Drawing Descriptions - save in each drawing, not in wdp file.

[Anonymous]

All of the variables from "Drawing List Display Configuration" are stored in the drawing, except the drawing descriptions.  Never understood why this was.

It would be helpful if these were stored in each drawing (they already are in attributes in the titleblock) so that when the WDP file corrupts and drops files and folder (every few weeks here even after several re-installs, customization resets, etc - project manager still has bugs I suspect), descriptions would then be picked up when drawings are added back into the project.

Alternatively, an application that could read these titleblock attributes that are already populated in the drawing could be extracted and pushed back to the drawing properties.

If you cant fix the problem, make a good work around please.

[Anonymous]

The Pre-populated Drawing DESCRIPTION 1/2/3 are automatically blanked out when a drawing is added to the project tree. If there are only few sheets (up to two), I normally fill the Description fields manually. If there are more than 2 sheets, description fields can be populated project-wide using spreadsheet input. 

[Anonymous]

So your Idea is to have a tool that would create a new wdp file from a selected list of files. That would be cool. I suggested way back something similar were the user just needs to create a project folder and drop a wdp file into it and viola the project is created and managed by the folder and sub folders. Any drawings in these folders are in the project and maybe just setup exclusion folders.

[Anonymous]

Actually no, my idea is to have these values stored directly in the drawing file in a usable format, possibly in the wd_pnlm and/or wd_m blocks already in every drawing.  If you want to see these blocks, turn "ATTDISP" to on and you can see them usually by the 0,0 point.  Set ATTDISP to Normal to hide them again.

[Anonymous]

Probably it is good idea if you are using same drawing for various projects (i.e. pre-populated drawing descriptions remain unchanged). This is not helpful for my application because the drawing descriptions change from project to project. So, I have to update the drawing descriptions on every new project(s) anyway. My project file (.wdp) has more than 80 drawings (including sections and sub-sections). So, I use spreadsheet input to update drawing descriptions project-wide instead.

I never had issue with .wdp file to date.  

[Anonymous]

Ramesh,  I dont think you understood me.

My issue is not with the WDP file, it works, but it could work better.

As previously stated, It would be helpful if descriptions were stored in each drawing, and populated the WDP file.

[JeffatPrimex]

The projects scratch database contains all the blocks information and this database gets created when the project is created. therefore there is no need to store this information again in the wdp file. 

[Anonymous]

Jeff,

This information is definitely not stored in the project database, it is stored in the *.WDP file.

Open a wdp file up in notepad and look at the end of the list, you will find the file name followed by description 1, 2 3 fields following it.

[JeffatPrimex]

That must be something new and undocumented for the .wdp file. I found a 2016 reference here: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad-electrical/getting-started/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2...

I don't see any description 1 2 3 fields following file names. Oh and yes all my blocks and their attributes are stored in the projects scratch database including the title blocks.

[Anonymous]

Those are the project descriptions that are tied to the project for updating a set project wide.

I am referring to each drawing's values for these fields, which are located in the *.wdp file.

I have both 2016 and 2018, and it appears there in both.

A snip it out of a wdp file that has drawings added appears below:

?[68]NO,NC,NONC
?[69]Standard
?[70]%T
?[71]1,2,3,5
?[72]W1,T1,TYPE,T2,W2,REF,SH,SHDWGNAM,FILENAME,FULLFILENAME
?[73]MC,MC,MC,MC,MC,MC,MC,MC,L,L
?[74]0.0
?[75]1
?[76]0.000000,0.031250,0.000000
===PROJECT COVER SHEET
===AND PRODUCTON NOTES
COVER SHEET.dwg
===AC POWER
===120VAC POWER
=====SUB=5.33B ELECTRICAL SCHEMATICS/POWER
5.33-003742-0100A.dwg
===RACK 01 POWER
===120VAC I/O POWER
=====SUB=5.33B ELECTRICAL SCHEMATICS/POWER
5.33-003742-0100B.dwg

These descriptions are set in each drawings properties, and if you have them mapped using DD1 and DD2 in your titleblock setup, then they update the titleblock's attributes when using the titleblock update function.

Hope this helps, Matt

[JeffatPrimex]

LOL that's not going to be in the scratch database those are the. I totally misunderstood. I thought you were saying there were title block description text strings that came after each file name like

5.33-003742-0100B.dwg TITLE1, TITLE2, TITLE3

[Anonymous]

Partially correct, if you are following Autodesk best practices, this is how your WDP file is set up.

TITLE1, TITLE2 and TITLE3 are there, these are in the titleblock, from the example above:

TITLE1 - ===PROJECT COVER SHEET
TITLE2 - ===AND PRODUCTION NOTES

Drawing file name - COVER SHEET.dwg

This is a subfolder:

=====SUB=5.33B ELECTRICAL SCHEMATICS/POWER

4 of these ===== are subfolders

Matt

[JeffatPrimex]

That's not something I would use for our title block updates we use wdl and wdt files along with the associated tools to update our title blocks. The Drawing Properties form is something I'm happy I can ignore. We have a routine that when a person saves a drawing the program uses the file name to update the attribute values in the wd_m block which in turn updates the title block and some drawing properties.

If your title block has these attributes then this information should be in the projects scratch database and I would agree ACADE should pull this information up into the associated form fields for the active drawing. 

[Anonymous]

1. we use wdl and wdt - Yes, I do to.

2. the program uses the file name to update the attribute values in the wd_m block - you must have some incredibly long file names to populate your titleblock descriptions based on your file names then.

3. projects scratch database - Again, the values in the scratch database are for updating based on project descriptions across multiple sheets from the project manager (Right click on the project manager, go to drawing properties, these are the values in the scratch database).  I am not referring to these, I am referring to the values in each drawing, not in the project wide descriptions which are stored in the WDP file.