Author Topic: What "function" are you working on now?  (Read 6329 times)

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RbtDanforth

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Re: What "function" are you working on now?
« Reply #15 on: March 28, 2006, 09:02:48 PM »
Long ago when lisp would not survive a plot, much less from drawing to drawing, I had it write little ASCII files ie. data.asc where the first line was variable a the next b etc.

It would them write a script that would plot the drawing and go to the next drawing in a list that was saved on another ASCII file, the script was then set to load and run the lisp function that would write another script file etc.

Since it always overwrote the previous information there was not a clutter of little ASCII files, and if it crashed, the last ASCII file could take over where things were left off. I also had an ASCII file with the standard info that went on the border so that was updated correctly in the process. In those days I could plot a hundred drawings with a single command :-D Changes in the way Autocad works has made that system a buggy whip, but it was fun while it lasted.

I did use that system to extract or fill out Bill of Materials lists and to hunt for specific elevation  blocks by picking the text of their number on the plan. By using space delimited text files it was simple to grab the line of text and pick out the text from point a to b.

To store info in a drawing, an invisible block with invisible attributes works pretty well as long as the info is well defined and hopefully short. I suppose there are more elegant ways but that would be my quick and dirty style.

As for my current problems, I am trying to do a workaround for a Mtext wipeout bug. Instead of hiding what is behind it creates a dark box of its own ( not the #63 color) hiding the text. A bit of experimenting shows up a set of codes that read when the wipeout is on but not when the wipeout is off. Now I have #s 45 and 63 understood but 90, 421, and 441 are a bit confusing.

If I set 90 to 2, the messed up text, the problem (and the wipeout) goes away, at 1 it goes to color stored in #63 and whether messed up of not 90 seems to be set at 3 when ever by background is set. Autocad doesn't seem to accept 0 or any number higher than 3.

When set at 2 the Assoc's 45, 63, 90, 421, & 441 still show which tells me that 2 is not a right setting. If someone has a solution that will quickly solve the problem, I would like to here it.