Greetings,
I never lurk around this area since I never use dynamic blocks (due to the dinosaur problem in the office), but I decided to look into them a bit during some downtime. I thought music would be an interesting test project for dynamic blocks, so I threw together a few simple blocks. After some trial and error, I was really impressed with how powerful they were. So I thought I might as well share.
I've attached the file if anyone wants to dig in and check it out. Feel free to comment on the blocks (or my composition skills for that matter) or let me know if you have any suggestions for extras I can add. Its in 2013 format.
Add a Block Properties Table to that and you could place the note on the stave as well with a little more work I should think.
Regards, Charles Shade
CSHADEDESIGN | AUTOCAD LT | LT-KB | DYNAMIC BLOCKS
Please mark Accept as Solution if your question is answered. Kudos gladly accepted. ⇘
Charles:
My concern with having the notes as part of the stave block is that it seems I can't do anything like 'nested visibility' (for lack of a better term) where I'm able to set the visibility state for different entities within the same block. Would the Block Properties Table help me achieve that? Either way I plan on looking into it, seems like an interesting function, thanks!
ojuris:
I was using rotate rather than flip since it used less steps (one rotate rather than 3 flips). However I have to admit the flip grip is a lot easier to use and much more obvious. I'm a bit confused about the function of the two lookup paramateres, are they there to activate the last two flips (like chaining) or is there something I'm missing?
I'm just beginning to familiarize myself with all this stuff so I really appreciate the suggestions.
Took me a moment, but I see the difference now. I wasn't sure which way the flag was supposed to go when the tail got flipped, so thanks for clearing that up for me.
I'll be messin around with this for the next few days, I'll post if I have any more questions or make any new discoveries.
Thanks again!
I wish I new more about music to make some constructive comments, I don't, so all I can say is well done, this is an excellent way to learn the principles. Pick a subject that interests you and then jump in and try to get the software to do what you want and not just sit there and try to learn how the software does things. I suppose one suggestion could be try adding a move action to your note to move it up and down the scale (a linear parameter with a list or increment distances).
Which is where I think a BPT could come into play.
The Table would be attached to the note not the stave.
My though is that this could palce the note on the stave as well.
1/16 note for E,G, B, D, F
1/8 note for E, G, B D, F
etc...
And the FLIP too!
Regards, Charles Shade
CSHADEDESIGN | AUTOCAD LT | LT-KB | DYNAMIC BLOCKS
Please mark Accept as Solution if your question is answered. Kudos gladly accepted. ⇘
Steven
I love the increment distance idea, that way I could get rid of the no-plot grid thats part of the staff as well as add ledger lines (which I'm drawing manually) to the note.
Charles
I'm still trying to fully understand the BPT, I can see its potential but I haven't found a good place to use it yet.
I stumbled upon http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Dynamic-Blocks/Multiple-Visibility-States-What-tricks-being-used/td-p/... and downloaded loggyboy's .dwg that uses lookups to 'divide up' the visibility states. I just started digging into it, and I'm thinking that it might be the key to incorporating both duration and accidentals into the note block without having dozens of combinations in my visibility drop down.
Visibilty-add-eng is not playing well with 2013 versions of CAD software.
You may find this to be a dead end.
Follow the thread that I linked there. It is many pages long now. Toward the end there is some discussion on the current releases problems.
Regards, Charles Shade
CSHADEDESIGN | AUTOCAD LT | LT-KB | DYNAMIC BLOCKS
Please mark Accept as Solution if your question is answered. Kudos gladly accepted. ⇘
I wasn't planning on using the visibility-add-eng.lsp, especially since I'm not lisp savvy. I was looking at the "hard way of doing it" that's discussed in the last 3 posts of that thread.
I can see why its the hard way...I will have lots of combinations to deal with. I went ahead and tested the concept on a simple block like the one shared in post # 8 of that thread and it looks like it will do the trick.
4 states for accidentals
6 states for duration
If I've got my math correct, that's 24 vis states and 10 lookup parameters. Lets hope I don't want to add a third variable later on, haha.
Success!
I've added a lot of functionality to the note's block and was able to clean up the staff quite a bit. Here is a quick run-down of whats going on in the block since it's getting pretty messy at this point:
-All notes insert at the beginning of the mesure rather than the note's location.
-The notes are positioned using an X Y parameter which is locked into increments.
-Added ledger grips at the top and bottom, they can be stretched to array the leadger lines and they also follow the note's X location.
-Added two lookup grips, one that changes the duration of the note and one that adds accidentals (without displaying all 24 combinations in one dropdown).
It'd be nice to somehow chain the array action on the ledger lines to activate if the note goes outside of the staff, I think I'll look into that after adding some features to the staff.
Thanks again, I wouldn't have made it this far without you folks leading me in the right direction. I really didn't expect to be able to do so much with Dynamic Blocks after only a few days!