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Standards for plant ID's and descriptions


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For those of you out there that do actually use the Place Plant tool and the Plant Database, how do you maintain standards for your Plant ID's and descriptions in your defined plants? I am greatly disappointed as a newcomer to find that these cannot be prepopulated by whatever plant is selected from the plant database.

How do you ensure that the same plant is labelled the same way on every single drawing? I have thought about setting up a resource file with all plants predefined, but then that means setting up 1500+ plants with 3-letter codes as their ID, but then that means an awful lot of plants to sort through, and 3-letter codes aren't awfully meaningful for remembering what plant it actually stands for.

Any suggestions will be most welcome.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi Richard

I use a code which is the first letter of the generic name, then the first three letters of either the species or variety name. Then it's most likely to be a) memorable by you and b) unique on the drawing.

e.g. Sgig is Stipa gigantea and CKar is Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'

I went through the entire plant database and changed all the ones that were supplied. I also added lists from my local nursery. I did all this using excel though - rather easier than using VW to do it. Time consuming but once done it's done.

It IS very disappointing that Place Plant doesn't pick up this info from the database though. Once I have selected the plant I want from the database I copy and paste the Species field into the Name field too. But yes, you have to re-type the height and spread as well as the id which is frustrating. The spread info is taken from the symbol you have chosen, not the underlying plant data. The spacing I can understand why it wants you to manually enter - but not the size of the plant. Maybe one day...

However, for me, it's still a HUGE leap forward from a pencil, circle template and an eraser! And then getting a worksheet to count them for me is heaven.

Have fun.

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Tamsin,

They're the kind of codes we use too, it's probably ok if it's just you, but when you're part of a group using a huge plant list, remembering all the codes isn't possible. Yes, we will get to remember a number of them, but other than that it becomes impossible.

That it's not able to take information, including height and spread, from the database, means it's only a very tiny baby step up from our current cad platform :(

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