The following options are all available within the Reports section of your preferences (if you have administrator rights) and allow you to customise all aspects of your reports;
PDF settings
Settings associated with viewing report sets in the PDF viewer.
Creating Report Sets
Due to the variety and number of reports which can be generated in the software, there is a Report Set Manager which can be used to give you control over the reports to be printed, printing order and number of reports generated.
To simplify the management of reports, individual reports are selected and grouped together into Report Sets. These Report Sets are built up to contain different types and quantities of individual reports, and the order they need to be printed, so instead of printing many individual reports, you just print a complete report set.
The Report Manager is found in the Preferences (found in the File menu). Open the preferences and double mouse click over the Reports directory on the left. Inside this there is an entry for Report Sets. Select this to view the report manager in the right-hand panel;
The Report Manager allows you to create, edit or delete report sets. The manager is separated into three columns;
- Report sets – the left-hand column shows all the report sets already created.
- Report set contents – the middle column shows all the individual report pages which are contained in a highlighted report set.
- All available reports – the right-hand column displays all the available report pages which can be added to the selected report set.
Report Sets
The left hand column of the Report Editor dialog box displays all the Report Sets which have been created. Each Report Set is a collection of individual reports which have been grouped together. For example, a Sales Report Set may contain all the sales reports such as a front page, six view drawing, colour images against a photo, etc.
Report Sets Contents
The middle column of the Report Editor dialog box displays all the individual reports contained in the selected Report Set. The order these individual reports are shown defines the order in which they will be printed.
If your project contains more than one model, individual reports can be added into two different categories depending on how you want them printed. Reports contained within Combined Reports will be printed only once, so will combine all the info for all the models.
Reports contained within Separate Reports will be printed repeatedly for every model.
All Available Reports
The right hand column of the Report Editor dialog box displays all the individual reports which are available for adding into the selected Report Set. To add an individual report into a report set, simply drag it from this right hand column and drop it into the middle ‘report contents’ column. The position you drop the reports into the ‘report contents’ column will determine the order the reports are printed.
Grouping reports within a Report Set
There are two different categories for grouping reports, depending on how you want the contents of the reports printed. These categories are only relevant if your version of VS allows projects to contains multiple models.
Combined Reports category
Any reports contained within a Combined Reports category will only be printed once by combining all the relevant information from the separate models into a single report.
Separate Reports category
Any reports contained within a Separate Reports category will be printed separately for each individual model.
As an example:
The contents of the Report Set on the left are grouped into two categories. Those reports within the Separate reports category will be generated separately for each individual model in the project. Those reports within the Combined reports category will only be generated once and will contain the relevant information from all the models in the project.
So if this project contains two conservatories, there will be two ‘six view drawings’ but only one ‘cost sheet’.
Report Options
The report options allow you to change settings within each individual report within a report set, these settings are mainly aimed at customizing the output from cutting lists and small part drawings.
To access the Report Options for a report, select the Edit button associated with the specific report. This will open a dialog box containing the available options.
For most reports the dialog box will only contain a setting to change the title of the report, however for cutting lists and small part drawings there are more settings allowing you to control the output of these reports.
The image shows the report options for one of the cutting lists. Not all reports contain the same options.
There are also User Defined cutting lists and small part drawing reports, which allow you to supply your own product file (.dat file) from which these cutting list (or small parts drawings) will be built.
This allows you to fully control the content of these User Defined reports.
To create a User Defined report, add it to your required report set (by drag it into the middle column), you should then rename this user defined report (this means if you want to create any more user defined reports they won’t have the same name).
Open the Report Options (as outlined above) for your new user report and in the Report Options dialog box you will see there is a setting to ‘Give the file name containing products’. Here you will need to input a new file name (eg your_file.dat).
This is the file which will contain all the profiles to populate your new user report. You will now need to go and populate the data file (your_file.dat) with all the profile names required for your new user report. The _.dat files are all stored in the Config Files directory in the Preferences (see section below for more info on Config Files).
Note, since you have just created your new file (your_file.dat), you will need to close down VS and re-open before the file will appear in your Config Files. Once you are in Config Files you will see the new user file (your_file.dat) at the bottom of the list.
Select this file, add in the required profile names and select the Save option. Your new user report will now be created when you go to generate your reports.
Report Set Options
There are also options which affect the whole report set. These settings will take effect on all the individual reports contained within the report set.
To access these options, select the edit button for the required report set. This will bring up a dialog box containing all the available options (as shown below).
Config files
This option within the preferences gives you access to locally saved versions of the report lists and drawings within VS.
VS contains an un-editable set of all the report lists and drawings, if you want to edit one or more of these reports, you can save a local version (into the config directory) which you can then edit. This means if you have created a local version of a report, then VS will use this to create a report instead of the master set within VS.
As an example, if you only want certain profiles to appear on the Aluminum cutting list, you can create a local version of this report, and then edit the profiles which appear in it. This local version of the list will then be used when the Aluminum list is created by VS.
There are a number of different buttons along the top of the edit area for working with a local version of your selected report;
Config – Pressing this will bring up the local version of your selected report for editing.
Default – Pressing this will bring up the master version of your selected report.
Clear – Pressing this will clear the edit area.
Save – Pressing this will save the contents of the edit area as the local version of the report.
Delete – Pressing this will delete your local version of the report.
So to build a local version of the Aluminum cutting list, fist select Default, then edit it as you require, then select Save to produce your local version.
Report settings
Within the Report Settings you can control the layout and content of each individual report. You will need to select the report you want to make alterations to from the left hand list and any changes you make will automatically update the view of the report, so you can directly see the changes you are making. Some reports only have a couple of settings to edit, such as font style and size. Other reports have lots of settings which can be edited, such as costing information, items to display and additional notes.
Drawing Borders
Control the look of the borders on the report pages, for both landscape and portrait pages.
There are two further tools which are available in Extras, on the main VS tool bar;
Updating or overwriting your report sets
In the Extras menus there is the Update Reports option. This allows you to completely overwrite all your current report sets with new report sets, for example if there is a more up to date version of the report sets, or you have been given new report sets.