[Tip] Export layer combination data

[Karl Ottenstein]

Someone asked me privately if there was a way to extract all of the layer settings for every layer combination in order to document all of the layer combos in an external program such as Excel or Access.

I talked about a method to do this briefly over a year ago when 8.0 first came out.

First, you must enable SQL in the Calculate menu - it is disabled by default. Open Preferences and for "Calculate menu appearance" choose "Full with SQL". You'll now have a new menu option as shown in the attached screenshot. Choosing 'Show Data Structure...' displays all of the tables and fields that can be viewed (I'm hoping there are more that are undocumented).

[Note: ArchiCAD 10 and above have fully user-customizable menus, so the above Preference does not exist. Instead, go to Options > Work Environment and add the SQL commands to your menu structure.]

Choose Query and paste in the following:

SELECT FLC.NAME AS COMBINATION, LAYERS.NAME AS LAYER_NAME,
LAYERS.LOCKED, LAYERS.VISIBLE
FROM FLAT (LAYERCOMBINATIONS, LAYER_STATUS) AS FLC
INNER JOIN LAYERS ON (FLC.LAYER_STATUS.LAYER_ID = LAYERS.ID)
ORDER BY FLC.NAME, LAYERS.NAME

then click the Execute button. The result will appear in your web browser as an alphabetized table. You can save the HTML and/or paste it into Excel, etc. for further manipulation to achieve your documentation goals.

The critical part of the code above is thanks to Akos Pfemeter who in 2002 explained the key part of getting the JOIN to work via FLAT.

Note that this displays the visible and locked status of every layer for every layer combination, something not possible via Attribute Manager's Print to File command. However, it does not display layer intersection priority numbers or wireframe display status - neither of these fields is documented, but I'm hoping that they are implemented and we just need someone from GS to tell us what they are.

Karl