topic Re: Display line length on layout in AutoCAD Forum

Display line length on layout

nickowen1987 — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 20:10:38 GMT

Hi all. Quick question.

I do a lot of designs of fire sprinkler systems where I use lines to represent a pipe run. I need to display the pipe size above and pipe length below the centre of each pipe run. Is it possiable to do this? As at the moment I am inserting a text box over the top of the line but this is very time consuming.

I am using different layers to represent different pipe sizes if that helps?

Re: Display line length on layout

Kent1Cooper — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 20:44:35 GMT

Check out LengthAtMidpoints.lsp, >here<, and if that looks appropriate for what it does, it can easily be adjusted to put the length figure underneath, and presumably the pipe size can be put above, extracted in some way from the Layer name. How do Layer names relate to the text content you would want used for pipe size?

Re: Display line length on layout

nickowen1987 — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 20:49:38 GMT

Thanks, I will give that a go, when I get 5mins.

in regards to the layer names, I can name them however I need to. I use a stream deck to speed up designing so what they are called does not really affect me to-much as all my lines are already set up so I only need to press a button then draw a line to length.

Re: Display line length on layout

Kent1Cooper — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 22:55:02 GMT

@nickowen1987 wrote:

.... in regards to the layer names, I can name them however I need to. ....

Post a [small] sample drawing, assuming the Layer names are obvious enough about it, and indicating the actual corresponding Text content. [For example, maybe you have a Layer called Pipe25 for 2 1/2" pipe, but of course you don't want the label Text to say "Pipe25". Would plain Text saying 2 1/2" do, or should it be 2.5, or should it be Mtext so the fraction can be stacked? If in metric units, maybe a number can be pulled straight from the Layer name, but should it have "cm" or "mm" added? Etc. A list simply pairing Layer names with Text content can be constructed, and a routine could find the pair and take the content, without the need to extract part of a Layer name and calculate something from it.]

Re: Display line length on layout

nickowen1987 — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 05:44:01 GMT

Thanks for replying. all our measurements are metric.

So for example a pipe of 25mm diameter and 1/2m (500mm length) will display 25 (on top) and 500 (on bottom).

as per the attached picture below

It would be great if I could have this text displayed automatically whenever I use a line with that layer. otherwise, I can manage if I can enter a command into the command line and click the line (pipe) it relates to. This might be better

Re: Display line length on layout

Patchy — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 14:16:14 GMT

Could make a linetype for each pipe size and dimension it with suppress all ext. and dimension lines.

or put pipe on different layer according to size and use field or routine to label the layer name.