AEC scheduling and xref

[h-jordan]

I have a project that is using basic block doors for scheduling. Just to be clear - that means that the doors being used are not AEC doors, but basic old-school line drawn blocks. I have generated a schedule directly in the floor plan where the door blocks reside with no problem. I have set the schedule to apply to blocks and then I have set the layer wildcard to A-DOOR, which the door blocks are inserted on in the drawing. I have a sheet file that will only list the door schedule itself. I have tried three methods for getting the schedule into the sheet file.

The first method is to simply xref the floor plan with the door schedule in it, but when it is xrefed, the schedule edits itself and schedules nothing. I don't quite understand how it does this, but it doesn't help me even if I did understand.

The second method was to insert a schedule and schedule the xref itself. This again produces nothing.

A third method was to insert the schedule and scan the xref (with the xref of the floor plan inserted into the sheet file). This produced the best results, but the schedule lists every single block reference inthe xref file. The obvious thing to do would be to add the layer wildcard XREF FLOOR PLAN NAME|A-DOOR. This works absolutely fine when I have scheduled multi-view blocks for room tags - why does it not work for this? Once I put the wildcard in, all of the information goes away and then I can't even select the xref plan since it doesn't match the layer wildcard. I've tried a variety of wildcard names with no results.

Does anyone else have tips for scheduling blocks through an xref? Keep in mind that this has been alieviated in 2006, but our office is in the middle of transition and the whole team does not have 2006 yet.

[dkoch]

Make certain that your wildcard string includes the layer on which the Xref file is inserted. For example, if the Xref is inserted on layer 0, use

0,*A-DOOR

as your layer wildcard.

If you are using ADT 2004 or later, you can also schedule an external file, without the need to place an external reference in the file with the schedule.

[jschultz]

Thanks,
That * in front of the layer name works for method 1 described by the first poster, which is what i was using. It wasn't until I added a layer filter that the schedule stopped populating.

I added the * in front of the layer name and now when I insert my schedule in the plan drawing and xref the whole file into the sheet, the schedule fills out.

This is with Autocad MEP 2011 and MEP lighting fixture objects.