topic Re: Exploding Text in VBA Forum

Exploding Text

greneebb — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 03:09:41 GMT

Good Day.

Is there VBA to explode text?

Re: Exploding Text

Norman_Yuan — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 16:23:13 GMT

No, VBA/COM API does not have a way to explode Text, as the Express Tool's "TextExp" command.

Re: Exploding Text

greneebb — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 02:00:21 GMT

Thanks for your response.

This situation existed since 2000. I can't believe that a resolution has not been reached yet.

The problem is that text cannot be sent to a cutting machine, so it has to be broken into lines and curves.

Isn't there a way to do this besides the explode command?

Re: Exploding Text

Ed__Jobe — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 02:30:09 GMT

@greneebb wrote:

The problem is that text cannot be sent to a cutting machine, so it has to be broken into lines and curves.

You're using the wrong software. AutoCAD was never designed to send items to any cutting machine. Use a product design software like Inventor or Fusion 360. 3D text is built into the software. And there are add-ons for exporting to cnc machines.

Re: Exploding Text

greneebb — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 11:18:21 GMT

Thanks for the explanation.
You are correct. However, my intent was incorrectly stated, because AUTO drawings cannot be used directly by cutting machines.
What I really meant was that the drawings are saved in dxf format and sent to another software, like RDCut, which intern sends the images to the cutting machine.
So, what I am looking for is a means of using VBA to break up the text in much the same way that Text Explode in the Express Tools menu works.
At the moment using this command does the job fine. But now I want to automate it using VBA.

Re: Exploding Text

Ed__Jobe — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 14:32:03 GMT

Yes, I fully understand what you are trying to do. I'm just saying that these are the wrong tools. There are tools that are specifically designed to do what you want. That said, if you still want to use AutoCAD and dxf. Since you are probably not writing paragraphs of text. For something like this, you probably only need a few letters that will actually be used. I would make up a set of blocks for each letter. Those you can explode. to line the block text up, you could place some dtext and overlay the blocks to match the spacing. If you're ambitious, you could even write a command to place the blocks. Or if you have standard lines of text, make the whole line a block.

Re: Exploding Text

grenee — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 23:03:48 GMT

Thanks. This is good food for thought. I would experiment.

Re: Exploding Text

lelandarjun12 — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 13:07:14 GMT

The VBA/COM API lacks a direct method similar to the "TextExp" command found in the Express Tools. I need to achieve the same result as "TextExp" – essentially exploding text elements – but I'm struggling to find a straightforward way to do this through the API. I've searched https://rainguardroofs.com/ through the documentation, but it seems that this specific functionality might not be readily available. If anyone has faced a similar situation or has suggestions on how to work around this limitation, I'd greatly appreciate your insights.

Re: Exploding Text

Norman_Yuan — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 15:09:35 GMT

My understanding to your question is that you are doing a VBA/COM app for your specific business operation, in which you need to explode texts. That is, exploding text is part of the coded operation, thus, using SnedCommand() to call "TXTEXP" command of express tool might be problematic because of it being executed asyncly.

If you do AutoCAD .NET API programming, it might be easier to incorporate Express Tool's "TXTEXT" into a coded custom operation because of .NET API's richer event handling mechanism. One of my articles was specifically on how to use "TXTEXP" in a custom coded operation:

https://drive-cad-with-code.blogspot.com/2022/11/loop-operation-with-sendstringtoexecute.html

Re: Exploding Text

Ed__Jobe — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 14:15:19 GMT

@lelandarjun12 The TEXTEXP command uses WMFOUT and WMFIN commands to explode the text. You could try that yourself to see if it does what you want.