Can Lisp work with Tool Palettes???

ACAD 2005...

I currently use pop-up and pull down menus for all my symbols (and I have a lot of them).

But by using LISP and my Menu, I can easly reinsert the previous selected symbol by typing in AG (for 'AGain')... so I don't have to go through the whole symbol selection thing. I can also bring back my last selected pop-up menu (again by typing in two characters) so I can avoid the whole pulldown menu selection process. Very fast indeed.

I've been looking at Palattes to see if it is usable (for me) for my symbols. But it seems to lack in a lot of current features.

My question is "Can you incorporate LISP somehow in the Palettes when selecting a Symbol"? (most likely not)

The other thing I've found is that even though I have PROMPT FOR ROTATION enabled for a symbol, I am "not" prompted for the rotation... and the symbol simply gets inserted.

Any thoughts appreciated.

BruceF

Reply to
Mr. B
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How many symbols? Maybe you could do the WHOLE THING in Lisp.

I am thinking a whole bunch of COND statements, and maybe a few wildcards. But after the tedious procedure of typing the code, the routine would be pretty simple.

Can you abandon your pull downs?

Reply to
roy

Over 500 of them (:

Where would that be coded into? I'm a fast typist (:

Well... the question is (in my mind) Are the Palettes "THE" way to go? Can they do what I can do now just as easily and efficiently? Right now it doesn't seem so.

I don't really want to change unless I absoluetly had to. I'm just trying to see IF the palettes are of any good for me.

Regards,

BruceF

Reply to
Mr. B

Basic answer to your question is yes. You can call a lisp routine from a tool palette the same as you could from a pull down menu. The power of Tool Palettes varies with the version of AutoCAD that you have. 2004 introduced Toll Palettes and lacked many of the extras that later versions have.

Personally I use both the pull downs and Palettes. I prefer to use pull downs for large block libraries because of the cascading selection feture.

Reply to
Chip Harper

So my bottom line is Yes it can be done... but depends on the Cad version.

Okay... so am I guessing correctly that the more later Cad versions will have additional options in the Property to include the LISP, etc? Just currious.

Regards,

BruceF

Reply to
Mr. B

(defun c:sybolblock()(command "-insert" "symbolblock" pause "" "" "")) put blockname in "symbolblock" and use a short word and place that block in programmme files. you may get so much info in

formatting link
cheers

nag

Reply to
gisvoice

thats only half of a thousand. :) makes me curious, what are the symbols of? I can't think of 500 blocks that I would actually use on a regular basis. but let's not let that be a project buster. it can still be written.

I am on autocad 2000, and in it came visual lisp. I like visual lisp, that is where I would write my code. the industry seems to be moving toward visual basic, I have not moved.

I have never seen a Palette. I assume it is little icons of you symbols. ???

Autocad is a database. A database that produces graphics on the screen and can produce pictures of vector graphics. People forget that it is not a drawing program really, it is a database. Organization is mission critical if you want an efficient database.

I got tired of drawing windows, so I first went to manufacturers for symbol libraries. But they were all proprietary, and the drafting sucked. I did not want to insert trash into my drawings, so I quit that. I have my standards.

Then I tried drawing my own and making my own symbol library. That was better, but I did not like having to keep track of all the possibilities.

In the end I wrote a program that draws windows in the elevation view from scratch every time. I give it dimensions, type and options. Like brick soldiers above / below / both is an option. I hate drawing soldiers..... Used to anyway. :)

So I would ask you a couple of things.

  1. How many of these symbols do you actually use? 2. Is there some catalog logic that a computer could manipulate? 3. Do your symbols fall into rational categories, or is it chaos?

Pallet, pull down menu, lisp with dialog box or command line..... There is only so much you can get on the screen at one time. First thing I would do would be to organize the data. Then I would decide whether I wanted to insert or draw from scratch. Might do some of each.

Be advised, I abhor using the word "command" in a lisp routine. And I don't drink cheap beer.

My first inclination would involve dialog boxes, which I have only worked through the examples at afralisp. Not any good with them. But you could have a rotation box, and radio buttons that could control a scroll box to shorten the list - which you are going to have to deal with at some point.

A project I just finished had fire alarm devices. Drives me nuts, working over somebody else's "files" poorly built. They had blocks, which is fine, but they had different blocks based upon the rotation of the device, rather than dealing with the rotation of the text in each symbol. So, when I want to edit globally, there were always a few stragglers that were just not copesetic. Which defeats the main purpose of creating a database, making it hard to sort.

Reply to
roy

Mr. B, Would you be kind enough to direct em to an info source where I can implement this kind of thinking? I am so tired of the info management in cad and need the computer to eliminate tedious drawing while doing it to my standards. Like your soldiers: I would like to have a fatter pen on the top outline, an even fatter pen for the lower shadow line and a grayscale line for the actual coursing. I have to manually do this now and have been doing this for years. (sheepishly). I have acad

2000i on xp pro and am migrating into it. Like I mentioned, I have been on another cad for wuite a while. I am also using other vendors programs, like SU, and find acad is the most stable file processer I have used. I just wish I had stayed in acad years ago when my cad adventure started.

My cad vendor cant seem to get this, I have to make a different block for any symbol that has text in it or else the text rotates with the block. Very messy looking unless I create an block with correctly rotated text, yada,yada..;..

Your advice is appreciated. p.s. I had to change my group user email, I got slammed by spammers 2 days ago.

Reply to
nospamnoanswer

my last post was actually to Roy, sorry ...

Reply to
WildWhiteNocho

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