Having a Record pop-up similar to one for a title block

[obviouslytom]

Seems simple enough, right?

I am creating labels for my utility drawings. I work in the exhibit industry so I have symbols calling out where a specific voltage/amp needs to be placed. I also have a legend on the right that calls out the total quantities of each type that I draw in. Currently I am manually changing it every time, on every drawing. 400+ jobs a year gets somewhat tedious.

So I have created symbols for my legend that I can place into the drawing that says "120v 5amp | (qty)". I create the symbol, then I create a record for the labels, which I have 8 of for the 120v list. In the record, I have the perameters as follows "P_120v 5amp" and have it set to "text".

After I get all of that set up and I link the quantity text to the record, I save the library file where I have it all placed and proceed to put it into a drawing. When I do, I double click on the label symbol and it asks if I want to edit the symbol instead of having a pop up like I do with the title block.

Is there a step that I am missing? I thought that I had everything covered since I followed how I did the record format for the title block and that works perfect every time. I know that I could probably get it to work if I put it into the standard title block file, but that would defeat the purpose since I have to roll this out to 4 other people once its complete.

If someone wants a file to mess with, let me know and I will upload one with the record and the label.

[Pat Stanford]

Title blocks are a very special object, way more than just text linked to a record.

If you only have one field in your record, I would change it to two. Make the first one just text for the type of service. Make the second one an integer for the quantity. Then link both pieces of text into the symbol.

You can then select the symbol in the drawing, go to the Data pane of the Object Info Palette (OIP) and change the quantity relatively easily there.

If you use a worksheet with a database row to display the individual services, you can also edit the quantities there.

If this does not make sense, let us know and I will try again.

[obviouslytom]

That makes sense. After I did it I saw that I could change it in the data tab and maybe that is how it will have to be. Its not the prefered way, but it is still loads better than what I was doing before

[Pat Stanford]

For 400 shows a year, how much is this worth to you in terms of dollars or hours?

You could make a PlugIn Object (PIO) that would give you popups or data entry fields in the Shape pane of the OIP instead. Depending on how complicated you want to make it and how much programming experience you have it would probably take between 5 and 50 hours of time to write.

If you have more $ than time, you might contact Sam Jones (or maybe one of the other scriptures on the list will chime in) and see if he can modify something in the AutoPlot pack to do what you need. www.autoplotvw.com

[Kevin McAllister]

What flavour of Vectorworks are you running? Wouldn't it make sense to use the tools in the Spotlight toolset? Then you can access the fields on the first tab of the Object Info Palette. There are the default fields plus some custom user fields. There's also paperwork setup to generate schedules etc.

Kevin