Alaskan_Son

Decided to double check what it would take to report as required 16 footers before I turned in for the night. Way easier than I was even thinking it would be... ML example 2.plan Anyway, these are just a couple simple examples of what can be done with the Materials List using the Components tab, and I'm really only scratching the surface with these. No, we can't get quite the level of reporting control using the Components tab that we can with Structural Member Reporting, but we can get some pretty accurate counts and actually have a quite a few extra capabilities that Structural Member Reporting could never provide us with.

You're kinda moving the goalpost there aren't you? Regardless, reporting specific lengths should be possible too but a lot more complicated and not something I have time to get into. For an overall count though, here is a very quick, down and dirty example. Just select the Materials List Polyline in the attached plan and click Calculate Materials in Polyline. You should see an accurate report. Then adjust the polyline to narrow the selection down and run it again. You should see that the Material List adjusts accordingly. ML example.plan P.S. This is only showing one method of many. The Material List capabilities we have are very robust.

Your color is toggled OFF in your "Framing, 1st Floor Plan" Plan View. Just turn it on. You can do this in several different ways.... View>Color F8 key Project Browser>select Plan View>right click>Edit View>check Show Color Edit Active View>check Show Color Use the Color toggle in the Toggle Modes Toolbar

This depends entirely on how you set it up. Material Regions can easily produce an accurate Material List as well.

Not necessarily true. Plan Views can be set to Show Color on a view by view basis.

You bet. I also forgot to mention that you may want to put in a couple buffer Key Frames (one before and one after your pause) to help control the transition a little better. You'll probably see what I'm talking about after you play with it a bit.

We actually can create a pause during a Walkthrough. Chief is very stubborn though and it requires some extra convincing...literally. Just take 2 Key Frames and stack them directly on top of each other (it helps if you place a temporary point or something else to snap to). Then open the dialog box, increase the Time by the desired amount, copy this number (unless its a really easy one), and then click Okay. Now open it right back up because Chief won't listen to you the first time and paste that number into the Time field again. Repeat that 5 or 6 times. Seriously, you just have to tell Chief several times to get your point across. Like I said...stubborn.

I would suggest you provide some more specific examples of what you’re looking for. Just guessing at what you’re after but I wonder if you’re familiar with using this approach (sorry, I feel like there’s some better description that myself or someone else has written up but this is all I could find with a quick search)... https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/14960-can-a-macro-do-math/?do=findComment&comment=126703

Everything you mention can be accomplished using built in Chief tools and methods with the exception of the inserted sheet being automatically numbered as 1.1. Those inserted pages with suffix numbering would need to be done manually.

You are a bad bad man.

You are correct good sir....

That seems really weird because it suggests that the browser recognizes the formatting (as evidence by the fact it displays the text as ALL CAPS; however, instead of simply carrying the formatting information, it's actually losing that information and converting the text to capitalized letters. This behavior is something that typically requires an add-on or extension.

Interesting.

What I was actually thinking was this...."And the question is?" Seriously, not sure what the question is. Where does Matt want to use Bates Numbering? What kind of information is he looking to include in the stamp? He could be looking for a way to timestamp cabinets or simply looking for a time and date macro for his layout files. Or maybe he's looking for a way to automatically name plan and layout files. I don't know. The question is just entirely unclear. All we know is that it involves automating Bates Numbering.

How are you copying and pasting that Eric? It looks like you're actually bringing in truly capitalized text somehow whereas my posted text was simply Rich Text formatted to Uppercase. That being said, and reading back through our back and forth, I can see there some clarification is warranted... You are correct. True ALL CAPS does not work. The macros should be typed in using lower case letters. Uppercase formatting (what I posted above) should work just fine though. I'm still curious how you managed to copy and paste my text as actual uppercase letters though.

One piece of advice I would offer is to click Okay a little more often to save your work. You have to re-open the dialog, but the benefits are worth the extra clicks.

You can't. Not sure if I've sent in a suggestion or not, but it's something I personally think about and wish for almost every time I go into that dialog.

Well, sometimes.

Wait...No.

Yes.

Make the text smaller so it fits inside the room.

Yes sir. And some of those "people" you speak of are us -- general contractors, designers, architects, engineers, tradesmen... We are paid to interpret code before it ever even gets to an inspector or plan reviewer, and then sometimes it falls on us to convince or even educate those guys. We are really the primary interpreters though if you ask me. Inspectors and plan reviewers are really just there to make sure we're doing our jobs.

Your method is WAY over complicated. You should read my first post too.

There’s nothing wrong with the ALL CAPS. I did that on purpose because that’s the format the OP was using. EDIT: I see based on some of the follow-up conversation below that this needs some clarification. The text I posted above is not truly capitalized letters. It's Rich text formatted to Uppercase. So I guess you are in fact correct. The macros need to be typed in lowercase. You should however still be able to simply copy and paste what I posted above because what you see is only formatting.