Changing Record Fields

[Davide]

I have many doors/windows inserted in walls; most of them are instances of the same symbol.

The automatic schedule reads their door/window records reporting sizes and IDs after I've used the ID tool.

Now in the DD stage of the project I'm ready to add more info, frame materials, ratings etc.

How do I do that for every instance without having to select them one at a time and type always the same fields info again and again?

What's the point of using an auto scheduling feature if it becomes slower then using an Excel spreadsheet where I can easily repeat cells info from row to row? At least I manually type the same info just once, instead of 100 times if I have 100 doors. The change record fields tool only updates symbols in a folder yet to be inserted, not the existing ones. The replace text will look into record fields but only if you already have some text in them.

Using symbols ( so that maybe you can edit one and change all) won't help because the record fields are independent from the editing unless you create a report/schedule that reads inside symbols info, but then you won't get the ID # info which is different from instance to instance.

So what do you guys do? Why use the auto scheduling instead of importing an Excel sheet which at least won't show ghost info that you cannot manually edit ( a subject I wrote a lot about it with no feedback from NNA or users)?

If you have any suggestion, please help! Pretty soon my bosses will want an updated schedule and I don't know how to quickly proceed! :-(

Thanks.

[Guest]

It's not my area so i don't know if this addresses your problem, but if you edit a record, create a new field, and give that field a default value, then every object using that record will get that default value set.

[Davide]

Yes, but what about the instances already in the drawing?

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Giovanni:

Yes, but what about the instances already in the drawing?

---

That is what i was speaking of - create a symbol, place it in a wall, attach a record, edit record format, add new field with default value to the record format: all objects in the drawing with that record get the new default value. This won't help you assign 50 objects as one thing and 50 other objects as another, but it may cut down the amount of work you need to do.

If you mean you want to change all of the data in an existing field, this won't help. I'm pretty sure that VectorScript can do that fairly simply tho...you might ask in the VectorScript section or (probably more useful) the VectorScript mailing list.

[ 02-05-2002: Message edited by: jodawi ]