Space design calculations and braces

I am really struggling getting calculations to come out as expected.

Calculations seem unreliable, I’m using brackets to have some parts calculate first, I get some to work and other simply don’t, from what I can see if brackets are used you have to have brackets around the full formula as well if using variables e.g.

( ( %Len% * %height% )) - will work most of the time

( ( %Len% *2 ) * %height% )) - will work most of the time

( %Len% *2 ) * %height% - won’t work

( %Len% * %height% ) * 2 - will work

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on May 26, 2011 at 4:23pm

Your second example had three right parentheses but only two left parentheses.

I changed it to: ( ( %Len% *2 ) * %height% ) and it worked.

The other three all worked.

I did make a couple of other changes for the next version:

1. You can enter the names of your own attributes in upper or lower case, %len% and %Len% will be tre4ated the same. (In the future use lower case for the names of all of your attributes)

2. If an attribute is blank or not defined I am replacing it with 0. This will make the calculations work better.

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Permalink Reply by Uzeno on May 27, 2011 at 8:09am

I see that now, I think that was a typo when I wrote it on the email.

Note on the name. will stick to lower case.

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on May 27, 2011 at 10:54am

I am adding a new "Test" button for calculations which should make it easier to use them. (On the edit attribure definition wizard)

The output shows the substitutions it makes to perform the calculation, the final ruby command, and the value after using it.

The '0's on each line are a level - for instance if a calculations uses another calculated field, it will show how that field is calculated as well.

If you select a component or group, before loading the attribute editor, it will perform the calculations on that item. Otherwise it uses the first component or group found in the model

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Permalink Reply by Uzeno on May 27, 2011 at 1:44pm

That is great! It will help getting formulas right, without having to run the report each time, and will make it much easier to see where mistakes are being made for beginers like my self.

look forward to that release.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on May 27, 2011 at 1:49pm

We will put out a new version in a couple of hours.

I also added a drop down to the Calculation section to make it easy to choose from attributes available for calculations, surround them with % signs, etc. It always adds the new %xxx% to the end, but you can copy and paste it to other locations.