Through the Interface

Sorting lists of AutoCAD objects using LINQ – Part 3

After seeing a basic approach to sort arrays of ObjectIds using LINQ – and then refactoring that to be a shared extension method to be used on arrays of ObjectIds – today we’re going to see that code refactored, once again, to work with types of data other than strings (up until now we could only sort objects based on string properties such as class and layer names). One solid approach for creating operations that can deal with different types of object – while maintaining type safety – is to use template classes, which are known as generic classes... Read more →

Sorting lists of AutoCAD objects using LINQ – Part 2

In the last post we took a look at one technique to sort a list of ObjectIds by the associated objects’ layer and type. In this post we’re going to refactor the commonality to have a single extension method that allows us to sort a list of ObjectIds based on any string property. Here’s the updated C# code: using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; namespace ProcessObjectsInOrder { public static class Extensions { ///

/// Sorts an array of ObjectIds based on a string property and order. ///

/// Read more →

Sorting lists of AutoCAD objects using LINQ – Part 1

I received this interesting question by email from Henrik Ericson, last week. Is it possible to sort the selected objects (only 3dFaces in my case) in a SelectionSet by their layers? I want to process all the objects, one layer at a time. In other words, first all objects on layer A, and then all objects on layer B and then C and so on. In my case it isn't necessary to process the layers alphabetically. It’s especially interesting as I’d just been thinking of approaches for sorting toolbars based on an index property, to get the code in... Read more →

Changing the border colour of an AutoCAD raster image using .NET

This is a question that came up at the recent Cloud Accelerator in Prague: how can you change the border colour for all raster image objects in the drawing? We could do this by placing the raster image on a particular layer, but the developer was looking for a global override. The answer ended up being really simple with a DrawableOverrule. Here’s some C# code that does this: using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.GraphicsInterface; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; namespace RasterImageOverrule { public class RasterImageDisplayOverrule : DrawableOverrule { public short Color { get; set; } public override void ViewportDraw(Drawable d,... Read more →

Getting the centroid of an AutoCAD region using .NET

This week we’re going to look at an interesting problem: how to create text that fits into a particular space. The scenario was originally presented (to me, anyway) by Alex Fielder, early last year (thanks, Alex!), but it’s taken a while for me to get to it. Alex wanted to check for the extents of block attributes overflowing their containers. I may well go ahead and implement that, in due course, but first I wanted to let the user select a space and create some text to fill it. Let’s take a look at how to make this happen.... Read more →

Preventing an AutoCAD block from being exploded using .NET (redux)

When I was a boy, I used to love going to play with toys at my grandmother’s house. My absolute favourite was a die-cast Batmobile made by Corgi in the UK. What I particularly liked about this toy was its hidden features: the cars apparently came with secret instructions, although these were nowhere to be seen by the time I started playing with it. The Batmobile had plastic flames that came out of the exhaust when the rear wheels turned and spring-loadable, vertical rocket launchers. The biggest surprise was when I discovered the cutting blade that popped out of... Read more →

Selecting a linetype and applying it to a set of AutoCAD entities using .NET

I received this request from Mateusz Andrzejczak, over the weekend: I have problem with LineTypeDialog. Your part of the code is working perfectly, but i have problem with modifying the values. I have a SelectionSet that holds all object that are selected with using a filter. I want to use LineTypeDialog to select linetype and then accept so all the object in selection set will change to selected linetype. I'm working with this for a few hours and it's not working. Any tip for me? The question related to this old post. I started by sending Mateusz a link... Read more →

Displaying the area of the last AutoCAD entity in an HTML palette using JavaScript and .NET

The title of this one is a little specific – the post actually deals with the scenario of passing data from .NET to an HTML-defined palette, as well as some other tips & tricks – but it’s something I wanted to show. Here’s the basic idea: whenever a closed curve gets added to the drawing, we want to display its area as the only item in an HTML palette. We also want the palette to update when objects get erased, etc., which makes life somewhat trickier. To set the scene, here’s a quick screencast of the finished application in... Read more →

Reversing the direction of an AutoCAD polyline using .NET

This question came in by email, last week: I’m trying to reverse the direction of a polyline thought the API, but I didn’t find something in the documentation nor in the web. (Even nothing on your blog.) Can you help me? I also didn’t find anything in the public API, although that doesn’t mean there isn’t something I’ve missed (I seem to be on a bit of a roll in that respect, lately :-S :-). A couple of thoughts/comments on this problem: Ideally we don’t want to create a brand new object, as on the one hand there may... Read more →

More API features in AutoCAD 2013

Following on from our look at the Core Console, Dynamic .NET and .NET migration for AutoCAD 2013, today we’re going to look briefly at the remaining API features in the AutoCAD 2013 release. Model Documentation The model documentation feature was introduced in AutoCAD 2012 – simplifying creation of 2D sections and details of 3D drawing content – and this initial API provides (primarily read-only) access to this information. It comprises the following classes SectionSymbol SectionViewstyle ViewBorder ViewRepBlockReference DetailViewStyle DetailSymbol The writeable aspects of the API are mostly related to the “style” objects – these can be created and edited... Read more →

