Anders Blomberg Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 I'm trying to create a drawing that shows the construction of all of my hard/softscapes (modelled as landscape areas in the model). I'm trying to create something similar to the diagram attached below. It shows: a section consisting of all soft/hardscapes with their respective name a text showing thickness of each layer a tag/ID for each material a simple explanation for the definition of the tag So far I've modelled a number of little squares consisting of the individual landscape areas next to each other and created a section of the. I have a number of questions: Why am I not seeing the hatch of the materials of the landscape areas? Can anyone help with a tag that shows material ID and thickness of the specific layer in a specific landscape area? Creating the simple explanation of the ID's? It doesn't have to look exactly as below. It would be lovely to have a worksheet that could present the same information. I've broken out the little squares into a separate file and attached it here if anyone would be kind enough to give it a try. Ideally I would have loved some kind of feature that could create this automatically without modelling the extra areas, I guess it should be possible as all the landscape areas and materials are already defined. Section test.vwx Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted October 20, 2021 Author Share Posted October 20, 2021 (edited) After trying around all day I've come as far as below. I feel like I'm really close to what I need. After looking through an episode on the university about materials they noted that the Mark field in the material can be used fo ID and fetched via a data tag. So now if I could only fetch the Mark in a data tag for the section and the same for a column in my worksheet I'd be home. As a bonus it'd be cool if the hatches would appear. Would love it if anyone here knew how to to it? Edited October 20, 2021 by Anders Blomberg 1 Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 I did have a look at your file when you first posted but I don't use Materials (yet) + have had very little experience of Landscape Areas with components so didn't feel qualified to comment. However, when I create a new LA using one of your styles + cut a section through it the section fills display fine But can you explain why the texture doesn't display on the top surface of the object? In your LAs it's as if there's a planar object on top of the LA with the texture trying to peek through: In Renderworks it looks like this: What's that all about? As I say, I've only used LAs with components once before but I don't remember this happening... Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted October 20, 2021 Author Share Posted October 20, 2021 How weird. How does the section I made in the sheet layer look to you? Is it all white for you as well? Yep, I don't really understand how to use the materials either. Basically the fill in the attributes applies itself on top of the material. I've understod it as you could control plan fill from the material but I'm not really understanding how currently. Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 Your section looks all white as per your screen shot + nothing I tried changed that. As for the texture not showing on the top surface of the LA, again nothing I did would change it i.e. setting the texture by object or by class. Yet if I create my own LA from scratch in a new file it behaves normally: Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted October 20, 2021 Author Share Posted October 20, 2021 @Tom W. Maybe I'd better look into my karma account. Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 On 10/20/2021 at 4:38 PM, Anders Blomberg said: After trying around all day I've come as far as below. I feel like I'm really close to what I need. After looking through an episode on the university about materials they noted that the Mark field in the material can be used fo ID and fetched via a data tag. So now if I could only fetch the Mark in a data tag for the section and the same for a column in my worksheet I'd be home. As a bonus it'd be cool if the hatches would appear. Would love it if anyone here knew how to to it? Hi @Anders Blomberg just wondering how far you got with this? I watched the same video but I think they were incorrect to say you can use a Data Tag to return the Mark field of a Material. In fact, you can only tag Materials applied to objects not components so can't see any milage in this option anyway. I would love to be able to tag wall/slab/roof components directly. But in the meantime I have been looking at Materials + the new option in worksheets to report on subparts + it's good that you can return a list of the materials applied to wall/slab/roof/etc components. That's an improvement. I guess that's what you did in the worksheet in your screenshot? Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted October 28, 2021 Author Share Posted October 28, 2021 (edited) @Tom W. Well I managed to produce a drawing but much less intelligently then I would have hoped for. "LITT" in the table is the mark field that I was hoping to retrieve with the data tag. I couldn't work it out so I manually created Callouts for the section. It really feels like it's extra work and it introduces the risk of getting it wrong. Ideally there would be a tool for creating this kind of drawing with just a few clicks. I produce this kind of drawing for literally every project where I'm creating construction documents, it's really a fundamental here in Sweden, don't know about the rest of the world? Since all the information is programmed into the materials and landscape areas it should really be a simple task to create a tool for this in Vectorworks. I never got the hatches to show and the volumes returned empty fields in some of the rows so I took those out of the drawing. Luckily I didn't have to deliver volumes/areas for the project. I don't think I used the sub-parts as I didn't need to report per landscape area but just the total. Maybe I should try that out next time. Edited October 28, 2021 by Anders Blomberg Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 Thanks for sharing yes I have had to resort to using Callouts too - not ideal like you say. Perhaps @Nikolay Zhelyazkov can say if/when there might be the capacity to do this with Data Tags directly? I think this was discussed in a previous thread somewhere but can't remember what was said... As regards reporting on the subparts this is what I did in a very quick test: So 'Landscape Area-1' on the left is your Data Tag labelling the LA object. And the worksheet is reporting the LA name in column A + the materials within it in column B. So kind of a way of producing a material legend listing the LAs + their materials but just tagging the LA as a whole rather than each individual component. This test was on walls: Not perfect but I don't think I was able to do anything like this before reporting on components Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted October 28, 2021 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted October 28, 2021 Hello all, So what you are trying to do is report the Material Mark in a Data Tag? Or are you interested in Material Name or other Material properties? In any case, if you can make this happen in a database worksheet it should be possible in the Data Tag too. I have tried reporting the Mark of a wall material but all I was able to do is get the Mark of a specific material resource using "=MATERIALPROPERTY" in a worksheet. I did not find a worksheet function that reports the properties of the materials assigned to a specific object and since I am not that much familiar with materials too, I cannot tell for sure if this is possible or not atm. If you can attach a simple test file with just the object that you want to tag and the desired result, I can look into it and see if I can make the data tag report what you want. Best Regards, Nikolay Zhelyazkov Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 Thanks Nikolay I could see the ability to report the Material Name + Material Texture in a Data Tag but nothing else, so if it's possible to incorporate some of the many useful worksheet functions for Materials in a Data Tag that would be great. I tried but didn't get anywhere, but then I don't really know what I'm doing. For example is it possible to use the MaterialProperty('MaterialMark') function to report a Material's Mark field in a Data Tag the same way you can in a worksheet? The other issue is trying to get a Data Tag to report on Materials assigned to components rather than to objects. Is there any way currently to use a Data Tag to pick up individual wall/slab/landscape area/etc components as per @Anders Blomberg's screenshot below where he had to do it using the Callout Tool?: For example is there any way to use ComponentName(t=wall,1) in a data tag to report the name of the first component in a wall? At least this way you could report the components one at a time with separate tags. If not is this something that will be available in future? See the viewport in this file: Data tag test file.vwx Thanks Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted October 28, 2021 Author Share Posted October 28, 2021 (edited) @Nikolay Zhelyazkov Attached is my sample file. I'm hoping to report the Material Mark in a Data Tag. I deleted everything but the stuff used for the drawing so you can see how I made it. I also used the "MaterialProperty('MaterialMark')" for the table and tried the same for the data tag but couldn't get it to work so I manually created the callouts. I don't really care if it's the Mark text I'm getting or some other field where I can create an ID. Preferably I'd like the ID for the material to number automatically so I don't have to go in and manually change in the the material if materials are added or removed from the project. Landscape section test.vwx Edited October 28, 2021 by Anders Blomberg Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted October 28, 2021 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted October 28, 2021 Hello @Tom W., @Anders Blomberg, Let me first explain you how the data tag worksheet functions work. Everything that is between "#WS_" and the next "#" is going to work exactly the same as if you have put it in a database worksheet for the tagged object. So, anything you can write in a database worksheet should work in the same way in the data tag. Now to your questions: 1) MaterialMark is a database function but it requires a material object/resource to be passed to it. Since the data tag is tagging the objects on the drawings, it cannot use this function to report the material mark. The same happens if you place MaterialProperty('MaterialMark') in a database worksheet with the extrude in it. So, in order for this to work we will need a new worksheet function that reports the material property of object's/component's material. Can you create a wishlist item for this, so that it is known that this is something desired? 