topic Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION in AutoCAD Forum

PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 17:55:23 GMT

IS THERE ANY WAY WE CAN PROVIDE A TEXT BOX AROUND THE DIMENSIONS USING A LISP ROUTINE

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Patchy — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 18:08:43 GMT

Click on the frame around text in the Dim Settings, no need for the routine.

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 18:20:22 GMT

NOW FOR THE RECORD HERE I WANNA PLAY AROUND WITH THAT RECTANGLE FOR EXAMPLE I WANT TO CONVERT THE TEXT BOX INTO CLOUD . BUT IF I PROVIDE FRAME AROUND TEXT I AM UNABLE TO DO THAT.

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Patchy — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 18:57:53 GMT

Explode the dim and tcircle ☺

What is cloud thing?

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 19:05:39 GMT

I WANNA MODIFY THE DIMENSION IN NEAR FUTURE. SO I DONT WANNA EXPOLDE IT...

SEE THE BELOW SNIP FOR THE CLOUD THINGY...

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

pendean — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 20:24:55 GMT

BOX or nothing: no cloud option to date that is integral to the DIM object.

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

ChicagoLooper — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 20:27:23 GMT

Sorry, Patchy is right..............try this:Text box for dims.

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Kent1Cooper — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 20:52:44 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

NOW FOR THE RECORD HERE I WANNA PLAY AROUND WITH THAT RECTANGLE FOR EXAMPLE I WANT TO CONVERT THE TEXT BOX INTO CLOUD . BUT IF I PROVIDE FRAME AROUND TEXT I AM UNABLE TO DO THAT.

Putting a standard text box around is not difficult, whether by making it part of the Dimension Style to include a frame, or imposing it on individual Dimensions, without removing it from any that already have it, with [if 'dimobj' is the Dimension entity converted to a VLA object]:

(vla-put-TextGap dimobj (- (abs (vla-get-TextGap dimobj))))

But if you want to mess with it, other than with its spacing around the text, as you say, that won't work. I don't see anything in Dimension entity data or VLA properties that could give you the length of the text part, which would be needed to build such a box to mess with. The one way that seems possible would be to temporarily Explode the Dimension, find the text part [which will be (entlast) for many Dimension varieties, but not all, so it would probably mean stepping through the results of Explode to find it], getting its bounding box to use for making the box/cloud, and then Undoing the Explode. Does that sound like it would work?

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

jayhar — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 07:20:53 GMT

Go to Dimension Style > Text Tab > Check Draw frame around text

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

JoistDetailer — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 13:56:26 GMT

Kent,

How would one "step thru" the exploded dimension? Can you create a selection set of the exploded entities?

Like the OP, I'm interested in creating a commend that prompts the user for a dimension, then will draw a "cloud" around *just the dimension text*. I already have a routine that draws several variations of a "attention-grabber" (cloud, a "3D" box, etc) around multi-text or multiple lines of s-text. I've been wanting to add dimension text to that, but can't figure out how to determine the "extents" and location (inside arrows, outside, leader, etc) of the text...

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

pendean — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 14:02:29 GMT

The customization forums are over here, start with the LISP for your new post, show screenshots of what you want https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-customization/ct-p/AutoCADTopic1

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

JoistDetailer — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 16:51:55 GMT

OK...I guess I was just trying to "bump up" the OP's question to see if anyone had more pertinent answers. Granted, his original question was vague, but he followed up quickly with what he actually wanted...a way to get the coordinates for a bounding box for the text portion of an associative dimension.

Thanks anyway...

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

JamesMaeding — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 18:55:16 GMT

@pendean, @JoistDetailer

I did this a long time ago, to make textmask command work on dimensions.

I also had to make it work on mtext and mleader text. Its not trivial.

For dtext, you use the lisp (textbox...) function.

For mtext, its real fun. You essentially have to parse the mtext string, to figure out what the mtext would look like if it were exploded, then use textbox function to figure the width and height of things.

Its complex, and not perfect, but fine for things like dims and mleader that don't have tons of format strings like bullets.

I give credit to Lee Mac on much of it. Check out his MLeader Textbox function to dig into it.

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

Kent1Cooper — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 19:58:43 GMT

@JoistDetailer wrote:

.... How would one "step thru" the exploded dimension? Can you create a selection set of the exploded entities? ....

Whenever you Explode, the resulting pieces become the "Previous" selection, so

(ssget "_P")

would give you that as a selection set. Given that, do you know how to work through that until you find an Mtext object to use your other clouding routine(s) on?

Re: PROVIDING TEXT BOX TO THE DIMENSION

JamesMaeding — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 20:10:42 GMT

@JoistDetailer

Like I say, this is already solved just using code, no hacking of entities involved.

To specifically answer your question though, to get results of an explode command, on however many things, you would do this:

1) select the items to explode

2) before the explode, save the last entity name in the drawing database, that is not one of the items to explode

3) run the explode on the selected items

4) after, loop backwards from the end, through the space involved, until you hit the ename saved in step 2.

I do that for my "explode to group" command.

Careful about the case where you are exploding everything. Easy if you can code the rest.