Attaching Viewports to Symbols in a Design

[zbone]

My attempts to find an answer to this via YouTube videos and random forum posts have gotten me nowhere, so maybe someone here knows if this is even possible.

 

I help design sites that have fairly standardized sets of equipment (water tanks, piping unions, electrical banks, etc.) but where these pieces of equipment are located vary from site to site. So when moving from one site to another, very few (if any) new symbols are added. It's mostly just rearranging a previous design to work for the new location.

 

Using the tanks as an example: For every site I need a viewport of where the piping connects into the tanks. Is it possible to create viewports that would "move" with the tanks as I'm rearranging the site, or do I need to just accept that I will have to adjust the viewports every time I alter a site? I felt fairly confident that this was possible, but the more I mess with it the more my confidence wanes... 

[Pat Stanford]

As far as I know there is no automatic way to have a viewport linked to a specific objects in a drawing.

 

There might be a couple of ways that you could script something like this, but I would have to know more about what you really need to do.

 

Try and adjust a viewport to handle a tank at a different location. Write down every single step that you take to make the change happen.  Those are all the steps that would have to happen in the script.

 

Now try and adjust a different VP following EXACTLY the steps you wrote down. If it works then it is probably scriptable and worth scripting. If it didn't work, it may still be scriptable, but the script just got a lot more complicated as it is going to have to know more about what you are actually trying to do.

 

Post a file and we can take a look and discuss what it would take.

[zbone]

That's what I was afraid of. 

 

Unfortunately, at this time I am not entirely certain what the steps entail - I'm starting to take some work off of my brother who is designing these sites and he had mentioned that this process was unfortunately time consuming. I figured I'd try my luck at finding a more efficient way. Once I'm more familiar with both his process of altering the sites and of adjusting the VPs I'll bump this thread.

 

Thanks for your reply, Pat!

[Kazemester]

@zbone How i would do:

1. Create the drawing with all the details, place down all elements.
2. Place all the different equipment (symbols) on different classes
3. Create a viewport of the floorplan with all needed classes turned on 
4. On the sheet layer click on the viewport and in the Object info window select classes and turn off all classes except the one which needs to be separated (symbol class for water tank for example)
5. Double click on the viewport and select "Annotations" and delete the deafult drawing label, than exit.
6. Now you only see the equipments (water tanks) on the floor plan viewport - Select "Clip tool" with "Split mode" and rectangle split all the equipment needed onto separate viewports
7. Select all - turn on needed classes in Object info/classes (walls, windows...etc.)
8. Arange the viewports as needed onto separate sheets or pages

Cheers.