comment export additional fields

[tgollan]

I am doing quantity take-offs and highlighting each item in a drawing to count it. I will use a different pencil colour for different types of equipment.
I notice a few issues that stop pdf exchange editor from being a viable automation tool for this task:
1. If you highlight items in quick succession, they are treated as a single comment.
2. When you export the comments list into CSV format for later tallying up, pdf exchange editor does not provide a column differentiating each colour pencil used

Is it possible to have this improved in future releases?

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi tgollan,

welcome to the Tracker Forums.

Regarding the application of highlights, they should all be discrete. The Pencil Tool has a feature to group rapid consecutive applications but only the pencil tool has it. You should find the highlight tool creates an object for each, regardless of how quickly in succession they are applied. Are we talking about the highlight or pencil tool here?

Regards the CSV, if you select all the highlights of a particular colour you can give them all the same "Subject" property and that will show up in the summary CSV:

It gets a result like this:

Does that help?

[tgollan]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Unfortunately I am counting drawn elements and therefore restricted to using the pencil.

I had success with naming the subject field as you showed. It would be handy if this field was defaulted with the pencil style too I.e. "pencil - green marker".

Is there a way to toggle off the auto grouping of the pencil? Even if this is a key press between each line?

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi tgollan,

I am pleased to hear you got the Pencil Tool to work as desired with respect to the subject.

Regards the grouping of sequential pencil tool objects, there is a registry hack you can do to change the threshold for grouping these: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/viewtopic.php?p=155171&hilit=pencil+grouping#p148833

The lower the value the shorter the time between discrete objects. I hope that helps.