Prompted entries in a form

[swright_CAD]

Hi everyone,

I am in the process of tuning up my companys .idw template/ . I created a form that we fill out to populate the title block. Three of the lines in the title block are for description and I need 2 of them to be specific to the sheet they are on. In the past my work accomplished that with prompted entries, as they only affect 1 sheet in an .idw.

In the past I tried to find a way to get the prompted entry text into the form but was unable to. I am now being asked to look at it again.

I want my designers to use the form I made to fill out the title block, it's easy to find, deploy and use and makes it hard for them to forget to fill out information. Editing the Field Text is not quick and easy to use. Is there a way to have a prompted entry that can be filled out in the the form box? Would I need to add a second form box that is specific to the sheet being worked on?

Any help is appreciated, I tried searching the forums in the past and couldn't find an answer where someone was trying to do this, I looked again this time and was unable to find anything that matched what I want to do. If this has been solved already please direct me to the form:)

[RodrigoEiras]

Good morning,

Please find in the picture the way to define a text in the Title Box as a prompted entry.

Best regards

[fakeru]

Hi I'm not sure my method is the best, but this is how I do it.

To link prompted entries in a form (ilogic form only) you need to use custom properties (text type). For instance these are 3 properties I'm using in my title block to fill 3 text lines in it:

Here they are in my title block:

This is how you insert them, in case you don't know it:

And then you add custom iproperties to your ilogic form:

 

 And as a final touch, I make this form to apear at the drawing creation.

I'm not sure that's the best way to accomplish your task. But it works for us ok. Now we don't fill the title block like before.

Good luck!

[swright_CAD]

Thanks for the replies but they did not solve the problem. Let me take another go at explaining what I want to happen.

In our title block I need to have two prompted entry lines as they can be different on different sheets in the same .idw. Where as the "description" is an iProperties that will be the same across all sheets of the .idw.

 

I have an iLogic form box already created that I want to add the prompted entries into, but they are not listed under parameters, rules, or iProperties in the form editor window to be added to the form.

I would like to be able to use the custom iProperties or something like that in order to link back to the prompted entries but they are not an option on this drop down.

My end goal is to be able to have the prompted entries linked to the iLogic form so that as new sheets are added to the .idw we can pop open the iLogic form and edit the prompted entries on each page, without having to dive into the field text box.

[dan_inv09]

In your case you would need to have your title block change to use the two new custom iProps that you are going to need it to create each time a new sheet is added ...

How would the form even react when two or three or ten sheets get added? And the form, and iLogic itself would have to have some way of knowing "Prompted Entry 1" on sheet 1 from "Prompted Entry 1"s on sheets 2 through 10

It's looking like we need to look at the problem a different way - we may need to know more about that text. You'll need to do it on your own if there's proprietary stuff involved, but "deconstruct" what that text is all about, then look at the options you have for your iLogic form and find a way to create that text some other way. (Pull it from the model in the first view on each sheet?)

Or, how about we try looking into some way to trigger "Edit Field Text" or something?

[admaiora]

Hi Fakeru,

how do you deal with multisheets drawing?

I mean, do you have your title_customproperty "Job 1234"  that recall the sheet Title.

If you have multisheets , they will have all the same title.

[swright_CAD]

Currently we rename each sheet with a unique name. So one .idw name 9999 could have a dozen or 3 dozen sheets inside of it with some variation of 9999-AA, 9999-BB... but that is set up as a promted entry, which is what I want to change.

I am not sure how the form would react with prompted entries in it because I can't get them in it. I would think that it would know that it is on page 4 and would edit the entries on page 4.

there is nothing fancy about the text, we use those two lines to desicrbe the items on that paticular sheet. It could be piece parts to a larger assembly, purchased parts, an entire completed assembly, a wiring diagram etc etc... They will vary depending on what is on the sheet, but nothing is specific enough on the parts to have it pull from the first model(already tried that).

I guess what I need then is a way to trigger the field text to open through the rule, something similar to this would be an acceptable solution. I can't seem to find a way to write a rule to trigger the Field Text to open.... Any ideas on what that would like like?

I have a rule set up to open the form box when I hit the trigger button(the little sunburst icon), but I can't seem to find anything on doing a similar thing for the Field Text.

[RodrigoEiras]

I think fakeru did show you the right way, although it is true that if you have a lot of sheets that will require to create a lot of custom iProperties.

You should change the workflow around:

1. First create all the iProperties you need to properly populate the title blocks

2. Edit the prompted entries in your title blocks and link them directly to the new iProperties

3. Now you can easily make those Custom iProperties appear in your form

Best regards

[fakeru]

Hi admaiora,

The thing is we don't deal that much with multisheet drawings. And when we do, we are ok with the same title block on all the sheets. But it's not 100% the same, as we differentiate the sheets with the sheet number property, which is displayed in the title block.

So yes, those iproperties "TITLE1", TITLE2", "TITLE3" are the same in all the sheets and it's not really a problem. These lines reffer to the object we make the drawing for, which can a simple part, but also big layout with buildings and equipment. But the idea is that the object is one and the same for all the sheets and then these lines are the same for all title blocks. We use extra sheets when views don't fit on the first one, not for a different object.

[admaiora]

Thank you Fakeru for the insight.

[mrattray]

There is no way to add field text to a form. It wouldn't work well anyways, because the form has no relationship to the sheet; it's a drawing wide entity. You'll need to cook up a work around.

Adding a button to pull up the field text for the currently active sheet, however, is plausible. I'm not sure exactly how to do it, although I did find the name of the command in one of my reference documents: "DrawingEditFieldTextCmd".

You sound like you have some proficiency with iLogic, why don't you take a stab at it? I'll be happy to help you out if you need it.

[swright_CAD]

Thanks everyone. I have come to the conclusion along with mrattray that inventor will not allow me to do what I am trying to do.

I did try working with the DrawingEditfieldtextCmd but was unable to get thing to happen with it. I probablly need to mess around with it in visual basic to get it to work and I don't have the knowledge or time to deal with that. For now we have gone back to doing prompted entries, it's not nearly as clean as I would like it to be, or laid out how I would preffer, but oh well. One step at a time.

[wally.cloud · Accepted solution]

I have found a way to do this and thought I would share it here in case it helps anyone also searching for this.

It may not be possible to edit prompted entries with an iLogic form but it is possible with a VBA macro form.

Have a look at the following link where they have an example of a VBA macro which can edit the prompted entries (for the active sheet) AND iProperties for the drawing:

http://modthemachine.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/02/another-iproperty-custom-dialog-example.html

Hope it helps others!