Reports

What it does

The command opens a window with ten tabs. The first, Main, is where you choose what to list, where to read from and where to write to; the rest hold the options of each report family plus a few support tools.

The reports read the drawing. There is no separate database: the information comes from the entities themselves — the layer name (which in CapCad has a grammar: SINA_HOR_AM_LFO4 already states type, colour and function), the attributes of the sign and support blocks, the constant width of the polylines, the CapGroups, the xdata. Each item's position is measured against the project alignment, which turns a coordinate into a km and a station; and, if the project has a coordinate system defined, into latitude and longitude as well.

It is the last link of the chain described in The CapCad ecosystem — see the "From the drawing to the report" section.

One pass of Generate produces one or more listings (one row per item) and, optionally, summaries (the same rows grouped and summed). Each listing becomes an Excel file, a tab of a single workbook, a text, a native CAD table or a table drawn in model space.

Workflow

1. Set the project and the alignment before anything else. The footer of the Main tab shows the state: green when both are defined, orange when one is missing. Without an alignment the command still generates, but the km, station and alignment-property columns come out empty.
2. Run CAPCAD_REPORTS (or type RT).
3. On the Main tab, tick the listings (24 to 34) you want. The Guardrails / barriers box lives on the Guardrails tab (101).
4. Select the summaries (3) you want alongside them. Each summary depends on the listing that feeds it; if that listing is not ticked, the summary is reported as pending on the status bar.
5. Choose the input (4 to 10): the whole drawing, a selection on screen, a rectangular area or a km range.
6. Choose the output (11 to 22) and its options — templates, save in the project folder, one workbook with tabs.
7. Adjust, if you need to, the options on the specific tabs (General options, Horizontal longitudinal, Horizontal manual, Vertical, Guardrails).
8. Click Generate (41). The form hides, a progress bar follows the reading (with a cancel button) and, at the end, the generated files open in Excel.
9. The status bar sums up what was produced: how many listings, how many files, in which folder, and what was left pending.
10. Open reports folder... (43) opens the project's Exports folder, where the files were saved.

The reports only read the drawing: cancelling halfway leaves nothing half-done. The only outputs that write to the drawing are Drawn table and CAD Table.

The form

Numbers are the same in every screenshot of this page: a single numbering across the nine tabs shown here. The Spreadsheet tools tab has its own page.

The screenshots are of a Portuguese session; the numbering is the same one this page uses. Where the software has an English caption, the tables below quote the English; where the caption is Portuguese in every language, it is quoted and glossed, marked (Portuguese only).

Main tab: listings on the left, summaries and presets in the middle, input and output on the right.

Tab 1: Main — Listings

Each ticked box produces an independent listing, with its own file (or its own tab, in the single-workbook mode).

Tab 1: Main — Summaries and presets

Below the preset list are three labels that are information only: the active project and alignment (green when both are defined, orange when the alignment is missing), the project's style and the coordinate system. They are not controls.

Tab 1: Main — Input

Where the entities come from. The alignment geometry reports ignore this choice.

Tab 1: Main — Output

General options tab: what goes into every listing, the Excel options and the decimal places of the coordinates.

Tab 2: General options

The options written in blue on the form are the ones that cost performance: clearing them gives a simpler, faster report.

Horizontal longitudinal tab: the options of the longitudinal painting, of the studs, and the perpendicular limit to the alignment.

Tab 3: Horizontal longitudinal

Horizontal manual tab: the register of pavement-legend areas and the CapGroup options.

Tab 4: Horizontal manual

Vertical tab: what goes into the sign listings and how the signs are tied to their supports.

Tab 5: Vertical

Guardrails tab: the box that turns the guardrail listing on lives here, together with its options.

Tab 6: Guardrails

Careful: the box that turns the guardrail listing on is not on the Main tab, it is here. The label under it says so.

