Topic: Improved BATTMAN

[trogg]

I know that I'm treading on holy ground by even mentioning that BATTMAN can be improved upon - but does anyone know of an enhanced version of BATTMAN? I have to deal with blocks that literally have over 100 attributes in them and need to reorder them. The current functionality of BATTMAN is starting to make me hate the clicking sound of my mouse.

The "improved functionality" that I had in mind was the ability to press & hold the buttons that move the ATT up or down and/or buttons that move an ATT to the top or bottom in one click.

So does anyone have a better way of repositioning attributes?

thanks
~Greg

I know the irony - I am showing a block that only has 2 attributes...

[alanjt]

I wonder if you wouldn't better off exploding the block and recreating. The attribute order is based on their order selected.

[trogg]

I'm trying to avoid exploding or bursting because there are so many attributes. Some of which (in their pre-blocked state) overlap so much that selecting them is a little tricky.

But I can see that exploding or bursting might be a good option

[alanjt]

Ahh, I can understand that. Why are you having to reorder them?

[trogg]

They are sent to me that way. They are mainly title blocks that have the various revision info all jumbled. I cant stand it so I am updating them so that the drafters/designers don't have to weed through the jumbled mess when updating their revisions.
I think that some of them are old or were quickly thrown together. Either way - they shouldn't be in that state...

[trogg]

Here is one that I worked on last night:

[alanjt]

Yikes.

[Matt__W]

Here is one that I worked on last night:

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogostick, BATTMAN!!

[ronjonp]

I don't have anything written, but it seems that an alphabetical sort would help too

[trogg]

I don't have anything written, but it seems that an alphabetical sort would help too

That would be a nice addition as well especially in my case where the revisions have a numerical suffix "REVISIONNUMBER1" that could easily be changed to a numerical prefix >> "1REVISIONNUMBER" Or it could be a letter as well >> "AREVISIONNUMBER"

[dgorsman]

I've seen those before.  Thats the reason I prefer a separate block for each revision entry, since trying to shuffle each revision down a line requires a lot of work on the part of the user.  When something like this comes up, time for some automation to handle the re-shuffling.

Regarding the initial question, I don't think any dialogs in AutoCAD use the "click and hold" method.  Maybe some sort of sort order template that can be saved out and re-applied later on...

[cmwade77]

I have seen title blocks with similar amounts of Attributes, here is what we do for Title Blocks that are sent to us:

• We rename the title block file to bdr. (If the title block is not already a separate file, then we WBLOCK it into one)
• We burst the title block, this preserves all attributes that are currently set
• When applicable, we add our logo, copyright and engineer stamp(s)
• Erase any sheet specific information.
• We xref it into each sheet.
• We put sheet specific information in as fields based on the Sheet Set Manager and Document Properties (i.e. Drawn By, checked by, etc.).
• Revision information is usually manually entered in, sometimes on the xRef, sometimes on each sheet that has changes, depending on the client's requirements.

By using the fields, it allows us to make sure our Sheet Indexes and Title Blocks match. And this process eliminates the issues with attributes in the Title Block.

As for the original question, I wish there were options to do so, Title blocks are not the only place where that would be useful for us.

[irneb]

There's one more reason why explode & recreate is not an option: Dynamic Parameters would disappear.

The biggest hassle I can see is that to introduce new functionality into the BAttMan dialog would require a lot of re-writing existing functionality. I don't think those functions are exposed in ADesk's libraries, let alone ActiveX. I'm guessing it would be easier just to re-create the BAttMan thingy through DotNet, especially since I don't think it's possible to have a click-n-hold action in DCL.

If such is the way to go, there would be even more I'd like to add to that dialog:

• Select which properties to sync
• Allow an option for keeping mirrored references readable, i.e. invert, rotate and / or move depending on block ref's XYZ scale factors. Actually this needs to be a default setting, only turn it off for some "strange" scenarios.
• Default to sync all references, but allow to select references to update/sync. Also add similar for batch files so you can propagate a change to other DWGs in one go.
• Allow reorder by simply click-n-drag in the list.
• Turn the list into a grid to edit properties directly, similar to the Layer dialog.
• Add a feature to sync default values into existing references per attribute and per reference selection. It would be nice to have this open for a field as well, extending the capability to reference other attributes from the same block insert (something which isn't even available in BEdit).
• Extend the dialog to also work on DB's parameters, allowing order change as well as properties like a length param's allowed values.

Just a few thoughts. 

[jbuzbee]

Well, instead of changing the block you could create an editor that could search, order the attributes in a textbox control to any specification you want.  Would be quite easy with OpenDCL.

[alanjt]

Would be quite easy with OpenDCL.

Would be really easy if DosLib is installed: dos_orderlist

[CottageCGirl]

I feel better now.. about reordring my 12 attribute blocks... . thanks

[alanjt]

I feel better now.. about reordring my 12 attribute blocks... . thanks

*water all over screen*