2) ComponentName on the other hand reports the name of a component from the drawing. This is something that can be used in database worksheets, so it can be used in data tags too. I have made this work in the attached file. I have also added ComponentMaterial in the same tag. Let me know if you have any questions about it. Best Regards, Nikolay Zhelyazkov Data tag test file.vwx 2 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted October 28, 2021 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted October 28, 2021 14 minutes ago, Anders Blomberg said: I don't really care if it's the Mark text I'm getting or some other field where I can create an ID. Preferably I'd like the ID for the material to number automatically so I don't have to go in and manually change in the the material if materials are added or removed from the project. - if you are looking for unique material data, why not just use the material name? It should be accessible from the data tag. Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 3 hours ago, Nikolay Zhelyazkov said: Hello @Tom W., @Anders Blomberg, Let me first explain you how the data tag worksheet functions work. Everything that is between "#WS_" and the next "#" is going to work exactly the same as if you have put it in a database worksheet for the tagged object. So, anything you can write in a database worksheet should work in the same way in the data tag. Now to your questions: 1) MaterialMark is a database function but it requires a material object/resource to be passed to it. Since the data tag is tagging the objects on the drawings, it cannot use this function to report the material mark. The same happens if you place MaterialProperty('MaterialMark') in a database worksheet with the extrude in it. So, in order for this to work we will need a new worksheet function that reports the material property of object's/component's material. Can you create a wishlist item for this, so that it is known that this is something desired? 2) ComponentName on the other hand reports the name of a component from the drawing. This is something that can be used in database worksheets, so it can be used in data tags too. I have made this work in the attached file. I have also added ComponentMaterial in the same tag. Let me know if you have any questions about it. Best Regards, Nikolay Zhelyazkov Data tag test file.vwx 5.98 MB · 6 downloads @Nikolay Zhelyazkov thanks v much for explaining this. Really helpful. Basically the two functions you used - "#WS_COMPONENTNAME()#" + "#WS_COMPONENTMATERIAL()#" - do everything I need them too. I can create a single data tag that will list all the components in a wall/slab/etc or if I prefer all the Materials instead. All with one click. Or I can create separate 1, 2, 3, 4, etc tags that I click on each component in turn if I want to take the time to label them in more detail. This is really useful + it's great that you can do this with data tags in VW2022 - thanks for pointing it out as after I didn't get anywhere with "#WS_MATERIALPROPERTY('MATERIALMARK')#" I might not have pursued it any further. But going back to the MaterialMark function, would I be asking for a 'ComponentMaterialProperty()' function in the Wishlist? This would allow me to make a series of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc data tags which could report, one at a time, the Mark fields for each Material assigned to each component in a wall, slab, etc? Thanks again Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted October 29, 2021 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted October 29, 2021 10 hours ago, Tom W. said: But going back to the MaterialMark function, would I be asking for a 'ComponentMaterialProperty()' function in the Wishlist? This would allow me to make a series of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc data tags which could report, one at a time, the Mark fields for each Material assigned to each component in a wall, slab, etc? - Depends on what you need. It could be ComponentMaterialProperty and/or ObjectMaterialProperty. Just describe what you want to get in a database worksheet from materials and your request will be considered. 3 Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 Forgot to say that I submitted this Wishlist request: The more can be done with Data Tags the better: they're great. Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted November 1, 2021 Author Share Posted November 1, 2021 (edited) On 10/28/2021 at 9:36 PM, Tom W. said: Or I can create separate 1, 2, 3, 4, etc tags that I click on each component in turn if I want to take the time to label them in more detail. @Tom W. @Nikolay Zhelyazkov It's really cool to see this discussion develop and it really helps me as a rookie in the software. Thank's for that! So anyways, the data tag you describe is way better than the manual solution I used. But am I understanding it correctly that I have to create a separate data tag style per layer in my slab? I can't just click on the layer and have the tag return the material or name of that particular layer in the tag? In addition to being some extra work it also introduces the risk of having the leader pointing to another layer then what the data tag is actually reporting on. Or am I getting it wrong here? Edited November 1, 2021 by Anders Blomberg Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Nikolay Zhelyazkov Posted November 1, 2021 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted November 1, 2021 4 minutes ago, Anders Blomberg said: @Tom W. @Nikolay Zhelyazkov It's really cool to see this discussion develop and it really helps me as a rookie in the software. Thank's for that! So anyways, the data tag you describe is way better than the manual solution I used. But am I understanding it correctly that I have to create a separate data tag style per layer in my