VP Annotation: no layer!

[Kool Aid]

A user wants to put revision marker symbols into viewports, to tally them for each sheet & version. Oddly, these symbols are on layer ?none?, ie. annotation objects do not belong to any layer.

Is this a Good Thing?

What purpose does it serve?

[Miguel Barrera]

Annotation objects belong to the viewport and the viewport belongs to the layer.

[Kool Aid]

Yes, but if I have one or more symbols embedded in (ie. belonging to) a PIO, the layer can be listed in a report.

How can my user get a listing of her revision markers by sheet/layer? If she can't, is there a reationale for this inability?

I am starting to have serious doubts about the VP implementation. They are not real objects, so PIOs cannot effectively communicate with them. They are not Groups, either, because objects ?belonging? to them are not on layer. And so on.

For a fundamental software design decision there must be a reason, a rationale. What might be the rationale for the non-functionality of viewports? Didn't anyone state the problem of the viewport properly?

The lesson of the airplane lies in the logic which governed the enunciation of the problem and which led to the successful realization. When a problem is properly stated, in our epoch, it inevitably finds its solution.

? Le Corbusier: Vers une Architecture

[Miguel Barrera]

Is there any particular reason it should be part of the viewport. I only include annotations that must be kept together with the viewport if it needs to be moved or symbols that must be at the same scale as the viewport. Otherwise, I keep other symbols and notes outside the viewports.

Have you used INVIEWPORT in the wksheet query:

=DATABASE((INVIEWPORT & (L='Layername') & (R IN ['Revision Marker'])))

I just tested this and finds all markers in the layer whether they are located inside or outside of a viewport.

[Kool Aid]

Yes, there is. If a file is used to generate several drawings, the user wants to be able to list & count revisions by sheet/drawing. As she has been doing before.

And all this is beside the point: the irate user (since 1988) has just changed her workflow and that's been a disaster. The whole point of the exercise was to get rid of the need of having symbols in different scales. Yes, mea culpa: I recommended the upgrade.

Yes, we have used various queries, but ones requiring explicit layer names are not acceptable: they would totally defeat the purpose of viewports, so she has wasted all this money in VW upgrade. (Few, if any, other new features are of any relevance, since she uses a fully customised system by yours truly.)

Heaps of pain, no gain.

I'm beginning to see the point in having old versions kept compatible with new OS versions? NNA's new features are worthless, but one may need to buy a new computer nevertheless.

[Kool Aid]

OK. Found a vectorworksaround.

The user is not amused. I have to find a way to embed the functionality into something?

Why can't worksheets have attached scripts as Shaved Seets do? Open a worksheet and a script is run. Tell you what: I'd have many uses for that!

But for the time being:

Workaround script

[gScott]

god, i love those Shaved Seets!