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VW 2020 Tag tool questions


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Guys, you hit it out of the park 🙂

Just a few questions :

 

1. Will we see any way tags can call out levels (not just stories)?

2. Is there any way to call out the surface area of a wall without calculating all 4 sides? (the longest surface side only is what interests me the most), or surfaces based on the component?

For me, I would use this for the purposes of calculating fenestration vs. solid walls for energy code requirements in NYC, and calculating wall area take-offs / costs.

3. Will we be able to modify text positioning in a tag without editing it - in terms of text. Let's say you need to resize the text field in just one tag, rather than resizing all tags, would we be able to look forward to something like this in the future? or is this something the asymmetric scaling can take care of?

 

Combining data looks very promising! Finally i can combine custom records with VW records and IFC based records without having to modify each one! Still playing around.

 

Thank you for your hard work!

Edited by Samuel Derenboim
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Firstly, thank you for the feedback.

1. and 2. I'll consult with colleagues about those.

3. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to achieve. You want to change the text box width and height? But only for individual tags because if you that in the profile group of a style it will be applied to all? I'll have to research this.

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the annotation tool can't pull out custom record information as far as i'm aware of. The idea is to infuse record information into a symbol libary, and pull out the information at will when constructing new details, or perhaps calling out component names in detail cross sections. There is a function I believe that can take notes out from a central database, but that's not the same thing unfortunately. one is centrally located in a database, thats not exactly associated with a symbol, and the other is simply a symbol having record information. But I think youll understand my meaning. 

 

adding this function to the annotation tool would be great, the only problem is that you can mass appropriate it to all the symbols like you can with the tag tool. When i discovered that feature, i was like....😍

 

Also, regarding tag tool parameters : 

 

1. is there a way to call out wall length? Only wall thickness and wall height can be called out, but not length. I was preparing on using the two parameters so that i can run a script to compute the surface area (wall length x wall height) into a separate record - perhaps that can be called out by the tag tool. 

2. The second, not as straight forward idea is that you can have conditional statements in a tag. Lets say you need the area of a window, door, window wall or wall in one tag. Normally under these circumstances you can't pull the information out in one tag, but rather three separate tags, which would kinda make it a little less convenient in using it under varied circumstances.

 

What if in one tag you can specifically call out areas in all three, having different parameters. i.e.

 

if object is wall -> use #Wall outer surface area# (if it exists) or custom record that calculates wall length x wall height

if object is a window -> use #Window#.#OverallArea#

if object is a door -> use #Door#.#ClearArea#

 

you wouldn't believe how conditional statements have saved my life on severe deadlines regarding energy calculations needed for the department of buildings, or tabulations for zoning, building area, gross area, etc... I can send you some samples on how i used conditional statements in worksheets that ultimately saves me a week of work in a matter of minutes.

 

Again, the second one isn't as important as the first. some basic functions are needed to at least tabulate dimensions, areas, etc... of walls, windows, doors, geometry etc...

So far, I've been using the annotation layer in viewports to draw out 2 dimensional geometry specifically for that purpose. For rectangles or polylines, its much easier to pull out length, width, area and height parameters. The only problem is that it defeats the purposes of building information modeling, or at least adds another layer to get the information i need not readily available.

 

i actually want to use the new data visualization manager this way, the lack of some of these functions are making it a little difficult. This would be a game changer for take-offs too.

 

Again, thank you for considering these things in your next iterations. I would never expect something like this from Autodesk. This is one of the main reasons why I remain, and will remain with Vectorworks. Thank you very much for your help in the matter!

Edited by Samuel Derenboim
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