Topic: Best way to keep text horizontal

[hmspe]

I have a number of standard blocks that have text in the symbol, things like fire alarm pull stations and cable TV jacks.  Example:  The pull station block is a square that's 0.1563" on each side with a 0.0625" high letter F in the center, with the insertion point at the midpoint of the right side.  When inserted these symbols are rotated to match wall orientation and sometimes are mirrored.  I generally explode the blocks and reset the text rotation so that the text is right side up and not reversed.  Not all the symbols are square so I can't just rotate the entire symbol in most cases.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on the best way to automate aligning the text.  My preference would be that the text align to the symbol's quadrants since not all walls are orthogonal and the symbols may be at rotations other than 0, 90, 180, and 270, but also be as close to horizontal relative to the paper as possible.

I can post a dwg if my description isn't clear enough.

Martin

[Kate M]

Definitely post a drawing.

Or at least some screenshots.

[hmspe]

Please see the attached.  These are all old symbols which use imbedded text.  The left detail is "as inserted".  The other two have had blocks exploded and the text manually rotated.

The two approaches that come to mind are dynamic blocks and a reactor that monitors the symbols and automatically changes attribute rotation in specific blocks if the block is inserted or changed.  I don't know enough about dynamic blocks to know if they are a good solution.  I've tried a few dynamic block samples posted at the swamp, such as one that's supposed to keep a door tag horizontal, but none of them seem to do anything for me.  I've tried the "step by step" at http://ltunlimited.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/10/virginia-beach.html, but what's there apparently assumes a base knowledge of dynamic blocks and the block editor that I don't have.  If dynamic blocks cannot automatically update if the block is mirrored, rotated, or copied I probably need to go the reactor route.

If this isn't a good application for dynamic blocks I'll repost in the lisp group.

Martin

[Matt__W]

Check out the flowswitch block in this drawing.

[hmspe]

Matt,

Thanks for the response.

I must be missing a setting or something.  I can see that the flowswitch is defined as dynamic, but on my computer if I insert another instance of the flowswitch the new instance works exactly like the non-dynamic block -- the text does not rotate relative to the symbol.  I'm running Autocad 2010 on 64 bit Win 7 if it matters.  Very baffled at this point....

Martin

[Matt__W]

I dunno... I'm running MEP 2008 on WinXP Pro.   

[Spike Wilbury]

Martin,

I would do it like this:

1. Make a block with an attribute.
2. Convert it to Dynamic Block and add the alignment parameter
3. At the end of the insertion of all the blocks, just make a little lisp routine to grab all the blocks, get the attributes and simple called the vla-put-rotation to 0.0...
4. Rock & Roll

[Spike Wilbury]

got the chance to play....


have a look if works for you (added is your dwg with one of the blocks and a lisp routine).

[hmspe]

Luis,

Thanks.  That works well. 

Now to spend the evening reading up on dynamic blocks....

Martin

[M-dub]

Check out the flowswitch block in this drawing.

Slight hijack (apologies)

I'm going to see how I can incorporate this with the text in my cable label.  Thanks Matt. 

[Spike Wilbury]

Luis,

Thanks.  That works well. 

Now to spend the evening reading up on dynamic blocks....

Martin

You are welcome...

BTW, what I posted is half Dynamic Block and Lisp (as I said) - I have not done or got involved much on DB's at all - one of these days I hope....