topic Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute in AutoCAD Forum

Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

stefanome — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 14:56:01 GMT

This is the "Child" block with the "Name" attribute:

And this is the "Parent" block with two "Child1" and "Child2" attributes and two instances of "Child":

How do I link the value of the attribute "Child 1" of "Parent" to the attribute "Name" of the first instance of "Child", and the same with attribute "Child2" and the second "Child"?

Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

cadffm — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 15:01:14 GMT

Doubleclick to edit the Target Attribut, as new Value: RightClick -> Field

Field type Object,

Select Source Block and select property <name of your attribut>

[Ok]

Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

stefanome — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 15:37:27 GMT

I don't understand...

I tried double clicking the "Parent" block and this dialog popped up, but now I don't understand what I need to right click on so I can select Field:

Then I tried to start the "Parent" block editing, then double click on the attribute and this popped up, but again, I don't see anything I could right click on:

Then I tried to double click the first "Child" block and I got this, again without anything I could right click on:

What am I missing?

Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

cadffm — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 22:20:49 GMT

Hi,

I read your first post again and see: It will not work this way,
except you are using a TEXT (or constant Attributdefinition),
what a stupid way would be.

See my Sample on the left.
Why stupid: You need an extra block for each Child block (child1, child2, child3...child999)
AND an extra block for Parent Parent1..Parent999.
And to edit the NAME, you have to use BEDIT or RefEdit Childs block.

How you should go: See my sample on the right!
My Parent block contains Name1 and Name2 (and Child1 + Child2)
(you could name both "Name", but I wouldn't do that. also I wouldn't use Lowercases in AttributTags!)

And for this structure I wrote my description (I misunderstood your situation first and thought you have it like my sample on the right):

1. Doubleclick to edit the Target Attribut,

2. as new Value: RightClick -> Field

3. Field type Object,

4. Select Source Block and

5. select property <name of your attribut>

6. [Ok]

and for "Name2" the same.

And now: You can change the NAME Value in Child blockreference,

after REGEN you will see the new value also in your Parent blockreference.

Note: You need to copy BOTH blockreference in one step (copy - select both)

to create correct working copies.

If you copy the Parent blockreference only, the field for Name1 and Name2

linking to the Child blockreference of the source Child blockreference.

Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

stefanome — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 23:19:08 GMT

@cadffm wrote:
And now: You can change the NAME Value in Child blockreference,
after REGEN you will see the new value also in your Parent blockreference.

Well... I need to do the opposite: I need to change the value in Parent and see it updated in each Child.

The block Child has 1 attribute Name.

The block Parent has 2 attributes Child1 and Child2 and two references to Child.

I want to insert a reference of Parent, assign "Joe" to Child1 and "Mary" to Child2, and see the two Child references updated, one to show "Joe" and the other to show "Mary".

In the attached example I tried to use a field, but it shows the value of the attribute as it was during the Parent block editing, not as is after assigning the values to the attributes of each reference of Parent.

In the file you attached, the Child block is not used. It looks like you have flattened the two references to Child. I can't do that because my real Child is a dynamic block with lots of stuff going on. It does need to be a dynamic block. I can't afford to explode it the way you did.

The Parent block contains 16 Child references. The position of each Child reference is set by constraints and its visibility by visibility states. If I understand your suggestion, I would need to create one big Parent block with all the entities of each Child reference, including all their parameters and visibility states. This would be a nightmare to maintain. By using 16 instances of one Child block definition, I can just edit the definition once (which is already pretty complex), while following your suggestion I would need to update each of the 16 instances.

PS: Thank you for the snapshots, I had never created a field by right clicking on the Value dialog box

Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

cadffm — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 01:05:26 GMT

You need one Block - all in one (one blockreferences)

or 2 single Blocks (one parent blockreference and two blockreferences)

It will not work with nested blocks.

Betreff: Assign attribute value to child block's attribute

stefanome — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 14:19:43 GMT

Thank you.

These blocks are part of an addin I'm working on. I hoped to be able to cover part of the job with dynamic blocks, but I guess I will need to do an hybrid and get the addin to go inside the Parent block and manage the attribute values of each Child reference. Using parameters for managing everything else (visibility, shape, position, etc.) is already a good help, I will need to still manage the last step, assigning attribute values, from code.