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Reports not counting symbols with specific class information


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OMG Nemetchek you're killing me.

I run a lot of reports.

They're really simple. I like to count things.

I use a lot of classes and then use reports to count them.

My current document I have a stage lighting design. All lights are "lighting instruments"

I have created a report, checked the boxes for counting plug in objects, and set the criteria, as Layer Lighting. All my lights show up.

Add a criteria for a specific class, like "Stage Fixtures" and half the lights with the given class are gone.

Specifically the lights that disappear I have imported from the native VW Libray.

But those fixtures come with the baggage of native embedded classes. (what ass hat thought that was a good idea)

I have deleted all the stupid native classes and replaced with none (as they should be)

It's these symbols that are not being counted in the report even though when in the working layer I select all the units and make sure they are the correct class and they are.

I've dug into editing the symbols to make sure they are in fact none (please see my post about crashing when right clicking on symbols to edit) and all the items in the 2D, and 3D objects are the none class.

So what gives?

Anyone having the same issue?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yup reports are definitely broken.

How sad. I'm glad I gave Nemetchek almost $4k last month.

Attached is a file with some variations of the same symbol.

I did not edit the symbol. That's not what broke the counting.

By simply giving the symbol a different class than it's native class it no longer is counted in the report.

Another example is a duplicate version of the same symbol. I edited the symbol and gave the root objects a class of none.

When you look at the records. The sheet that has no criteria counts everything. The sheet that has a criteria only counts symbols not lighting instruments, and the last sheet is counting only objects with the native class.

This last sheet tells the real story. Even though I have removed all class information from the symbol it is still being counted in the 3rd sheet with the native class. That means there's some piece of information deep in the fixture that I can not edit that contains that class information. In my earlier drawing I deleted all of the native classes and opted to assign all objects to none. Therefore they now will not show up in any reports unless I give the report no criteria.

This is a major failure on Team VW. I think this problem lies more in the people that work on the spotlight portion that the worksheet portion. I will submit this bug and pray they fix it fast, but that means VW2017 most likely.

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I think there are two things going on. (And you're not the first to find this frustrating.)

In the past the difference between the symbol for the lighting instrument and the parametric object Lighting Device has been less important. Before my time I think it may have even been common practice to insert a symbol and then convert it to a lighting device. (VW 8?) I think even today many or most Spotlight users very happily don't understand the difference between the lighting symbol and the lighting device parametric object.

What seems to be happening in 2016 is that the Lighting Device parametric object, which is the container for the symbol, is classing the conventional, led, and moving light symbols differently. I wonder if this was a wish list item? The good news is that it is using the class set in the symbol definition, so it's easy to change.

It does seem out of character for the rest of vectorworks. The only time VW auto adds classes that I can think of are red line objects, framing members, DTM modifiers, guides, and section cut styles. Most of those I find helpful. I'm not seeing the usefulness of autoclassing lighting devices. yet.

I'd really love to know the reason that at least some conventional lights have their 3D Locus classed as Lighting-Architectural. I don't see the benefit of that.

All that to say…

I think you can accomplish what you need to do in a couple ways.

1. Delete the Lighting-Moving Light Class. You'll probably have to delete it again if you import a new symbol. Not sure if that screws things up further down the road, but I just tried it and it was stable. Probably not the best option.

or

2. Change the default symbol class for each lighting symbol. Right click on the symbol in the RB, choose Edit Symbol Options…, and set the class you want in the Assign to Class pulldown. After that, as long as you keep using the symbols from the current document instead of the default symbols, I think it will behave the way you want.

or

3. Don't look inside the parametric object in the database criteria. i.e., use =('Lighting Device'.'Inst Type') instead of the symbol name to identify fixture type. Use the new(ish) (2014 or 2015) instrument autoclassing in Spotlight Preferences to assign Lighting Devices to classes.

Maybe Kevin or Jim will be able to share some insights as to how and why Lighting Devices developed this way in 2016. In the past, changes like this have either come from wish lists or been precursors of future features.

hth

mk

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