Updating Your Fields

I wrote an article for AUGI Hotnews last month about Fields. It goes over the basic uses and implementations of fields. Nothing ground breaking, or earth shattering, unless you don't use fields but have repeating data in a drawing set.

One of the articles readers, a licensed engineered, has an issue with fields. When the object data changes, the field doesn't automatically display the new data!!! What?? I thought that's what fields do. Well, it does, it just doesn't change the text until you do a refresh or a regen all type of thing.

I told him that when I update object data that has a field linked to it, I type in RA (keyboard shortcut for REGEN ALL) and BAM!!! it's updated. I've never seen it as a detriment, but, the reader makes a great point. The filed should automatically change right away.

This is how fields work: They reference data. They have a connection to the data source but it is not a constant connection. It has to be told to read the source data in order to display it properly. When you do a REGEN ALL, that tells the filed to look at the source data and display the value. It does. It is something that we have to deal with.

Now, here is my question, which is actually our readers question that I could not answer for him. Is there a setting or method that can be used to have the filed automatically update when source data is changed without doing a regen? I don't think so, but i am wrong all of the time.

So CAD-a-Blog readers, how do you do it? What do you propose? Is this setting out there? Let me know, either by e-mail or post a comment here.

Thanks for the help.