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Posted on 2013-11-18 11:26:39
A complex Linetype with the text embedded would have the benefit of not
breaking pieces out of the linework, making any re-routing MUCH easier. It
would also work on Polylines (as well as Arcs, Circles, Splines, Ellipses,
etc., however rarely some of them might be used for piping diagrams). It
could introduce the label more often than you might sometimes want, or at
the other end not include it in shorter Lines, so you would need to
consider how long a line segment to define between text elements. There
would sometimes be a need to reverse the direction of linework [there are
routines here and elsewhere to do that, including one built into later
versions of AutoCAD for some entity types]. And you would need a different
linetype definition for each kind of label, though in most disciplines
there would be a limited number of commonly-used labels. But the
advantages may outweight the limitations. And even if you use defined
complex Linetypes most of the time for their benefits, a routine like this
would still be useful for occasional circumstances such as rarely-used
labels or too-short lines.
Posted on 2013-11-18 11:57:58
One warning: It first draws the Text using whatever the current Style is,
and THEN changes it to Standard. That will cause trouble if the current
Text Style when you call the command has a FIXED HEIGHT, so make sure
that's not the case first. [It can be adjusted to avoid that problem, and
also to work with other entity types (and restrict the User's selection to
appropriate ones) -- I may work on a revised version and post it later.]
Posted on 2013-11-18 14:33:30
@Kent -
I agree, a complex Linetype would have been more utilitarian -- as that
would permit me to calculate the unbroken line's pipe lengths for
estimating purposes. But alas, I am coming into an office with an
established CAD Standard (and drawing team), and they use lines and text
(for now). A routine to create a complex linetype on the fly would be
awesome - with a dialog interface, maybe ;-)
Also, thanks for the heads up warning about a text style with a defined
height. I will have to re-work the code as well, we always work with a
defined text height of 0'-0" in the style itself, but outside text styles
find their way into our drawings on occasion.... thanks for heading off
that headache for me. :-)
- Theresa Lowe
Posted on 2013-11-20 14:03:50
FWIW, I've been doing some additional testing and I am able to get PTXT to
run in virgin installs of Civil 3-D 2013 & 2014 and Architecture 2013 &
2014.
Posted on 2013-11-21 13:41:56
Here's a revision that takes care of the things I mentioned, and has some
other enhancements (see revision comments near the top). I changed the
name to be about "Label" rather than "Pipe" to be more generic, but you can
do what you like with that. For the most part, I left in but commented out
lines of the original code that I re-did in some way, and kept the original
variable names (those I added have lower-case names). If you like it, you
can wipe out all the commented-out parts. Limited testing.
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