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Split worksheet across multiple pages


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We have a worksheet set up on an A4 page to act as an issue sheet. Our list of sheets tends to be longer than one A4 page allows however (Worksheet shown next to 2 vertically stacked A4 pages on sheet layer).

 

1195514058_ScreenShot2019-06-26at10_18_58.thumb.png.19020719456b6b83309eca6909ea45ee.png

 

If you print this, it sort of works, but leads to some cutting off: 

896422253_ScreenShot2019-06-26at10_19_18.thumb.png.f35c2028a11bff1f3d5fb0e1044cf60b.png

 

I have previously converted it to a bitmap, pasted it twice and cropped to how i'd like it to be on both pages, but this is a bit time consuming, has to be redone if a sheet gets added or omitted, and leads to a big file size. Any suggestions?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello @_James,

 

As I see you are creating Title Block Project Issue History worksheet. You could create this worksheet report from Title Block Manager using the option "Create multiple pages". This will create multiple worksheets depending on the values inputed for Rows Count and Start at Row. Make sure that these values correspond to the worksheet resources used, as otherwise you might get some odd results.

 

Best Regards,

Nikolay Zhelyazkov

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Hi @Nikolay Zhelyazkov,

 

I'm aware of this, but it's quite difficult/unintuitive to use! Things that make me think this:

 

👎 Either you need to delve into VW's preferences files and amend the worksheet template to display your own company info or go into each page and change it. 

👎I have no idea how many rows I want to be displayed, it's good that it gives you an option to start at row x and specify the amount of rows per worksheet, but who knows this before they create the sheet/see it? Changing this dynamically once the worksheets have been created would be much easier, or like any spreadsheet programme it would be handy to just select a print area and spread large sheets over multiple pages.

👎Creating it from TBM seems to preclude you having an issue sheet as an office-wide resource and just dropping it into a sheet when needed. Keeping it as a resource lets the more VW literate people edit functionality and get it all working nicely to then allow less literate colleagues just drop it in without needing to get too bogged down in technicalities.


Time for a wishlist item? It's potentially so powerful but there's a lot of friction to get it to work as wanted. As ever, thanks for your quick replies!

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello @_James,

 

First of all, thanks for your feedback. 🙂

 

13 hours ago, _James said:

 

👎 Either you need to delve into VW's preferences files and amend the worksheet template to display your own company info or go into each page and change it. 

- You could do this from VW UI by importing the worksheets from the default content to your active file, but it will take effect only in that file that way.

 

13 hours ago, _James said:

👎I have no idea how many rows I want to be displayed, it's good that it gives you an option to start at row x and specify the amount of rows per worksheet, but who knows this before they create the sheet/see it? Changing this dynamically once the worksheets have been created would be much easier, or like any spreadsheet programme it would be handy to just select a print area and spread large sheets over multiple pages.

- You could Initially use the default values and after that modify the values and worksheets and recreate them from the Manager. It still requires more than 1 simple step though.

 

13 hours ago, _James said:

👎Creating it from TBM seems to preclude you having an issue sheet as an office-wide resource and just dropping it into a sheet when needed. Keeping it as a resource lets the more VW literate people edit functionality and get it all working nicely to then allow less literate colleagues just drop it in without needing to get too bogged down in technicalities.

- As these worksheets are not using database rows, we cannot make them as simple resource, as they require dynamic filling. That is why we need them to be created from a menu command. However, you could still use them as normal resource, at least the ones with database row, as the others will not be filled that way.

 

13 hours ago, _James said:

Time for a wishlist item?

- You could fill in a wishlist item and we will see if we could make it happen. 🙂

 

Best Regards,

Nikolay Zhelyazkov

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  • 1 year later...

Hi @Nikolay Zhelyazkov,

 

I have been looking into 2021 and the print functions built directly into the worksheet window. I have been trying to do the same thing as above but am still getting issues where the page split ends up cutting rows - am I using it wrong?

 

In between sheet 450 and 500 there is supposed to be sheet 455 - this has been cutoff completely!

 

80551793_Screenshot2020-10-21at17_48_10.thumb.png.8560ace93941c13f1f55855c416c676d.png

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
13 hours ago, _James said:

Hi @Nikolay Zhelyazkov,

 

I have been looking into 2021 and the print functions built directly into the worksheet window. I have been trying to do the same thing as above but am still getting issues where the page split ends up cutting rows - am I using it wrong?

 

In between sheet 450 and 500 there is supposed to be sheet 455 - this has been cutoff completely!

 

80551793_Screenshot2020-10-21at17_48_10.thumb.png.8560ace93941c13f1f55855c416c676d.png

Hi @_James,

 

I have just texted printing a big Project Issue History worksheet to a pdf file and it got split correctly. Could you send me a test file or a screen recording showing the steps you do?

 

Best Regards,

Nikolay Zhelyazkov

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Before I do, would the fact that it's a 2019 file converting into 2021 for testing have anything to do with it? Perhaps I would be better rebuilding the worksheet from scratch in 2021?