The notes panel on the right is a fixed Portuguese text, the same whatever the active country profile: it reproduces the delineator-spacing-in-curves table (radius, central angle, spacing 4 / 8 / 16 m) and cites the auxiliary-devices manual it was taken from. The delineator field of the guardrail spreadsheet is computed from that table, without rounding. Readers outside that manual's jurisdiction should check the figure against their own regulator's spacing rule.

How it works tab: informative text, no controls.

Tab 7: How it works

It has no controls: it is the command's notice page, as text (in Portuguese). It is worth reading, because it explains decisions you see in the result:

• OneDrive sometimes locks the downloaded spreadsheet models; if that happens, turn it off.
• Some Excel messages open behind the CAD and stall the progress bar. If it seems stuck, look for the Excel window.
• If a workbook looks inconsistent, use Resetar templates....
• Excel must be installed.
• Two kinds of item go into the markings and legends: registered blocks (those in the project's pavement-legend folder, with a pre-set area) and blocks whose name starts with LEGENDA_ (with no area); and CapCad named selections, whose area comes from open or closed entities with a width (linear area = length × width) or from hatches (the hatch's own area). Closed entities without a width are ignored — which is the case for the construction outlines of pedestrian crossings.
• In gantries, only blocks named PORTICO* are listed; the rest needs editing afterwards.
• In curves, one report comes out per sub-alignment.
• In the vertical listings, images are inserted when a .jpg exists with the same name and folder as the sign's .dwg.

Tools tab: duplicate checking and shortcuts to the neighbouring commands.

Tab 9: Tools

CapCloud tab: the sample drawing and the sync with the cloud register.

Tab 10: CapCloud

This is the tab CAPCAD_CAPCLOUD opens directly.

What each listing produces

The columns below are the ones the generator emits. What ends up in the final workbook still passes through the style's column composer (see The variable vocabulary) and, where there is a template, through the Excel model.

Horizontal longitudinal

One row per horizontal-marking polyline.

Horizontal studs/devices

The same columns, with two differences: hor.comprimento holds the gross length (without the cadence factor) and hor.descricao comes out in the form DESCRIPTION-TACHA-COLOUR (or -TACHAO-, -BALIZADOR-). Only the lines that carry a device are included.

Horizontal manual (hand-applied painting)

One row per CapGroup × layer, plus one ITEM AVULSO row for every entity on a manual layer that is not in a group. Columns: hor.layer.normalizado, hor.acao (spelled out), hor.descricao (the group's name; conflict area when the layer is MAC), hor.tipo, hor.cor, hor.material, cad.id, hor.area.linear, hor.area.hachura, hor.area, tacha, tachao, hor.baliza, and the centroid's position (pos.x/y.centroide, pos.km.centroide, pos.estaca.centroide). The loose-item rows also carry hor.posicao (the side, D/E, read from the layer suffix), hor.comprimento and hor.largura.

Vertical

One row per sign. Besides every attribute of the block, one per column named after the attribute:

The only difference between the three vertical listings is the action filter: application brings what is to be installed, inventory brings what exists (remove and keep), complete brings everything.

Guardrails

The summary groups by item and action, sums def.comprimento and counts the stretches in qtd.

Gantries

nr, pos.km, pos.lat, pos.lon, portico.tipo (the effective block name) and cad.id. The columns portico.vao.horizontal, portico.altura.livre and portico.defensas exist but come out empty — they need editing in the spreadsheet.

Geometry (curves)

One report per sub-alignment. One row per alignment segment: with Curves, only the curved stretches; with Complete, the tangents too.

Summaries

Each summary depends on a listing.

Ticking Vertical without images, Vertical images (AÇÃO) or Vertical images (IMP/REM) makes the Vertical complete listing clean the code name for the quantities; with those or with Vertical supports, the speed-limit signs' code starts carrying the speed.

The variable vocabulary

Every CapCad report column has a dotted name: placa.codigo, hor.area.linear, def.comprimento, pos.km.inicial, suporte.secao. It is not decoration: it is one vocabulary, shared by three places in the program.

