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#HalfAssed Stake Object


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Why is the Stake Object in Vectorworks (2012) so bad as a coordinate marker?? It's completely half assed. It annoys the hell out of me that Nemetshek makes me look like an amateur when I issue setting-out coordinates.

A site engineer had a go at me again today about our coordinates showing the Northing above the Easting when UK practice is the opposite - I just had to say that the engineers at the American CAD company don't get out of the office much, or ever ask their users how the Real World works.

He also asked me to include some AOD values (elevation values) on some of the site coordinates...and what do you know VW can't do that while displaying Eastings and Northings. It can do X,Y,Z but not E,N,Z. Grrrr.

I want NV Inc to correct the functionality in 2012. I'm not putting this on the Wish List because we aren't buying any more of this BudgetCad stuff.

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Stake tool makes you look amateur?

How about walls on setting out drawings that move unexpectedly because a component was removed?

Or how about not actually being able to issue drawings because lines are showing through from the back of elevations, due to the hatched planar objects workflow promoted in this video?

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  • 5 weeks later...

Hi, Bryan: I searched the forum and bump into this thread. I was hoping if I post a question you would answer it. Looks like you are facing the same issue?...manually changing all the ID number! I will add to the wish list. Auto numbering would be very much appreciated. Label Reference with ID, Description and Elev. will very useful to me too!

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I use stake object quite a lot. I have a number of scripts that manipulate the description field in various ways based upon stake object data values. This way I can cover most eventualities by displaying the description field, sometimes in conjunction with other standard fields.

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I quickly extracted this script from one of my routines. It works, but is not perfect and is only posted as an example. Use at your own risk!

Its an example of handling the stake object in vectorscript. Basically, I scans the selected stake objects and replaces their description with the Z value in meters (I'm all metric based so don't need to worry about complex conversions) then sets the stake to use the description as its display value.

Im not sure if you could put a newline in the value to allow a split Easting / Northing convention, but if convention allowed, it would be relatively easy to encode E/N onto a single line.

{ Sets description of stake object to Z value in meters
{ Stake object should be selected on entry
{
{(C) Ian Hutt 2008-2012
{
{ Nov 2012 - extracted and simplified code from set stake datum
{}

PROCEDURE setLevelMeters;

LABEL 666;

CONST
stakeObject = 'Stake Object';
VAR

datumObj		: HANDLE;

PROCEDURE convert( h : HANDLE );
VAR
x, y, z : REAL;
BEGIN
GetSymLoc3D( h, x, y, z );

SetRField( h, stakeObject, 'Data', Concat( Num2str( 3, z / 1000 ), 'm' ));	
       { Replace description with level in meters
       { You could try something like 
       { Concat( 'E: ', Num2str( 3, x ), ' / N: ', Num2str( 3, y )) 
       { to give a result such as E: 10.000 / N: 20.000
       {}

SetRField( h, stakeObject, 'Label Reference', 'Description' );

ResetObject( h );
END;

BEGIN
DSelectObj(INSYMBOL & INVIEWPORT & (PON<>'Stake Object'));
datumObj := FSActLayer;
IF ( datumObj = NIL ) THEN
BEGIN
	AlrtDialog( 'No stake objects selected on active layer' );
	DSelectAll;
	GOTO 666;
END;

ForEachObject( convert, (INSYMBOL & INVIEWPORT & (PON='Stake Object') & (SEL = TRUE)));

ReDraw;

666:
END;

RUN( setLevelMeters );

As I say, it was lifted from a more complex function so is probably a bit more complex than need be in places. Some of the checks are redundant if run as a menu item as this handles object selection checking etc.

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Most of its comments or checking for valid selection.

The foreachobject at the bottom causes the convert procedure to be executed on all the selected stake objects. The setrfield in the convert procedure is the bit that populates the description with something (in the case above, the elevation in meters). The setrfield that follows then makes the stakeobject show the description field.

Play around with the first setrfield will allow you to modify the results as you need.

Simples.

I'll be upset if you don't learn anything from it as you did ask me to share ;)

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