Drawing registers

[nikihoops 2]

Hi all,

 

 I'm trying to create a 'clever' drawing register. I've created a worksheet data object and its on a sheet; looks great etc. However when I change the name of a sheet for example it doesn't update on the worksheet - I have tried recalculating it. This is also the same with adding revisions. I have my own sheets set up with title blocks that all seem to work fine. 

 

I've looked online for videos/explanations with no luck.

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction/give me some pointers? 

Example.vwx

[line-weight 291]

Last time I looked into whether it was possible to do this...the answer seemed to be no. But things may have changed since then. I'll follow the thread with interest. Sorry that's not of much help to you.

[nikihoops 2]

Well that seems pretty pointless! Might as well create the register in excel.

 

I thought the idea would be that the register would update as I add revisions/issues to each sheet - or least update when the sheet name changes.

 

Will wait and see what others say too.

Thank you for your response Line-weight

[Jonathan Pickup 158]

Are you using the standard Vectorworks Sheet Border tool for the title blocks?

 

[nikihoops 2]

Um I'm not sure? The title block was half set up when I started with this company and I've been adding to it and amending. There is a file attached to my original post which has the title block in. 

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

Hello Niki,

 

From the example file, I see that you are using the Project Revision History report without database row. This worksheet has no formulas in it and could be updated only by running the TB Manager and updating the worksheet report from there. However, you could create the Project Revision History report with database row, by not checking the "Create multiple pages" checkbox and that way your worksheet should update.

Another thing, that I have noticed, is that you are talking about updating the Revisions, but in the Project Revision History are listed Issues with their Current Revision Number, so, in order to populate the report with information, you should create Issues too.

 

Best Regards,

Nikolay Zhelyazkov

[nikihoops 2]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Pickup said:

Are you using the standard Vectorworks Sheet Border tool for the title blocks?

 

I've just had a play with a standard one and cant quite get it to work 100%  - I'm watching your video on youtube about the VW 2018 title block and am editing the standard sheet border to suit and still cant get the revisions to come up on the sheet. There is nothing in the formula box - what should be there?

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

If you want to get information about revisions, you could use Sheet Revision Log worksheet or check out this thread for more information about revisions in worksheets :

 If this is not helpful, could you tell me what exactly do you want to display in the worksheet and maybe send me another file with the worksheet you are currently using?

[nikihoops 2]

So I've created a new title block following Jonathan's youtube video (as mentioned above) and have added some revisions to see if it works and then created the Sheet revision log worksheet instead. This works fine but I much prefer the layout of the revision history sheet - this looks like a drawing register as I'm used to seeing them but it won't update with my revisions. 
I've uploaded my test file. 

Test.vwx

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

Project Revision/Issue history are both displaying information about Title Block Border Issues. The only default worksheet, that displays information about revisions, is Sheet Revision Log. If you want to, you could make yourself worksheet with database row for revisions, but you will have to use the formulas with SUBSTRING, as shown in the quoted thread in my previous comment. If you have troubles making one, I could make a simple example for you.

[nikihoops 2]

Ok thank you. I will take a look and have a go myself first.

 

Thank you for all your help and time. 

[nikihoops 2]

I cant actually insert the formula into the required box (see attached screenshot) as the box to type in wont let me type. 

So maybe your example might be helpful! 

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

I have attached the example file. Make sure to have View->Database Headers checked in order to be able to see the formulas. Let me know if you have any further questions.

ExampleRevisionWS.vwx

[line-weight 291]

@nikihoops did you get any further with this?

 

I have spent the past few hours trying to figure out how this all works. Like you, for me the "project revision history" worksheet is pretty close to what I want and what I think of as a standard drawing issue sheet.

 

I have got it mostly working.

 

I think some of the confusion has arisen from the difference between drawing issues and revisions.

 

Although the VW worksheet is titled "Project Revision History"* it is really a "Drawing Issue Sheet".

 

That is, it shows which drawings are issued to who, on each date. And for each of those drawing issues, it shows which revision of each drawing was issued on each of those days.

 

I think maybe you are making a new revision of a drawing sheet(s) and then wondering why it doesn't show up in the worksheet. But you need to make an issue of the drawing sheets. Then that issue will show up on the sheet and the revision number of each drawing issued will also show up.

 

To make a drawing issue the procedure to me is a bit obscure, and I think this could be done much better but as far as I can make out is like this:

1. File>Title Block Manager opens 'Title Block Manager' dialogue.

2. Select the 'Issue Data' tab. [This will show the 'issue' data for just one drawing sheet, see ** below]

3. Click 'Add' to open an 'Add New Issue' dialogue. Near the bottom of this dialogue is where you choose which sheets to 'Apply Issue Data to' ***

4. In there, choose which drawing sheets are to be included in this issue.

5. Click OK to exit the 'Add New Issue' dialogue and then OK again to exit from the 'Title Block Manager' dialogue.

6. VW then does its magic and that issue should be added into the worksheet for you.

 

For me in my trial file the worksheet looks like this:

 

 

So, for example, issue no.1 includes all the drawing sheets. Issue no.5 only includes sheet 101. Issue no.8 only includes sheets 012,101 and 202 but they have been revised since the previous time they were issued.