 

I simply just open the worksheet from the resource manager, click 'file' (within the worksheet window rather than the programme window) > print > and then use the 'open as pdf in preview' option that's available in MacOS.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
26 minutes ago, _James said:

Before I do, would the fact that it's a 2019 file converting into 2021 for testing have anything to do with it? Perhaps I would be better rebuilding the worksheet from scratch in 2021?

 

I simply just open the worksheet from the resource manager, click 'file' (within the worksheet window rather than the programme window) > print > and then use the 'open as pdf in preview' option that's available in MacOS.

I do not think that the file version should be a problem. This is a print worksheet issue, so it should be based on the active worksheet only and the worksheet print functionality. Might be something with your printer settings. For me, I get correctly split worksheet with header lines on each page.

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Thanks for your help on this. After a bit more playing around I realise that it's my error as I had set all the margins to 0. Now that i've restored these to a more sensible amount, particularly the bottom=25 the rows split correctly. On this, is there any reason why the margins give 8 decimal places? I do not need this level of precision! Also I found that if I put all the margins as equal amounts, the worksheet does not sit centred on the page, hence right and left have different values.

 

1648582761_Screenshot2020-10-22at10_55_54.thumb.png.74903eb1205e0782a13c16d8f42d9b48.png 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
4 minutes ago, _James said:

Thanks for your help on this. After a bit more playing around I realise that it's my error as I had set all the margins to 0. Now that i've restored these to a more sensible amount, particularly the bottom=25 the rows split correctly. On this, is there any reason why the margins give 8 decimal places? I do not need this level of precision! Also I found that if I put all the margins as equal amounts, the worksheet does not sit centred on the page, hence right and left have different values.

 

1648582761_Screenshot2020-10-22at10_55_54.thumb.png.74903eb1205e0782a13c16d8f42d9b48.png 

 

- About the precision, this might be coming from conversion from mm to inches or something. If you do not like this behavior, you can submit a bug about it.

 

- About the difference between right and left, I think that you might be left with blank space after your worksheet because your left margin is too small, and that is why the right margin looks bigger. Again, if this is not what you would expect, you can fill in a bug or wish about it. Otherwise, you should be able to adjust the position by modifying the left margin

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Thanks Nikolay.

 

Out of interest I tried using the standard Issue History worksheet and using this. I see it's set up for a US Letter paper size. I changed this to A4 and the formatting goes completely wrong (pdf attached). Changing it back to US letter, it's still not correct.

 

Is there a tutorial for setting up worksheets so that they're correctly sized on a given sheet of paper? It's very time consuming re-sizing columns and the numbers don't stay exactly as the values you enter (for example if you specify 16mm it's common to go back and see 15.97mm). Is it possible to set the print area like in spreadsheet and then have the desired area be scaled to fit?

Title Block Project Issue History.pdf

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
4 minutes ago, _James said:

Thanks Nikolay.

 

Out of interest I tried using the standard Issue History worksheet and using this. I see it's set up for a US Letter paper size. I changed this to A4 and the formatting goes completely wrong (pdf attached). Changing it back to US letter, it's still not correct.

 

Is there a tutorial for setting up worksheets so that they're correctly sized on a given sheet of paper? It's very time consuming re-sizing columns and the numbers don't stay exactly as the values you enter (for example if you specify 16mm it's common to go back and see 15.97mm). Is it possible to set the print area like in spreadsheet and then have the desired area be scaled to fit?

Title Block Project Issue History.pdf 97.08 kB · 0 downloads

- Honestly, I am not very familiar with worksheet printing. Anyway, I have just checked to see if there is an answer to your question and I saw that in the Printer Setup there are Scaling options, which allow you to fit the worksheet in one page or the worksheet columns in one page. I think that these options should get the work done for you. 🙂

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 10/22/2020 at 5:57 AM, _James said:

Thanks for your help on this. After a bit more playing around I realise that it's my error as I had set all the margins to 0. Now that i've restored these to a more sensible amount, particularly the bottom=25 the rows split correctly. On this, is there any reason why the margins give 8 decimal places? I do not need this level of precision! Also I found that if I put all the margins as equal amounts, the worksheet does not sit centred on the page, hence right and left have different values.

 

1648582761_Screenshot2020-10-22at10_55_54.thumb.png.74903eb1205e0782a13c16d8f42d9b48.png 

 

 

These unit and precision of these values are controlled by your document units and precisions. The length unit precision for your document is probably set to 8 decimal places. 

 

Are you including the tabs in your prints? Tabs always taken into account even when you turn them off. That would explain why the worksheet doesn't appear centered on the page.

 

 

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 10/30/2020 at 12:50 PM, _James said:

Hi @Hugues,

 

I don't have 8 decimal places set, could there be another cause?

 

I'm not including the tabs in the prints no, I would rather not see these. Do you know the dimensions of these so that I can account for them in my margins?

 

694348471_Screenshot2020-10-30at16_49_03.thumb.png.2f0f0eb8396de878c0c5bcdcad295b67.png

 

It appears that those rounding errors are the result of some legacy unit conversions. 

The width of the row tabs is about 64mm.

 

 

 

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