Topic Title

I'm trying to learn more about reports and hoe to modify forms etc. Where can I go for more explanation on this. How do I find the full capability reports and how new ones can be created?

There have been several how-to's in the Cheap Trick newsletters dealing with using the new forms, reports and symbols attributes. I don't believe there has been anything really substantial from Datacad LLC, in the form of a how to for these features. I have played around with them some, but they are still missing some important features IMHO, so I have not vested too much time into them yet. The potential is there though. From what I have heard, Datacad will be gearing up more towards these features in the next few versions, and may provide more understanding on how to use it soon. Time will tell.

I sort of played with the "Symbol Reports" that we can automatically generate ... once several years ago, and again a couple of months ago. I still find that what you can do with these forms and reports ... and how they can be customized for your own wants and needs is very limited. Maybe I'll play with them again sometime in the future.

Hello Steve,

Perhaps we can wish for a more powerful engine to link bi-directionally the drawing file database and external spreadsheets, like with Excel.

I don't know how complex can it be to discriminate all and each single information in the database, but I believe that all (or near that) of the useful informations are present inside it.

Thanks,
Miguel

I also have tried to follow the examples in "Cheap Tricks" to create symbol reports for :
1) Window and door schedules
2) Exterior finishes
3) Section standards
4) Municiple regulation information for FSR and grade heights.
I am hoping that Dcad will be giving more detailed information and examples as to how this can be improved because for the moment I cannot get it to work properly

Perhaps we can wish for a more powerful engine to link bi-directionally the drawing file database and external spreadsheets, like with Excel.

I don't know how complex can it be to discriminate all and each single information in the database, but I believe that all (or near that) of the useful informations are present inside it.

I agree that being able to link the info to our spreadsheet of choice would be awesome!

The new abilities of the attributes that we now have available with the symbols are also quite nice. The report forms (.frm files), however are next to useless.

Take a day, copy one of the .frm files to your own file name, look at all of them to get ideas of what you should be able to do with them ... then try to modify your new file (with notepad, or your favorite text editor) such that you can group info like you want, display things like "manufacturers", "model numbers", "remarks", etc. in a way that can use more than a just few characters, and then get a final output that is actually useful (professional looking, logical, readable, with complete information). Mess with it for a day, then let me know what you think of these reports.

I would think that it wouldn't take much to update the potential of these forms.

Steve,

You are right. Our .frm files are still much behind to be useful.

I suggest you to put together your ideas, and prepare yourself to contribute for the future improvements on the next major release. I am doing the same right now.

I start from the point of view that any possibility to make DataCAD able to 'talk' with external applications will strenghten its position.

A data report, to be managed by any application, must be the simpler as possible. That is the reason I consider having a way to exchange data among our drawing database and a spreadsheet will be a huge advance. And I include here the symbol attributes too. The same information that serves to build a quotation, could be used by a detailing job, a presentation sheet, and several other uses.

My hope is that a matured language as DCAL will be, with this improvement "for Delphi", can allow macro developers to head on many gains in usefulness. We can be on the threshold of a new era of DataCAD, because remains only a few weaknesses on the DataCAD core, and Dave and his Crew are hardly working to advance on this big steps.

Thanks,
Miguel

Being able to have some sort of live link of symbols (or any sort of entity, for that matter) to a spreadsheet would be ideal.

But even the very simplified text-based .frm format would be much more useful if the programming that makes them work would allow for being able to simply arrange how and where the info is displayed. For example, I tried to create one that would simply list some of the symbol info, grouped together PER symbol like...

-------------------------------------------------------
SYMBOLS INFORMATION:
-------------------------------------------------------

Item Name: (Item #1)
Manufacturer: Blah-Blah-Blah
Model Number: Blah-Blah-Blah
Remark #1: Blah-Blah-Blah
Remark #2: Yadda-Yadda-Yadda
Item Cost: $0000.00

Item Name: (Item #2)
Manufacturer: Blah-Blah-Blah
Model Number: Blah-Blah-Blah
Remark #1: Blah-Blah-Blah
Remark #2: Yadda-Yadda-Yadda
Item Cost: $0000.00

-------------------------------------------------------

I was simply wanting to list all symbols, with the information per each symbol grouped together, and in the format shown above which would allow for long names, descriptions, remarks, etc. ...Can't get much simpler than that, but I couldn't get it to work. The closest I could come was to list it as follows (which by the way is from the custom .frm file I messed with several years ago)...

-------------------------------------------------------
SYMBOLS INFORMATION:
-------------------------------------------------------

Item Name: (Item #1)
Item Name: (Item #2)
Manufacturer: (Item #1)
Manufacturer: (Item #2)
Model Number: (Item #1)
Model Number: (Item #2)
Remark #1: (Item #1)
Remark #1: (Item #2)
Remark #2: (Item #1)
Remark #2: (Item #2)
Item Cost: $0000.00
Item Cost: $0000.00

-------------------------------------------------------

Not very logical, and VERY hard to read.

Apparently, the only way you can get it to work where each symbol's items are grouped is if each symbol has it's own row, with the items listed in columns ... but then you are limited in the length of your line (row) ... You can't even format the output for landscape mode, because you are not allowed enough line length for any more characters than will fit on about 8-1/2". Even with the sample above, I couldn't control the length of the dashed lines like I wanted for a printed output, with additional text at the END of the dashes...

-------------------------------------------------------
SYMBOLS INFORMATION: .................. YADDA
-------------------------------------------------------

(Note: The only reason for the dots (periods) above is because this forum doesn't let me use multiple spaces)

Picky? Maybe ... but if I'm going to use these forms, then I want the output to be to my liking. After all, there are pretty much unlimited capabilities if this info is in a spreadsheet.

Steve,

You can add the fact that if I got a symbol created originally in a foreign language (english, in my case) they are considered object with two different natures for reporting purposes.

This are 3 symbols, originally created with default english DataCAD, and 2 in translated.



When reporting in the translated form, this is what I get:



The original report (in english) gives back the opposite result:

Being able to have some sort of live link of symbols (or any sort of entity, for that matter) to a spreadsheet would be ideal.
...
After all, there are pretty much unlimited capabilities if this info is in a spreadsheet.

I am with a big expectation for the possibility to deal with a dynamic AND 'bi-directional' way to link symbols and reports. We could easily arrange this misfunction, if the symbol would be 'un'-linked with the engine that was used to create it.

Thanks for rising this subject. We need to face it soonly.
Miguel

Hi Miguel.

The output differences between languages sure seems strange!

One idea that I have had about using symbol attribute info in conjunction with your spreadsheet (but haven't actually tried it here in the office, yet), is to have a separate layer (or layers) in DataCad where you place symbol markers, with just a minimal amount of attribute info, that is used with DataCad's report forms, primarily just to identify and count the items, then manually (at this time) input the item (or some sort of spreadsheet entity that represents the item) and its quantity to a single location in your spreadsheet. From there, the spreadsheet would be built to include any and all info and calculations that you could think of, and generate any type of output you might desire, based simply on what the item is and how many of them there are.

Let DataCad do the counting and the spreadsheet do the thinking.

Hey Steven,

You are thinking really 'out of the box'. This is a great idea, man!

Let's develop it some more, to later show it to our laureate team of "bits & bytes".
I am sure that this is a great root to follow.

Thanks,
Miguel
(paraphrasing NBA: 'I love this game.')

Now, if we could just get a live link between DataCad and the spreadsheet, like Miguel suggested, in order to keep the info in the spreadsheet current, then we'd be set!

Don't forget read-only options too!