Topic: (1002 . "{")

[curmudgeon]

working with extended data, I am ready to dive in. I think.

These braces enable applications to organize their data by subdividing the data into lists.

from the Autocad 2002 DXF reference guide. but from the examples I have seen, I cannot comprehend the purpose, find the advantage, of having done so. further, I played with EXPRESS TOOLS extended data routines, and found that no matter what I did the curly brackets created in that manner at each end of each application were redundant.

am I missing something here?

and am I limited to dotted pairs, or can I create more generic lists? for example, it would be real handy to store a list of enames, not knowing in advance how long that list would be. but the only provision I see by example would be something like (1000 . "193dc10 193dc17 .....") and then parsing the string for the actual entity names ( or handles ).

can I save a list of 3d points?

is there a better way to save generic types of lists in extended data, or is it the dotted pair or the highway?

thanks.

[MP]

I cannot comprehend the purpose

see link

and am I limited to dotted pairs, or can I create more generic lists? for example, it would be real handy to store a list of enames, not knowing in advance how long that list would be. but the only provision I see by example would be something like (1000 . "193dc10 193dc17 .....") and then parsing the string for the actual entity names ( or handles ).

Most programmers would create multiple 1005 groups to host multiple handles. You could string multiple handles together with commas and parse em out later, using a dxf group code of 1000, but I don't see the benefit (notwithstanding the 255 character limit for each 1000 group string entry).

I could be wrong but I don't recall a dxf group code for enames in xdata.

can I save a list of 3d points?

Yes, use dxf group code 1010 if they are not to move/scale with the parent object, otherwise dxf group code 1011.

etc., etc. ... it's all in the DXF Reference.

[curmudgeon]

my apologies, I must have searched badly to post twice.
 :ugly: