I have a drawing showing a double storey building.
Both floor plans have been xrefed into the drawing. So that I can use the drafting palette to generate sections and elevations.
I use ppms or blocks for the windows and doors - with custom properties - to generate window schedules.
All the windows are on a window layer, and the doors on a door layer .
In a single storey building I would generate the report by filtering relevant information via layer. But with the double storey the layers are within the xrefs and not available in the choice for filtering, so the report is empty.
I would like to extract the data from both storeys at once as I need a summary report for the schedules.
Is this possible?
 I have attached a test drawing
 

Experimenting with this I can see that you cant filter by layer but you can extract without a filter and it will pick up the blocks in the xref.
Once it is in a table form save to excel and filter out the nonsense. Not exactly what I wanted but it will work.

I wonder what would happen if you Exploded your drawing so that the XRef'ed information would be placed in your drawing.


Jeff

That does work but I am trying not to "break the connection". I am looking for ways to make the workflow more efficient - like BIM.
 I could extract  the information from each drawing and add combine the 2 schedules but the more processing I have to do the greater the chance that I make a mistake.
 I don't use TC2018 but reports in 2018 have the ability to update - which would mean that information would never be wrong as long as the "connection" isn't broken.

Nikki,
All you need to do is set the required “define fields” in the master drawing. There’s no need to assign the fields to the inserted xref in the master drawing.
The “advanced report” should extract and “update” custom fields from the xref. Any changes made in the xref you need to “reload” the xref in the master drawing.

HUH? I never define fields, I use the data connection palette. The defined fields are probably from my template drawing. - I should clean that up.
 I couldn't get reports to work, because I always extract data using a filter it returns an empty report if you apply a selection filter. - hopefully I am wrong??

I might be way off base here but is this what your looking for..this allowed me to report without exploding groups or blocks.. really didn't test xref. I'm using v21 pro 2018 might be different

I'm seeing it now..search criteria won't report anything thats  within the group or block..and in your case xref.. wouldn't work on some double lines that I had grouped.. worked before setting any search criteria though

That does work but I am trying not to "break the connection". I am looking for ways to make the workflow more efficient - like BIM.

Or... whenever you want a report, make a copy, explode it and extract the information.

You don't even have to make a copy; you could just do the above, then exit without saving.


Jeff

As I said exploding is an option but it breaks the link. - I would need to redo the whole process every time something changes. In an architectural drawing - this happens a lot.
The other issue with exploding is that in each xref there are blocks with the same name. Windows which are almost exactly the same (the difference being the z position from the bottom of the wall .)
When you explode an xref, with included overlays, the overlays don't disappear - (they should because that is how overlays are supposed to work.)-they become a block within the drawing. The first floor has an overlay of the ground floor. Not really a problem but irritating.
The layer name is also changed to a long name with dollars in it. All this adds time to something that should be automatic.