VariableImporter Features: Custom Increments

Custom Increments

In the world of Illustrator variable datasets it is required that the name of each dataset be unique, mentioned only once, for the scope of the entire record set. With great power come great responsibilities, and as the VariableImporter script allows for custom naming of dataset names, so it provides a chance for duplication.

To ensure dataset names are preserved absent such issues, it is easily possible to add the dataset-name field of type "increment" to add a sequential integer to every record name, therefore making it unique among other records. (The default behavior of the VariableImporter script is to genericize the dataset names or variable names if it detects duplicate names.)

The basic increment field component is a handy way of referencing the output files by their index in a collection. But what if for a given project it would make sense to refer to the output files as sets of items within the overall set? Such would be the case with multiple-record layouts where one file contains more than one presented record.

In the sample template pictured here, there are 4 nested records inside of each row.

In the Illustrator template each named text frame corresponds to a data-spreadsheet column of the same name.

This is now a job for the Custom Increment dataset-name field type. With a custom increment it is possible to add sequential markers to the dataset names beginning at any positive integer, with a custom increment amount as well as padding zeroes. Using the "Make interval increment" checkbox adds a dash following with the automatically calculated next-incremented amount (minus one).

Now it's possible to add interval increments to record names and designate the output files as sets containing a batch of records.

Let's create an interval increment that will add the sequential indexes of nested individual items to the record's name. To do this, open the Custom Increments dialog.

Custom Increments are defined in VariableImporter's Customer Increment option dialog box, located inside the Options tab.

In this case the increment called "s1p1i4-interval" is being used. The options for a custom increment are:

1. Start Number - The number to start the first index at.

2. Increment Value - The number of units to add to create the next increment index.

3. Padding Zeroes - Will add an amount of zeroes before increment numbers which do not fill a certain amount of place numbers: for example a padding value of 3 will turn the number 99 into 099.

4. Make Interval Increment - This is a checkbox to set this increment as an *interval* increment, so the amount of the incremented value minus one is added after a dash, after the record's increment.

It adds an interval range to the end of the record names to show that the file contains sets of 5 items, and which ones they are in the overall record collection. The resulting files named appropriately are shown here:

These file names shown contain an index of the file as well as the index interval of contained items. This nomenclature could aid in production processes and error control: the workers can trace any imposed template in a batch of imposed templates and any product on an imposed template to its "nested dataset" ([Name1, Title1] out of [Name1, Title1, Name2, Title2...]).

Thus it may be possible to use one long single-record CSV file and have a system whereby an operator can quickly observe any issues or isolate a product in a machine template visually by index and then be able to connect the actual item they see with the related data content from a CSV.

The following is an example of tracing a production issue with the help of custom increments. In a production process something goes wrong and one item out of many is defunct. So the operator needs to relay the issue concerning a specific item, but the machine template being used actually contains multiple batch items and one file may contains several individual products.

Looking at the UI of the machine's file-import screen, the operator sees file names related to the batch aspect of the operation but isn't really able to connect non-incremented files to any source single-record data without some intensive effort. However, if the interval increment is used, it places the handy index of reference on the batch file to help determine the source of the data more quickly.

In this case, there are 4 batch files on an production template and each batch contains 4 individual products. Seeing an issue with the 2nd item in the 3rd batch group, the operator can count the index of the batch file to determine the batch group of interest as well as count the number of items up to and including the problem item and use that as a reference for the source data. Because the first 4-item batch in the template as seen through machine's interface is at index 5, the 3rd batch group is at index 7. And because it was the 2nd item in the group that was damaged and the interval index indicates that the individual index of that item in source data is 25, the item of interest would be whatever item 26 is in the original data.

Since in this example each variable record for batch file sets has 4 sets of pairs of columns with similarly-named variables, the column indexes relating to the problem item are calculated by counting the pairs of columns starting at 1 and going up to 4. For example, if the damaged item is at index 26 and the starting index of an individual item in this batch is 25, then the 2nd pair of columns belongs to item 26, the 3rd is 27 and 4th is 28.

Once this information is gathered and relayed to another department, it serves as a sort of conduit between them as the production team would care about the batch sequence concerning the issue while customer service/data team would instead be concerned about the individual sequence which is what ultimately leads to the source data. And yet, custom increments give us both worlds to benefit from.