slab? I can't just click on the layer and have the tag return the material or name of that particular layer in the tag? In addition to being some extra work it also introduces the risk of having the leader pointing to another layer then what the data tag is actually reporting on. Or am I getting it wrong here? Hello @Anders Blomberg, If I understand correctly, with "layer" above you mean "component"? The data tag described above reports the component information of a specific component (at a specific position in the object, since components have order in the object, each of them has an index in this order that is visible in the Edit component dialog). So, you can make a data tag that reports the data of the component at index 1, or at index 2, etc. The leader end of the data tag points to the slab object ("tagged object") itself and is not affecting which component you are getting your data from (because of the specifications of the component functions described above). You can also make the data tag display data from more than 1 component, if you make a bit more complex formula. I agree that this is not the best way to report on components using the data tags, but at this time there is no other way to achieve this I think. Best Regards, Nikolay Zhelyazkov Quote Link to comment
Anders Blomberg Posted November 1, 2021 Author Share Posted November 1, 2021 @Nikolay Zhelyazkov Ok! Yes, by layers I was referring to components. Always good to know the limits. I hope the tagging of components gets more developed in the future then. Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted November 1, 2021 Share Posted November 1, 2021 48 minutes ago, Anders Blomberg said: @Tom W. @Nikolay Zhelyazkov It's really cool to see this discussion develop and it really helps me as a rookie in the software. Thank's for that! So anyways, the data tag you describe is way better than the manual solution I used. But am I understanding it correctly that I have to create a separate data tag style per layer in my slab? I can't just click on the layer and have the tag return the material or name of that particular layer in the tag? In addition to being some extra work it also introduces the risk of having the leader pointing to another layer then what the data tag is actually reporting on. Or am I getting it wrong here? I created one Tag that lists all components (up to ten of them) at once: Then I created separate individual tags for each of the above functions so I could label components individually: I did the same thing for tags that reported the '#WS_COMPONENTNAME()#' function as well so I have choice of labelling the component with the component name or the material name. Obviously this means going back + forth + changing the tag you're using each time but still quicker (+ more accurate/consistent) than using Callouts + if you have several walls/slabs/etc in the VP you can tag the 1st, 2nd, etc components on each object at the same time so you're not having to change tag every time you click. The 'ComponentMaterialProperty(propertyName)' function that I wished for would allow us to place ID labels on the components (based on the Materials) which would give another option (to display details in a worksheet/legend). 2 Quote Link to comment
DDD Posted November 2, 2021 Share Posted November 2, 2021 (edited) On 11/1/2021 at 4:43 AM, Tom W. said: I created one Tag that lists all components (up to ten of them) at once: Then I created separate individual tags for each of the above functions so I could label components individually: I did the same thing for tags that reported the '#WS_COMPONENTNAME()#' function as well so I have choice of labelling the component with the component name or the material name. Obviously this means going back + forth + changing the tag you're using each time but still quicker (+ more accurate/consistent) than using Callouts + if you have several walls/slabs/etc in the VP you can tag the 1st, 2nd, etc components on each object at the same time so you're not having to change tag every time you click. The 'ComponentMaterialProperty(propertyName)' function that I wished for would allow us to place ID labels on the components (based on the Materials) which would give another option (to display details in a worksheet/legend). Hi Tom, I have trouble opening your file. I created another test file and somehow it doesn't work like yours. In the data tag editing window, the "data source" scroll-down doesn't have "worksheet" as an option. I also put in the #WS_COMPONENTNAME()# function but the tag is not working either. Could you please help me with it? Thank you! HARDSCAPE COMPONENT CALLOUT.vwx Edited November 2, 2021 by DDD Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted November 3, 2021 Share Posted November 3, 2021 Hi @DDD I'm guessing you're using VW2021. My file was created in VW2022. The capacity to use worksheet functions in tag fields was only added in VW2022... 1 Quote Link to comment
DDD Posted November 3, 2021 Share Posted November 3, 2021 7 hours ago, Tom W. said: Hi @DDD I'm guessing you're using VW2021. My file was created in VW2022. The capacity to use worksheet functions in tag fields was only added in VW2022... Hi Tom, thank you for clarifying this. I just checked the updates and my VW 2021 tells me no updates is available. Can I ask how did you get the access to 2022? Thank you. Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted November 3, 2021 Share Posted November 3, 2021 I have a service select contract which means you get access to new versions as they're released. Is that what you meant? Quote Link to comment
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