Hi,
I'm trying to automate something that takes a lot of time at my company.
We got a lot of P&ID drawings full of tags. I want to automate the modification of tags according to an excel table.
I got something working but it's not reliable. It often doesn't work and it's very slow.
Please comment on it. I'm no programmer besides some programming classes back in school.
The form I call from.
It's function is to let the user pick which P&ID's should be put in the modification loop.
It's just a listbox (filenames), a textbox (for the file location) and a button.
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click() Dim vtPid As Variant ReDim vtPid(0) Dim i As Integer, j As Integer j = 0 For i = 0 To lstPid.ListCount - 1 If lstPid.Selected(i) = True Then ReDim Preserve vtPid(j) vtPid(j) = lstPid.List(i) j = j + 1 End If Next frmPidTag.Hide Call Modifie_PIDTag(vtPid, txtLocation.Text) End Sub
The code is in my module.
First I open the excel (table with 2 columns, old and new tag) and put the table in an array.
The array is then used cycle through al entities.
[b] I'm trying to change certain text located in the layer "instrumentation".[/b] It's just text strings, no blocks or anything.
I'd like to use another method to get only the entities with possible matches but this seems to be the only reliable method. Only cycling textstrings would be better.
Sub Modifie_PIDTag(ByVal vtPid As Variant, ByVal varLocation As String) ' Create the Excel object Dim oExcel As Excel.Application Dim oBook As Excel.Workbook Dim oSheet As Excel.Worksheet Dim aryPID() Dim LastRow As Integer Dim LastColumn As Integer ' Open existing workbook Set oExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application") Set oBook = oExcel.Workbooks.Open(varLocation & "EXCEL\DrawingData.xlsx") 'Set oExcel = New Excel.Application oExcel.Visible = False ' Open worksheet Set oSheet = oBook.Worksheets("PIDtag") oSheet.Activate ' Read Excel LastColumn = oSheet.Cells(1, oSheet.Columns.count).End(xlToLeft).Column LastRow = oSheet.Cells(oSheet.Rows.count, 1).End(xlUp).Row ReDim aryPID(1 To LastRow, 1 To LastColumn) aryPID = oSheet.Range(oSheet.Cells(1, 1), oSheet.Cells(LastRow, LastColumn)) ' Cleanup oBook.Close oExcel.Quit Set oSheet = Nothing Set oBook = Nothing Set oExcel = Nothing ' Create the Autocad object On Error Resume Next Set objAcadApp = GetObject(, "AutoCAD.Application") If Err Then Err.Clear MsgBox ("AutoCAD is not running...") End Else Set objAcadDoc = objAcadApp.ActiveDocument Set objMspace = objAcadDoc.ModelSpace End If Dim Entity As AcadEntity Dim Doc As AcadDocument Dim i As Integer, j As Integer Dim saveloc As String For j = 0 To UBound(vtPid) 'MsgBox vtPid(j) On Error Resume Next Set Doc = Documents.Open(varLocation & "TEMPLATE\" & vtPid(j) & ".dwg", False) If Err Then MsgBox "error" Err.Clear End Else AppActivate objAcadApp.Caption i = 0 For Each Entity In Doc.ModelSpace If (Entity.Layer = "INSTRUMENTATION") And (Entity.EntityName = "AcDbAttributeDefinition") Then For i = LBound(aryPID) + 1 To UBound(aryPID) If Entity.TagString = CStr(aryPID(i, 1)) Then Entity.TagString = CStr(aryPID(i, 2)) End If Next End If Next
saveloc = varLocation & "\DWG\" & vtPid(j) & "-new.dwg" ThisDrawing.SaveAs saveloc ThisDrawing.Close End If Next End Sub
The get/create autocad object may seem out of place there but it was the only way to solve an error.
Calling the subroutine from a form gave me automation errors. I think it was a focus/activation problem. Anyway, this seems to solve it.
Thanks!
Ok, I created a selectionset to lessen the amount of entities I need to loop through.
Dim sset As AcadSelectionSet Set sset = ThisDrawing.SelectionSets.Add("FilterSet1") Dim filterType As Variant Dim filterData As Variant Dim p1(0 To 2) As Double Dim p2(0 To 2) As Double Dim grpCode(0) As Integer grpCode(0) = 8 filterType = grpCode Dim grpValue(0) As Variant grpValue(0) = "INSTRUMENTATION" filterData = grpValue sset.Select acSelectionSetAll, p1, p2, filterType, filterData For Each Entity In sset If Entity.EntityName = "AcDbAttributeDefinition" Then For i = LBound(aryPID) + 1 To UBound(aryPID) If Entity.TagString = CStr(aryPID(i, 1)) Then Entity.TagString = CStr(aryPID(i, 2)) End If Next End If Next
This doesn't seem to help.
Autocad still does what it wants. Sometimes it executes, sometimes it doesn't.
It's like VBA is executing really fast and autocad can't keep up.
"It's like VBA is executing really fast and autocad can't keep up." I am affraid, that is not possible. VBA does not execute anything fast. The real reaseon is VBA did not catch Autocad may be.
Can I ask you which operation system you have? If it is 64 bit vba does not support properly. There is something like VBA 64 bit server it delays everything. May be that is the reason it too slow working. Microsoft did not support VBA any more. Visual Studio suggested for any furter application.
Windows 7 64b.
Visual studio would mean I'd have to create standalone apps.
I just want to automate some cheap tricks. I do it all the time in Excel/Word/Access
Any other language I can use that is supported? It can't be any more basic as VB.
It did not mean standalone application. May be I missunderstood microsoft does not support Visual Basic for Application in other terms VBA. You can still use visual basic language but in a different platform. In VBA you create .dvb file, in vb.net you can create Visual Studio has also support visual basic. You can use express edition for both office and cad documents or may be lisp will do it.