Changing the relative draw-order of AutoCAD objects based on their layer

Terry Dotson has – once again – generously offered an application to be an ADN Plugin of the Month. This little tool, called DrawOrderByLayer, allows you to modify the draw-order of objects in an AutoCAD drawing according to the layer they’re on. I don’t expect this to go live for another month or so (I still have plans for November’s plugin), but I did want to post it in order to give people the chance to provide feedback. Here’s basically how it works… You have layers containing geometry – in this case I’ve created circular solid hatches on layers... Read more →

Changing the layer or color of a nested entity using .NET (take 2)

A big thanks to Thorsten Meinecke for pointing out the obvious issue with my prior post (the nested entity selection loop which has frustrated me unnecessarily when developing the code for that post and another). Here are the details of the fix: using Editor.GetNestedEntity() along with a PromptNestedEntityOptions object, instead of a direct message string, allows us to specify AllowNone to be true. Which, in turn, causes PromptStatus.None to be returned when the enter or space keys are used to terminate the selection loop. An obvious omission, in hindsight, but anyway – I’m much obliged to you, Thorsten! :-)... Read more →

Changing the layer or color of a nested entity using .NET

In a recent comment, Adam requested the code from this previous post be modified to work in the same way as another, more recent, post: Is it possible to get a version of this code where the user is prompted to create a selection set of nested objects first, and then being prompted for the new colour of the objects? i.e is it possible to get the code for changing colour working the same way as it does for changing layer, as detailed here? This would allow the user to pick and choose the objects affected, rather than making... Read more →

Changing the case of an MText object using AutoCAD’s in-place editor from .NET

In the last post we saw a very simple, preliminary exploration of some of the new programmatic capabilities of the in-place MText editor in AutoCAD 2011. In that basic case we just used it to strip off all formatting from an MText object. Now we’re going to implement a couple of commands to toggle the case of the contents of an MText object between lower- and uppercase. Here’s the C# code: using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices; using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime; namespace MTextEditing { public class Commands { [CommandMethod("CTU")] public void ChangeToUppercase() { ChangeCase(true); } [CommandMethod("CTL")] public void ChangeToLowercase() { ChangeCase(false);... Read more →

ADN DevCast Episode 3

Once again, members of the DevTech Americas team have put together an entertaining and informative DevCast session on AutoCAD’s APIs. This time, Gopinath Taget joins Stephen Preston and Fenton Webb to present a number of interesting topics: boundary tracing, associative surfaces, 3D laser scanning and point cloud filtering. I’ll be covering boundary tracing via this blog in the coming weeks, just as I expect to be doing more with point clouds (coincidentally a laser scanner from FARO – similar to the one Fenton and Gonzalo use in this DevCast – should be arriving for me today, so watch this... Read more →

Creating an AutoCAD MText object containing different colours using .NET

Some weeks ago we received this question via ADN support: My string contains several sentences and I need to make 2 of these sentences Red. I know that I could use a separate Mtext for the red portion; however, I was wondering if there was a way to programatically do this using just one Mtext? A big thanks to Varadarajan Krishnan, from our DevTech team in India, for providing the code that formed the basis for the below solution. I decided to spice things up slightly by adding some additional per-phrase and per-word colouring. Here’s the C# code: using... Read more →

Adding a dynamic password property to an AutoCAD object using .NET

In this recent post we looked at adding custom editing capabilities for dynamic properties we’ve added via .NET. In the first example we looked at a “distance” property which provided a button allowing the user to select two points. In this post we’ll look at implementing a masked string property, such as one you would use for a password. I won’t repeat too much of the background information from the last post in this series: you should refer to that to understand the fundamentals (the fact that we’re basing this implementation on Cyrille Fauvel’s OPM .NET sample, that we’re... Read more →

Adding a dynamic distance property to an AutoCAD object using .NET

Back in these previous posts, we introduced an ObjectARX module that exposed AutoCAD’s Property Palette to .NET (thanks again to Cyrille Fauvel for his work on this :-). In this post we’re going to build on this work to demonstrate how to integrate properties with more advanced editing controls into the Property Palette. [Note: this sample does not deal with persisting the data with an object. If you want to store your data with a particular object, I suggest taking a look at this previous post which demonstrates how to use Xdata to do so.] This code is being... Read more →

Modifying an AutoCAD object’s state via a dynamic property defined using .NET

I’ve been meaning to get to this one for a while. This post takes the OPM .NET implementation and shows how to use it to allow modification of data persisted with an object: in this case we’re going to use the XData in which we store the “pipe radius” for the AutoCAD 2010 overrule sample we’ve recently been developing. To start with, I needed to migrate the OPM .NET module to work with AutoCAD 2010, which meant installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Other than that the code migrated very easily, and the project (with the built asdkOPMNetExt.dll assembly) can... Read more →

Exposing AutoCAD's Properties Palette functionality to .NET - Part 2

In the last post we looked at the code behind an ObjectARX module exposing AutoCAD's Properties Palette for use from managed .NET languages. Thanks again to Cyrille Fauvel for providing this implementation. In this post we're going to move right onto using this implementation from C#. First things first: if you didn't understand much of what was said in the previous post in this series, Don't Panic! (Yes, that's a quick reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) The actual implementation details aren't particularly important - you only really need to understand them if you want to expose... Read more →