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Calculate total job hours


Joey Parsonson

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Hi is there any way to calculate the total job hours spent on an individual file. I know there is a log file to look back on but this is a very slow process if you are spending months on a job & multiple jobs. It would be a very constructive to tool to have in vectorworks to be able to look at hours spent to date at any time or to monitor hours spent especially if hourly charge out rates apply or to guide your overall charges based on hours or to total up at end of jobs, please look at creating this for next version, I'm sure thousands of other users would benefit from this. If the function of the log file is already active then must be possible to be auto calculated per file internally, thanks.

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In Vectorworks Preferences under the Session tab there is an option to Log time in program

The problem is no one works continuously on a file. People get distracted, make telephone calls, check their email, search for product information, talk to colleagues, make a cup of copy, go to the toilet, go to lunch, etc.

All the log will do is give you a reading of the time the file is open. It will not tell you how long you actually spent working on the file or which drawings in the file you spent time working on.

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I have this checked to log time in program & set autosave to every 2 minutes. This shows up in the log file so if you are away for more that 5 mins or so it stops saving or doesn't show in log file, this is how i keep track at present if i forget to monitor my hours, i look back in this log file. If this info is going to a log file than surely it can be calculated.

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That's my point.

VW already knows when a file is open, so there's no reason why tabs can't be keep on it.

As for being "Open" when no work in the program takes place, in my opinion, that's not a bad thing, many clients put research down to "Wasted Time".

Just because i'm not drawing doesn't mean the project has stalled!

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

A few questions:

1) What would be the desired output? Is a simple text file more than enough, or would something formatted with an eye towards being added to a spreadsheet be better?

2) Is a simple "How long was this file open?" enough of a metric? Or would there be desire for some kind of delay to indicate when the user was actively editing the file and when they went inactive for a long period of time? as AndiCAD states, there are plenty of legitimate reasons the file would be open without the user performing any actions, such as doing research or multiple coworkers gathering around the file for a discussion (or an argument? ;) )

3) Would this log be desired only on a per-workstation basis, or would it be useful to have multiple seats of Vectorworks all report back to one "master" station or cumulative report file of some kind? If so, is it important that there be one user designated as a manager that can lock access (with a user-customizable password of some kind) to the settings for these logs, or is security not a common problem?

4) Would it be useful to designate a file or group of files and have all of its logs funneled into separate log directories for different clients or projects? Or is this more easily handled by the user manually?

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Thats why i set my autosave to 2minutes so as soon as the next auto save kicks in after the last command or tool used it must not kick in again until another command/tool is used/activated, so if nothing activates it then it must sit dormant until use resumes. this is how i can use it at present to track but it is very slow. This is my point, for a tool/command that can be configured to auto track these movements & with one click, movements can be viewed. This will not only benefit sole designers like myself, but probably also large companies that desire the need to track employee usage, maybe, lol sorry to the employees that hate me for this post.

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Thanx Jim, good list, though i don't "need" them all, knowing they're there would be reassuring.

But, for personal use, just for now, a constant display would be really helpful to assist budget/time control, but, all of your suggestions would be beneficial, eventually, as each would make the final closure of accounts so much simpler.

As long as the "Ease of Use" factor is kept foremost and really intuitive is remembered for five year olds like me.

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Jim, maybe for Macs an icon in the Menu Bar on the right near the clock. That way it doesn't rob real estate from anything else in VW and might offer a quick fix while the more complex jobs are worked on.

Can this also work on current Windows OS? It's been a while since I've used a desktop config.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

That's reasonable, I will definitely mention it as a possibility. I was thinking more along the lines of a UI element that could be popped-out as a palette so users could place it where they wanted.

Not sure how much more/less work it would be for either UI choice, so I will propose both and see what the response is.

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