed more "phantom" objects. It turns out that my particular worksheet still counts objects that are not present due to their class being "turned off." When I turn those on, the phantom objects reappear. I imagine this is the root of my problem with the search as well. I turned these classes off because I wasn't sure I didn't want to use the objects later on. Pretty typical, I would say.

 

That said, VW often asks if I want to turn on classes when importing objects in an invisible class, so why not this time? I imagine that the worksheet could also have a selection option that restricts counting objects that are not there.. If an object is not visible due to a class assignment, the default should be for my simple worksheet to not count it. I need an "only count visible objects, please" filter.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, regardless! I'll recheck the "search" feature and see if that works now.

MHBrown

[bcd]

Glad you got it sorted.

I would expect the WS to count objects whether or not the Class is visible. Setting a criterion for that however would indeed be helpful.

[Pat Stanford]

You can add a negative criteria and specify classes to not include.

 

Or you can add a positive criteria and specify only the classes to include.

 

Criteria are very powerful, but they are like a Genie. They do exactly what you tell them to.

 

 

[MGuilfoile]

Thanks for the tips! Yes, this was user error. I've used Excel for decades, but still sometimes forget to put my "logic" hat on.