 

Some suggestions for VW by the way:

 

* I think this worksheet should be titled "Drawing Issue Register" or similar. Calling it a "Project Revision History" is not only a name I've never seen used in practice but I think it causes confusion because the primary purpose of this document is to record what revisions of what sheets were issued when - not when they were revised.

** (referring to step 3 in my process above) It would be much less confusing if the drawing issue process started off with a list of all drawing sheets, in a grid that also showed all issues so far. Usually if you're issuing drawings you are issuing a batch of them, not just one. Why enter this procedure from a tab that seems only to relate to a single drawing sheet?

*** Where it says "Apply Issue Data to" in the "Add new issue" dialogue: this is not very good from a UI point of view. While I understand that what VW might be doing behind the scenes is applying issue data to a sheet, from the user's point of view, they are including that sheet in a drawing issue. It should say something like "Sheets to be included in this issue".

 

 

[line-weight 291]

@Nikolay Zhelyazkov I have a few questions for you as you seem to know the nuts & bolts of how this works.

 

1) If you look at the screenshot of my issue sheet above, you can see that issue nos. 2, 4 and 6 have no drawing sheets included. That's because of me accidentally including none whilst trying to figure out how things work. How can I delete, or edit, these issues? If I go into the Title Block Manager, in the "Issue Data" tab there is an 'edit' button but there's no way for me to select any of those issues because they don't appear for any of the sheets.

 

2) Is it safe for me to customise that worksheet by making changes outside of the sections I've outlined in red below (delete rows, change text, etc)? Or might that stop things working?

 

3) You might notice that in my screenshot, issue no.1 starts in the 3rd column along. If I change the setting shown in the screenshot below to '8' this seems to fix it. But if I then change it to, say, '15' I get what is shown in the second screenshot below. Is this intended behaviour?

 

4) For drawings that haven't yet had any revisions applied, it seems that they just produce a blank box in the worksheet. Is that right? If so, this means that people must call the original version of any drawing revision 'A'. Conventionally, in a drawing issue sheet, I'd expect just to see a tick in the box for a drawing that has been issued, without yet having any revisions.

 

5) I've noticed that if I apply a revision to a batch of drawings using the Title Block Manager, this revision number is not applied in the actual title blocks, until I go to each one on its sheet layer, double click to edit it, and then click out of it again. Is this a bug?

 

6) Am I right to understand that the system is not 'intelligent' about dates of revisions and issues? In other words, it doesn't notice if issue no. 2 has an earlier date than issue no. 1. And it doesn't care if, say, revision B to sheet 001 has an earlier date than a drawing issue that included sheet 001 at revision A?

 

7)

(a) Am I right to understand, that when I make a new drawing issue, the revision numbers recorded for the drawings included in that issue are determined by what the latest revisions in their title blocks are, at the point when I exit the Title Block Manager?

(b) And after that point, I can't change that?

 

8 ) Is it right that I can't automatically add recipients to that worksheet - I just do that manually?

 

Sorry for the long list. There might still be more questions to come...

 

 

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

Hello @line-weight,

 

Before anything else, there were major changes in the Title Block Manager functionality in VW2019, so some of your questions might not be up to date anymore.

 

1) This is a know problem with the "unused issues". As of now the only way to fix this is to use a script that I have attached somewhere in the forum I think. I could attach the script here too. Anyway, we are looking into this problem and we are trying to find the solution, as soon as possible. 🙂

 

2) Yes, just make sure to have the first row of the second outline from your picture(the row below Sheet No.) to be the same as the Start at Row field, if you are creating multiple pages/worksheets.

 

3) Yes. When you specify the number of issues, you are specifying how many columns to be created for issues. After that, the existing issues are placed from right to left in these columns. In VW2019 you could select to simply display all existing issues.

 

4) Yes. You mean to have something else and unique, specifying that the drawing had no revisions, when it was issued, rather than a blank box? If so, could you add a topic about this in the wishlist thread, to have it listed somewhere? We will discuss this and see if it is possible and appropriate to make this change.

 

5) Yes, it is a bug. I tested this in VW2019 and it is fixed there.

 

6) Yes. Dates are either automatically generated, when creating new Issues/Revisions, or manually inputted. If you add new Issues/Revisions chronologically, the dates should be in ascending order too for the new Issues/Revisions.

 

7) Yes and yes.

 

8 ) Yes. However, you could do this just once by adding recipients row in any of the areas specified in 2) and after that this row should not be edited/deleted by the Manager.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

 

Best Regards,
Nikolay Zhelyazkov

[line-weight 291]

Hi @Nikolay Zhelyazkov

 

Thanks very much for answering my questions.

 

2) I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'start at row field'? (I'm not really an expert in using worksheets/databases with formulas etc)

 

4) Yes that's right. I'll make a wishlist request.

 

8 ) Again I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'recipients row'? This would be a row where I'd need to add special formulas?

 

 

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

1 minute ago, line-weight said:

2) I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'start at row field'? (I'm not really an expert in using worksheets/databases with formulas etc)

 - I was talking about the field from the picture below

 

8 ) Yes, similar to the "By" row. You should replace "Approval" in the formula from that row with "Recipients" and that should do the trick. I could make an example worksheet with just recipients in it if you want to.

