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classes / symbol issue


KNOSAJ

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i have all of my floor plan drawing separated out into various classes.

but the problem is that once i turn everything into a symbol, my class visibilities (of the parts in the symbol) no longer work right. i used to be able to turn off/on, grey out, different items as needed.

if i convert to group, the visibility functions work right again.

i thought that it was working properly and think something may have messed up. i will be importing these symbols in other areas and need to be able to turn off and on, or grey out classes.

what gives?

thanks

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

It is indeed supposed to let you manipulate visibilities of differently classed objects within a symbol.

If you create a new blank document, add two rectangles and class them as "A" and "B" with the None class active, then combine them into a symbol are you not able to control the visibilities in that test file either?

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that is correct. partially.

i did a test.

i made 3 pairs of objects.

placed 1 of each pair on class A, the other on class B

made one pair a symbol with world based settings, one default, the other left as objects only.

played with the visibilities.

the simple pair that was not a symbol worked fine.

the default symbol didn't work at all and when set class visibility to active only, stayed off.

the one set as page based symbol, and "layer B" as the active layer when i made it.....i could only see the layer B object (not the layer A) when layer B was the active class.

this is messed up!

i havent seen these issues.

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if i move my world based symbol from class none to class B, then the B object shows up when on class B.

and likewise, if i place the symbol on class A, the A object in the symbol turns on when i activate class A and the B object stays hidden until i switch the class visibilities to all on show/snap/mod others.

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Yes it should act that way.

They symbol instance has a class. The objects inside the symbol have a different class.

If you set the class options to Active Only, then one of those two classes will be set to invisible and you won't be able to see them.

When using nested objects you have to manipulate the class visibilities individually, not use the Active Only setting.

I try to leave all my symbols and groups in the None class and then leave that always visible.

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Pat what you are saying makes perfect sense.

to check that i have everything on the right class, i like to cycle through my classes, with active only, and make sure that only certain things are showing up on the right classes.

so, this is impossible once i convert everything to a symbol?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

What I understand from your original post and your subsequent posts is this:

1) Make class A active.

2) Symbol contains classes B and C.

3) When you change the class visibilities of B and C, the visibilities of those classes within your symbol do NOT change.

Is this a correct description of your issue or did I misunderstand?

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not correct jim.

i know my description was bad.

I have 4 classes. A, B, DIM, none.

i make symbols out of pairs of A and B classed objects.

once i make a symbol, it defaults to none class.

then as PAT describes, it acts properly.

- i just want a way to double check my classes as i described in my last post....while a symbol.

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Pat what you are saying makes perfect sense.

to check that i have everything on the right class, i like to cycle through my classes, with active only, and make sure that only certain things are showing up on the right classes.

so, this is impossible once i convert everything to a symbol?

Yes, this is basically impossible, especially as your symbols become more complicated and contain multiple classes.

If your symbols are simple enough that they only have one class, you can edit the symbol so the Symbol Instance has the same class as the objects in the symbol. Then the Active Class trick will work.

But what you probably really need to do is switch your procedure.

1. Set all classes to Invisible.

2. Set None class (or whatever your symbols are in) to Visible.

3. Set Class Options to Show Others or higher.

4. Cycle through classes as you normally do.

Since the None class is visible as is the Active class, when you get to a class that is inside a symbol (whose class is None), those objects will be visible.

HTH

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