02 Feb Vectorworks Training – Bring your Plant Schedule into PlantMaster
Bring your Plant Schedule into PlantMaster
Once you’ve gotten far enough in your design that you would like to return your plants and quantities back to PlantMaster to either create a Presentation or additional Report/Legends – you have two options. You can either send plants to your current project in PlantMaster , or you can start a whole new project fresh.
When you open the PlantMaster plugin from within Vectorworks, choose the third option “Import Plant Schedule”.
From here you will need to make sure that all plants are matched to the PlantMaster database.
This step is really only important if some of your Vectorworks plants were initiated from the Vectorworks database/catalog.
Plants that you cannot find a match for will be skipped automatically, but you can manually search for a plant using the quick name search tool.
Matching a Vectorworks plant to the PlantMaster library when the spelling is different
From here you will need to make sure that all incoming plants are matched to the PlantMaster library database. This step is really only important if some of your Vectorworks plants were initiated from the Vectorworks database/catalog. Plants that you cannot find a match for will be skipped automatically, but you can manually search for a plant using the provided quick name search tool.
For all of the matched plants, you can review the action and choose to skip any that you don’t want to be added or updated. Additionally, if there are plants in your PlantMaster project that were not in your Vectorworks file, you have the option to “remove” them using the slider at the bottom. Plant quantities will be updated to reflect the number of times used in your design.
Update your active PlantMaster project with the latest plant additions and quantities calculated in Vectorworks
Import Plant Lists – Make sure all plants are matched to PlantMaster ePlants.
In this step, you need to make sure all your plants are matched up to plant records (ePlants) in PlantMaster. Any plants that are not matched will not be added, so its worth taking some extra time to make sure your plants are matched! This is what this screen looks like:
PlantMaster will try to make the matches automatically for you. But, remember that it IS software (and not a person) so it will only match plant names that are spelled EXACTLY the same. And we all know how many different ways there are to spell plant names!
The first section will be in red. This is all the plants that we did not find an exact match for.
The second section is green. This is all the plants that were correctly matched to ePlants.
Double check matched plants.
We recommend that you take a quick look at the matched plants just to make sure everything looks right. You can always click the “Change” button if you want to match your plant to a different plant than the one selected.
The blue exclamation mark means the names didn’t match exactly – so please double check that the right plant is selected.
You can click on the plant names to see the full ePlant – that way you can make sure you’ve got the right plant.
Manually match your un-matched plants.
Next, head back to the red section of UnMatched plants – this is where you’ll need to do a little work to manually match your plants.
The first plant in our example is “Anisacanthus Quad. V. Wrightii Mexican Fire”.
Click the “Find Match” button to the right of the plant name.
This will pull up the plant search. Here is what it will look like:
Tips and Tricks to find your plants.
If you don’t see the plant name – don’t give up yet! There are so many different spellings of each plant name and the system just hasn’t found the EXACT match. PlantMaster will search through botanical name, synonymous names, and common names. So give these tips a try!
Don’t type the entire plant name in the search bar. Try typing 4-5 letters and use the list to find your plants.
Or, click on the green buttons below the name. Try clicking on the various parts of the plant name to see if we have your plant.
In the example above, try searching by what is most unique in the name. Try “wrightii” or “quad”
Lastly, if you know the common name, try typing part of the name.
Once you’ve found this plant, click “Select” and it will be connected to the ePlant. You will see the plant disappear from the Un-Matched list.
Repeat this process for every plant in your list.
At the end of this process you will get a file with all the plants that were not matched so you’ll know exactly what plants to add. (We don’t have a way to automatically create a new plant, yet – so you’ll need to create those plant records in another step.)
Once everything looks great and your plants have been matched, click “Import”.
This will bring in the plants you have matched. (Hopefully we had most of your plants!)
You are now free to create your accompanying reports, legends, or online presentations as needed. We envision that you may run through these two phases multiple times as you add and adjust which plants end up in your final draft.