Place Plants-Defaults?

[Taproot]

Can the Place Plant Tool defaults be set so that they apply to multiple plant symbols?

I started with a simple schematic project using rendered symbols from the default plant library and though I reset the defaults for the place plant tool i.e. [turn "on plant list" off],[turn "tick style" off],[turn "random rotation" on], etc. I found that these settings would always change back for the next plant placed.

I discovered that within the Place Plant Preferences ->Edit Definitions -> Default Prefs, you could change these characteristics, but they would only apply to that single plant. All other plant symbols are placed with NNA's default display settings.

I'm using 30 or more symbols and want them to have the same characteristics and rendering. Changing every symbol individually seems like a really tedious way to do it. Is there a more sensible way to do this?

[Guest Frank Brault]

Try Tools->Custom Modification with the criteria set to act on the desired plant definition. Any change will apply to all the placed plants of the same definition in the file.

Using this method, you can make changes to any values that appear in the object info palette. All of the settings that you mentioned happen to fall into this category. This only applies to placed plants i.e. plant instances already on the drawing, but you don't have to visit each definition.

[Taproot]

Frank,

That sort of helps ... as a work around. "Custom Modification" allows universal changes to OIP settings, but not all of the plant settings are available through the OIP. A common example would be plant shadows: It's a common event to want to adjust all plant shadows in orientation, hatch/fill, etc. These seem to only be available on an individual plant basis.

The other limit to "custom modification" is that it's after the fact. You end up placing plants with ID tags all over the place when you want to just concentrate on a loose design concept. So, it's helpful in the end, but a little awkward along the way.

If in fact, the Place Plant Tool can't modify the symbol to suit the user's default settings, then my follow up question would be, how can you modify elements of 30-100 symbols simultaneously? Note, I wasn't able to get there with "Change Symbol Attributes."

I really hope that I'm being obtuse here and that this is a simple thing ...

Thanks,

[IanH]

You may want to see my similar comments here regarding graphical plant attributes and use of symbols.

[Taproot]

Thanks Ian,

I did read through your comments, my conclusion is that the only really effective way to do this is to create a new symbol library from the default symbols with each plant display set to our preferred standards i.e. shading, hatching, etc. Then as Frank suggests when the drawings advance to CD level, we can use the Custom Modification to turn on "on Plant List" etc.

This is a bit cumbersome, because right from the get-go, it's a little difficult to know what the best "standard" is without working with the symbols for a while. I do believe I'll log my initial request as a wish list item.