Window & Door Symbols & Schedules

[willofmaine]

Windows (and Doors too) in walls are separate instances. If you create a VA schedule, they all show up on the schedule, as expected. But if I have several Type A windows, for example, I want to be able to modify them all simultaneously, so...

I create a Type A window Symbol, and place that several times. And to modify it I guess I have to "dumb" it down by converting it back into a PIO, make the changes, and resave it as a Type A windows Symbol again. That works well, but...

The Type A window no longer shows up on the VA schedule. At least, not until I recently found that I could edit the search criteria of the Database Row Header in the VA schedule worksheet to include windows that are IN symbols. That seems to work...

So I think I have a system. But in the meantime, what is the purpose of "Use Symbol Geometry" when creating a door or window? It seems the Data tab is not linked to the size of the selected symbol geometry such that its appearance on the schedule is likely to give incorrect information. More generally, I guess, my question is how does VW intend for multiple doors and windows, of the same types, to be created and also reported in schedules? Any thoughts would be most appreciated!...

[Robert Anderson]

Have you tried using the Eyedropper tool to pick up and distribute data among window or doors?

[willofmaine]

I have done that, yes, but if a building has 30 Type A windows, that seems like a potentially tedious way to change all of them from, say, 1 over 1 to 2 over 1. So far, it seems like maybe symbols are the way to go. Even if half of the windows are to be 1 over 1, and the other half 2 over 1, then two different symbols (Type A and Type B) could be created. Though if only one of them needs to be tempered, then a third symbol - maybe Type A-T - would need to be created? "Creating a Window or Door Symbol" and "Inserting Windows" in Help address these, and seem to further suggest that symbols are the way to go, but I guess I'm struggling with just how to do this effectively...

Thanks! -Will

[blimey]

Hi,

I've been working on a similar pattern as willofmaine, it worked fine including for schedule for a while, and i had built a nice worksheet system to count symbols and also calculate wall areas etc... it all went down with the "wallaverageheight", net surface and brutto surface bugs... so now i'm trying to count the symbols not only to get schedules but also to deduce my wall surface area. It's pretty ok to count symbols, but is there a way to count them according to wich kind of wall there inserted in (so to be able to substract their surface to the wall surface and get the wall net surface)? I've try the location formula, without to much luck. any suggestion?

[Christiaan]

I think there's a fundamental (but hopefully transitional) flaw in VectorWorks which is evidenced by this sort of conundrum. See more here:

A different way than Symbols to edit en masse

http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=77572

[blimey]

Yes. i've reread all the threads on that subject and it always get stuck somewhere.

i've been chewing that problem for quite a whilen (since VW11.5) trying to build up a system that works, but still using symbols and PIO somehow in a work around way. I mean I'm realising that i'm struggling quite a lot partially because i'm using windows and doors in a way that is not the one intended by NNA when conceiving them... BUT it's NOT that I haven't tried to do it the way they intended(or at least what I underestood they intended), but it just too cumbersome to imagine editing doors and windows with the eyedropper going through hundreds of similar windows and not being able to change them at the same time.

So yes, I guess that a lot has to do with the inability of vw to mass edit PIO. This is the reason that has lead me to put windows in symbols...

THEN, i'm also trying to build a system that actually use VW worksheet capacities. I've notice that many people do use the windows schedule, but not the wallarea calculation formulas... how do you guys make your schedules? manually or with some automatized systems that are using the worksheets? how?

[blimey]

i shall give a try to mike suggestion with charles chandler's pluggin... that doesn't solve the worksheet problem though...