 

[line-weight 291]

3 minutes ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

 - I was talking about the field from the picture below

 

 

 

Ok - thanks, I get it now.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

 8 ) Yes, similar to the "By" row. You should replace "Approval" in the formula from that row with "Recipients" and that should do the trick. I could make an example worksheet with just recipients in it if you want to.

 

 

An example worksheet would be useful to help me understand, yes please.

 

35 minutes ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

1) This is a know problem with the "unused issues". As of now the only way to fix this is to use a script that I have attached somewhere in the forum I think. I could attach the script here too. Anyway, we are looking into this problem and we are trying to find the solution, as soon as possible. 🙂

 

It also would be useful if you could attach this script, thanks.

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

You will find both the script and the example worksheet in the attached file Examples.vwx.

Examples.vwx

[line-weight 291]

Another question (more about title block borders than the issue sheet).

 

Usually I have things set up so that there is one drawing sheet per 'sheet layer'.

 

Sometimes though, I will have several sheets (or pages) on one design layer (under 'page setup' I specify for example 5 pages horizontally).

 

It seems that it is OK to have more than one title block border in a sheet layer. Is that right, or might this cause me problems (I would not want to include these sheets in the drawing issue register anyway)?

 

The 'sheet title' and 'sheet number' for each of these title block borders are the same, because they are pulled from the sheet layer title and number.

 

I've tried creating some custom data fields for the title block style that I use here. This works, but whatever I then enter in those fields, applies only to each individual title block border. Is there any way of creating a custom field that will apply to all title block borders that are on the same sheet layer, that is, that will behave the same way as 'sheet title' and 'sheet number'?

 

The reason I ask this is: when I have a sequence of pages set up like this on the same sheet layer, I will often export them as a multi-page document, and it's useful to have them labelled as "page 1 of 5", "page 2 of 5" and so on. At the moment I have to do this manually, but it would be handy if I could do this automatically, for example, if a 5 page document becomes a 6 page one, it would be nice to have a 'number of pages on this sheet layer' field that I could change once, and it would automatically apply to all the pages.

Edited January 9 by line-weight

[line-weight 291]

56 minutes ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

You will find both the script and the example worksheet in the attached file Examples.vwx.

Examples.vwx

 

Thanks.

 

The script didn't quite work for me unfortunately.

 

Here is the worksheet before I ran the script:

 

 

Here it is after running the script once:

 

 

Here it is after running it again:

 

 

 

It seems like it has removed the 'empty' ones but then it has not renumbered the remaining ones - and also it hasn't sorted them in order.

 

 

 

Edited January 9 by line-weight

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

35 minutes ago, line-weight said:

It seems that it is OK to have more than one title block border in a sheet layer. Is that right, or might this cause me problems (I would not want to include these sheets in the drawing issue register anyway)?

- So far I have heard of 2 different practices in using the Title Blocks

     - Have only 1 TBB on a layer

     - Have multiple TBBs on a layer

 So I think that your case is OK.

 

36 minutes ago, line-weight said:

I've tried creating some custom data fields for the title block style that I use here. This works, but whatever I then enter in those fields, applies only to each individual title block border. Is there any way of creating a custom field that will apply to all title block borders that are on the same sheet layer, that is, that will behave the same way as 'sheet title' and 'sheet number'?

- This could be easily done with styles. You have to use one style for all TBBs on that layer, edit the style and make the fields that you want to be the same for all TBBs using that style to be "By Style", by clicking on the buttons left from the field name in Sheet Data. After that, when you want to change the value of that field, you will have to edit it through the style.

 

About the script - its purpose is to delete the issues that are not used by any TBB in the file. It does not renumber the Current Revision Number of the issues that remain used in the document.

[line-weight 291]

7 minutes ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

-

- This could be easily done with styles. You have to use one style for all TBBs on that layer, edit the style and make the fields that you want to be the same for all TBBs using that style to be "By Style", by clicking on the buttons left from the field name in Sheet Data. After that, when you want to change the value of that field, you will have to edit it through the style.

 

Ah yes of course.

So I would have a 'master' style for the type of TBB I want to use and just make a version of it each time I have a multiple page set.

 

I guess there's not a clever way of getting it to automatically number the pages 1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5, etc? It would need to be able to count the total number of pages on the sheet, and number them in order.

[line-weight 291]

11 minutes ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said:

About the script - its purpose is to delete the issues that are not used by any TBB in the file. It does not renumber the Current Revision Number of the issues that remain used in the document.

 

Unfortunately it's not of much use if the sequence of issues gets mixed up, like you can see in my example where it puts issue no. 3 after issue no. 8.

 

I think it would be better just to live with some empty columns in the worksheet.

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov 58]

1 minute ago, line-weight said:

 

Unfortunately it's not of much use if the sequence of issues gets mixed up, like you can see in my example where it puts issue no. 3 after issue no. 8.

 

I think it would be better just to live with some empty columns in the worksheet.

Did you create the worksheet again from the Manager after you have executed the scipt once?