Drawing content manager

Drawing content manager is an interactive tool for checking and editing building objects and drawing content, especially marks, dimension marks, and associative notes, in the current drawing.

Use Drawing content manager to quickly and easily:

Select relevant drawing content for checking and editing purposes, and target actions on single or multiple building objects or marks simultaneously.
Add, modify or remove building object marks, dimension marks, and associative notes.
Add weld marks to model welds in drawings.
Highlight either objects or marks.
Check how many marks building objects have in one view or in the entire drawing.
Add other content to building objects depending on the object type, such as rebar dimension lines.
Modify building object or mark properties.
Hide/show building objects.

With this tool you can avoid duplicate, missing, or false information, and efficiently check if all necessary content exists, without having to manually go through all drawing objects separately.

To open Drawing content manager, first open a drawing and click the Drawing content manager button in the side pane. Then click Show to populate the Drawing content manager list. If you do not want to list all building objects, narrow your selection by selecting certain drawing views, drawing areas or multiple objects, and then click Show.

Tip:
If you suspect that some objects are missing from the list, go to the drawing view properties by double-clicking the drawing view frame and set the needed building objects visible.
Drawing content manager lists building objects in the drawing, and by default the related mark content and quantity. You can add and change property columns. Associative notes and dimension marks are also considered and counted as marks.
You can only see the contents of one category at the time. If you have a lot of objects in a category, and you need to scroll, the objects are loaded as you scroll.
The following building object categories are available in Drawing content manager if they exist in the drawing, and have been set visible in the drawing View properties:
- Assemblies
- Parts
- Welds
- Bolts
- Reinforcement
- Pour objects
- Neighbor parts
- Neighbor reinforcement
- Connections - Connection objects have a symbol representation in drawings. By default, the connection representation symbol is the symbol number 142 in the xsteel.sym file in the ..\ProgramData\Trimble\Tekla Structures\<version>\environments\common\symbols\ folder. You can modify the connection representation symbol in Symbol Editor. Connection symbols are only highlighted in a drawing when you have selected the objects from the Drawing content manager list, otherwise connection symbols are hidden.

How to use the building object list


To	Do this
Show in the Drawing content manager list the building objects that are hidden in the drawing	Click Show hidden items on the Options menu.
Select and highlight the selected building objects or marks in all drawing views where they are visible	Click Show in all viewson the Options menu.
Refresh the Drawing content manager list with correct mark quantity information	Click Update. Do this every time you hide some building objects, or if the number of marks changes.
Select and highlight either building objects or marks in the drawing	Select the objects in Drawing content manager and change the selection from object to mark using the switch . When building object selection is active, the switch is gray , and when mark selection is active, the switch is blue . Marks selected: Parts selected:
Highlight objects in the Drawing content manager list	Select and highlight objects in the drawing. Parts selected in the drawing are highlighted in the list:
Collapse or expand building object categories	Use the arrow buttons .
Search for and list specific building objects	Use the search box. You can use operators OR and AND. AND is the default, you do not need to type it. For example, to find all ground beams and footings, enter `FOOTING OR GROUND_BEAM`. To find only ground beams with position number GB/1, enter `GROUND_BEAM GB/1`.
Sort mark properties in alphabetical order	Click a column header.
Sort columns cumulatively	Click a column to sort by that column first and then hold down Shift and click another column to secondarily sort by that column.
Add a new property column in Drawing content manager	Click the arrow button next to a category to expand the category. Click the + button nex to the the property column title row. The + button is displayed when a category is open. In the Add/Edit properties dialog box, do the following: Select the required property from the list on the left and drag it to the list on the right. Use the Search box for searching properties. You can add several properties to the same column. If you want to add custom text in a column cell, select Custom text and type the required text in the displayed Text box. The press Enter to add the custom text in the list on the right. To show the property cells even though there is no value, select the Show empty fields of the column option. Enter the name for the property column and click OK.
Change a property column	Right-click the column name and select Edit.
Remove a property column	Right-click the column name and select Remove.
Change the order of the columns	Drag the columns to the new position.
Hide category types from the list of visible categories	Click the Options button to open the Options menu and click the categories on the displayed list.
Save category properties	All generic category properties are saved in the DrawingContentManagerCategories.xml file located by default in the system folder defined for the advanced option `XS_SYSTEM`. All property column modifications (new columns, edited columns, column order) are saved in the DrawingContentManagerCategories_ <user>.xml file in the \attributes folder under the current model folder. First, Tekla Structures tries to find the user-specific setting file DrawingContentManagerCategories_ <user>.xml. If it cannot be found, Tekla Structures will next look for DrawingContentManagerCategories.xml. You can convert the user-specific file to a generic one just by removing _<user> from the file name. The folder search order for the generic settings file is the following: \attribute folder under the model folder Project folder (`XS_PROJECT`) Firm folder (`XS_FIRM`) System folder (`XS_SYSTEM`) Folder defined by the advanced option `XS_USER_SETTINGS_DIRECTORY`
Copy selected rows to clipboard to be used in Microsoft Excel	Select rows in the Drawing content manager list and use Ctrl+C to copy the selected rows to the clipboard in the .csv format. You can then paste the rows to a Microsoft Excel sheet. Hold down Crtl or Shift to select several rows.