1. The report generators emit their rows using those names as column keys.
2. The style editor's report composer uses the same names to decide, per style, which columns appear, with what label, in what order and in what format. This is the column catalogue: each entry defines the name (placa.codigo), the visible label ("Código"), the data type (text, real, area, km, geographic, date…) and the format (0.00, 0+000, 0.000000).
3. The property sets (the properties the entities carry) start from the same list.

The catalogue is organised by report family: Vertical, Horizontal, HorizontalManual, Segurança (guardrails), Tachas (studs), Porticos (gantries) and CurvasTratamento (curves). The prefixes you meet most:

What that means in practice: the spreadsheet's layout is a decision of the project's style, not of the command. Changing the style can change which columns appear and how, without touching the drawing or the report. And if a column comes out empty in your workbook, the reason is usually one of two: either that column is not filled in this version, or the drawing does not carry the data.

Excel templates and the reset

With Use templates when present (13) on, a listing does not go into a raw table: it is poured into an already-formatted .xls model, starting at the first data row.

The summaries have no model: they always come out as a plain sheet.

The models are downloaded from the server once, on demand, into Exports\reports\capcad.default\ inside the project folder, and reused from there on. The row where the data starts is 12, with two exceptions: 13 in Marcas Longitudinais and 14 in Tacha Tachão. If the project's style declares a start row of its own, that one wins.

If a model cannot be obtained or filling it fails, the command says so on the status bar and falls back to a plain sheet — the report comes out either way.

When the workbook comes out with odd data

An Excel crash can corrupt a downloaded model, and from then on every workbook of that family comes out wrong — with data that has nothing to do with the drawing. The fix is Resetar templates... (51), on the General options tab:

1. Click Resetar templates....
2. The command explains that the operation risks no data loss and offers three answers: Yes, Back and See folder (which only opens Exports\reports\ in Explorer so you can look).
3. On confirming, every .xls* in the folder is deleted and the command reports how many were removed.
4. On the next run, the models are downloaded again from the server, intact.

It is the same fix described in the Troubleshooting guide.

Where the files are written

With Save in the project folder (14) on, each listing becomes Exports\<listing name>.xls (or .xlsx, when there is no model) inside the project folder — vertical.completa.xls, horizontal.longitudinal.xls, defensas.xls, curvas.seg1.xls, and so on. In the single-workbook mode everything goes to Exports\relatorios.xlsx.

With no project defined, the destination is the system's temporary folder.

With the box off, nothing is written: the workbooks only open in Excel, with no file name, for you to save where you like.

Remembered between sessions

Practically every option on the form is saved when it closes and restored when it opens: the ticked listings, the input and output modes, the Excel and template options, the decimal places, the perpendicular limits, the tolerances, the counting methods and the filters. The chosen preset is remembered too, without reapplying its configuration on opening.

Two exceptions: Include signs in groups and Include signs outside groups (95, 97) always open ticked, because one of them silently off would leave part of the signs out of the report.

Notes

• Sorting by km (54) happens before the summaries, so they inherit the listings' order.
• In BricsCAD, GstarCAD and ARES Commander the form opens and all the options work, but Generate and Open reports folder are not available in this version.
• The inputs By viewport, By dwgs and By CapData are not available in this version: chosen, Generate says so on the status bar and produces nothing.
• On ZWCAD, Generate works, and so do the template buttons, Entity Report, Ver blocos, H suportes, Eliminar pontos and the whole Localizador frame. The overlap checks, Cap Att-in, Migração Seabra Sinc, the spreadsheet sync and the CapCloud tools are not available on that CAD.
• Paging the Drawn table output across several layouts with curated columns is not available in this version.
• When a ticked option is not available, the command usually says so: it appears at the end of the run, on the status bar, in the bracketed pending list. It is worth reading that list after generating.
• The status bar's pending list and the How it works tab are in Portuguese in every language.