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All 'viewports' on a sheet to share one 'Annotation' space


Amorphous - Julian

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When documenting, we constantly click in and out of 'viewport annotations'. 
 

Sometimes it is just to copy a finish tag etc, from one viewport to another. Other times it is to perform a repetitive task like dimensioning. 

 

It would be most useful to have a workflow where we can seamlessly enter from one annotation space to another. 


This could either be:

(1) an option to access all viewport annotation at the same time (access all viewports) , or

(2) be able to 'tab' between the annotation spaces on the same sheet (to perform, say, copy-paste operations between them).

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10 hours ago, Amorphous - Julian said:

(2) be able to 'tab' between the annotation spaces on the same sheet (to perform, say, copy-paste operations between them).

If anybody is interested in a workaround about the possibility to switch to another viewport annotations with minimal mouse actions below is at least one such possibility using two utility apps. (Keyboard Maestro and Better Touch Tool)

 

In my version I use a mouse tap to call the BTT coincidence "context menu like" to select the command, click to select the command (shortcut to activate the Keyboard  Maestro sequence), lastly click the next target viewport. 

 

As a note, "edit annotations"  (or any context menu command) in the context menu can be assigned  a keyboard shortcut in the system preferences.

The keyboard shortcut will Only work when the context menu is active.  Simulating a Ctrl + click in keyboard maestro then the edit annotations command shortcut will trigger the edit VP annotations.  The setup sounds more complicated then it is to set it up.

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If anybody is interested I can post a screenshot of the sequence I use.

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Yes please.

It's very rare to have viewports on the same sheet that aren't context related.

A group of Interior elevations, Single section cut into multiple VP's to compress it, Call out details at larger scale than the main section. 

Altought across scales might be hard.

All these times a single merged space would be an advantage.

 

For the rare case it's not we'll cope.

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While it sounds appealing, I'm not sure this is the way to go.  What happens if you annotate two details in a single viewport but then decide that you need to move one to another sheet?  The system would need to allow for separate VPs for each detail, but allow you to enter all of the VPs on a single sheet at the same time.  That would allow for a a better workflow without having to jump in & out of different VPs, while not locking individual details (or elevations, sections, etc) to a specific spot on a specific sheet.

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8 hours ago, Matt Overton said:

Single section cut into multiple VP's to compress it,

 

yes... I do this all the time, and annotating them is a pain (although, sometimes I 'cheat' and put all the annotations in the annotation layer of one of the viewports but place them so they actually sit on top of the other viewports)

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This would be a handy and time saving option, but there is still the ago old question of when is it better to use annotations or put notes, dimensions, etc on the original design layer.  If we are talking about 2D details and plans it might be easier and better to do them on the design layer or layers, there you don´t need to open anything and the viewports just need to be updated.  Also as we know viewports cannot be copied to other files.  But in the case of elevations derived from a model each elevation would generally be in its own viewport and notes, dimensions, etc need to be done as annotations. 

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20 hours ago, E|FA said:

While it sounds appealing, I'm not sure this is the way to go.  What happens if you annotate two details in a single viewport but then decide that you need to move one to another sheet?  The system would need to allow for separate VPs for each detail, but allow you to enter all of the VPs on a single sheet at the same time.  That would allow for a a better workflow without having to jump in & out of different VPs, while not locking individual details (or elevations, sections, etc) to a specific spot on a specific sheet.

Not sure this is much of a problem.

After all, you'll be able to copy the whole viewport to another sheet then delete the no applicable parts from each.

To me, that is a reasonable trade to make the more common situation easier to work with.

 

Also, don't mind if it is a special non-automatic function that I'd have to configure as a multi-crop viewport or viewport container object that collects them into a single viewport like object.

 

Now a Viewport collection object could handy in many ways not only unify the annotation space also could unify class, layer, render settings and maybe force viewport alignment so internal elevations in a container would be height aligned. Upon explode or export the container would move shared annotations to the closest viewport.

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Having more than one detail in a viewport goes back to the comment that you can´t use auto callout referencing.  I don´t know how important that is since it is only useful when looking at the plans and details in VW it has no use for hard copies on the job site.  

 

On my current project I made empty viewports with the settings of scale, etc I wanted for each.  Then pasted the details in as annotations.  That works pretty well, and the modifications done to the details as annotations can then be copied and pasted into a design layer for future use.  If you make annotations in the normal way to a viewport you can´t save the whole thing for use in another file.  Of course this only works if the detail consists of only one layer.  

 

There is a management issue that is persistent in VW;  you can´t easily copy viewports to another file.  So you have to be careful how you approach using annotations.  

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