Add marks to building objects in a drawing

You can add marks and notes to all visible building objects in a drawing.

Note: When you create a mark manually, and the content in the properties is not defined for the object type you have selected in the drawing, the empty marks are either hidden or shown depending on the setting of the advanced option XS_SHOW_EMPTY_MARKS.

Click Show to populate the Drawing content manager list. If you do not want to list all building objects, narrow your selection by selecting certain drawing views, areas or multiple objects, and then click Show.
Select the building objects that need marks from the Drawing content manager list.

You can only select multiple objects inside one category. Activate the switch to select only objects in the drawing. The selected objects are highlighted in the drawing.

To select the whole object category, click the category name, for example, Parts or Welds.
Right-click in the drawing and select one of the following options:

Add associative note: Notes are created using the current associative note properties.

Add mark > Using view properties: Marks are created using the view level mark properties.

Add mark > Using applied mark properties: Marks are created using the current mark properties.

Add weld mark: Marks are created using the view level mark properties.

Add mark > Dimension mark: Marks are created using current applied dimension properties.

Tekla Structures creates the marks or notes. The added marks are shown in Drawing content manager. To update the mark quantity, click Update.

Note that if you select several building objects in the drawing at the same time, and if some of the selected objects already have marks, the content of the existing marks does not change.

Check mark count

Click Show to populate the Drawing content manager list. If you do not want to list all building objects, narrow your selection by selecting certain drawing views, areas or multiple objects, and then click Show.
If you want to know the mark count in the whole drawing, click Show in all views on the Options menu.
To include hidden objects in the list and show their mark count as well, click Show hidden items on the Options menu.
To make sure that the mark information is up to date, click Update.

Note that Drawing content manager supports counting all kinds of building object marks, dimension marks, and associative notes.

Hide building objects from drawing or drawing view

Click Show to populate the Drawing content manager list. If you do not want to list all building objects, narrow your selection by selecting certain drawing views, areas or multiple objects, and then click Show.
Select the building objects from the list, right-click in the drawing and select Hide/Show > Hide from drawing view or Hide from drawing.

Delete marks

If you are not happy with the existing marks, you can delete them.

Click Show to populate the Drawing content manager list. If you do not want to list all building objects, narrow your selection by selecting certain drawing views, areas or multiple objects, and then click Show.
Click Show in all views and Show hidden items on the Options menu to show in the list building objects in the whole drawing, including the hidden building objects.
If you are looking for certain building objects, use the Search... box.
Activate the mark selection .
In Drawing content manager, select the building objects whose marks you want to delete.
Press Delete on the keyboard, or right-click in the drawing and select Delete.

If you have activated Show in all views and Show hidden items, marks are deleted from all views, including marks for hidden building objects.
Click Update to update the mark information in the list.

Modify building object or mark drawing properties

To modify the properties of building objects in the drawing, select the objects from the Drawing content manager list, right-click in the drawing and select Properties.... If you are looking for certain building objects, use the Search... box.
To modify the properties of the marks, select the objects from the list, activate mark selection , hold down Shift and double-click a mark.
If you wish to list some of the marks, such as weld marks, but not show the marks in the drawing, use the first color option in weld mark properties, it will show the marks invisible. First select the objects from the list, activate mark selection , hold down Shift and double-click a weld mark. Then change the weld mark text and line color and click Modify.