INSYMBOL and symbol name in worksheets

[unearthed]

I'm familiar with using INSYMBOL to count subsymbol objects but all that does is get all of a particular item from within all symbols. How do I say query all instances of symbolA?

This is for a planting plan where I'm using several different planting modules, each of which contains several different plant species, and obviously I'd rather have the same species symbol drawing-wide.

[unearthed]

Putting it another way:

I have ten different belts of trees (each up to 1 kilometre long). Due to varied terrain, soils etc. the plant mix varies along individual tree belts. I'm doing this by introducing different master symbols proceeding along the strip, each of which contains a different species mix (sub-symbols), although many of the species appear in different master symbols.

For simplicity sake I would rather NOT have to put groups of symbols on different layers or classes in order to count the symbols in a particular tree belt.

I had hoped that

=COUNT((INSYMBOL & (S='masterSymbol') & (S='subsymbol1')))

would work but no luck there

INSYMBOL seems to lack a way of limiting COUNT to a specific master symbol.

Has anyone had better luck?

For the less plant oriented one could think about counting all the red door handles in door symbols on level 34.

[michaelk]

nigel

I would have sworn that there would be a way to use location to do this. I tried creating location objects inside the main symbol and outside the main symbol.

The results were unsatisfactory. With the location object outside the main symbol it didn't "see" any nested symbols. With the location object inside a main symbol it "saw" all the nested symbols in all the main symbols.

Here's the easiest way I could find to do it:

1. Create a new record format. In the example I made a new record format called 'WhereAmI' with one field called plant area.

I had another record format called TreeType attached to all the tree symbol definitions just to use in the criteria to identify trees.

2. I edited each main symbol and did the following:

a. select all

b. attach the record format WhereAmI

c. While they were still selected, type in the name of the area in the bottom pane of the data tab of the OIP.

In the criteria, I used

=DATABASE((INSYMBOL & (R IN ['TreeType']) & ('WhereAmI'.'Plant Area'='1')))

That's the quickest fix I could find. I'll attach an example.

hth

mk

[unearthed]

Hi Michael,

Thanks very much, that's so helpful I'm (nearly) speechless, a very happy new year to you.

I'll work with the drawing you sent and get back to this post later this month.

[michaelk]

Hope it works! Have a great new year.

mk

[Francisco J. D. Rogers]

Hello:

 

By the way, what is the syntax for show the symbol name in a Worksheet?

 

cheers

[michaelk]

=S

 

It's tricky to find in Help.  Search in Help for "Entering Data in Database Rows"  then scroll down until you get to "Retrieving Object Attributes in a Worksheet"  (for some reason searching for Retrieving Object Attributes in a Worksheet won't find it) there is a very handy chart with all the attributes you can call.  Just stick an equal sign in front of each one.

 

hth

mk