How to join rectangles and circles between them

[tongkezhou21]

I have a pattern made up of a lot of lines and circles between lines. I fill (off) and regen it. Some rectangles and circles are generated. But there are a lot of lines inside circles. And I want to join all of them and then get some closed polygons. How could I do? 1.png is snapshot of a part of pattern after fill and regen. 2.png is the cirles with lines. 3.png is what I want.

Thanks a lot for your kind help.

[dmfrazier]

"I fill (off) and regen it."

What is the purpose of doing the "fill"?

[Kent1Cooper]

Are the "lines" [and the rectangles] actually Polylines with width?

[Kent1Cooper]

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@dmfrazier wrote:

"I fill (off) and regen it."

What is the purpose of doing the "fill"?

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I think they mean that they turn FILLMODE off, so that [my assumption] Polylines with width are not filled.  REGEN is needed after changing the FILLMODE value, to visually get rid of the fill.

[leeminardi]

To get a drawing like your figure 3 from figure 1 I would use the boundary command.   Draw a rectangle around the entire figure 1 then use boundary followed by a click just inside the rectangle to create a polyline of the outer boundary.  Use boundary again to make polylines for the inner islands.

[tongkezhou21]

yes, it is.

[Kent1Cooper]

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@leeminardi wrote:

... use the boundary command.   Draw a rectangle around the entire figure 1 then use boundary ....

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Maybe.  If the "lines" are Polylines with width, as suggested by one of their original images, that won't work.  Boundary does not "see" Polyline width, but goes to the center-line path of a Polyline.  Given the left situation here, that approach produces the dashed green on the right:

[tongkezhou21]

exactly！

[tongkezhou21]

yes, it is. This is what I want to say.

[tongkezhou21]

In my opining, could we convert every line to closed rectangle and then convert it to a region, and then use union command.

[Kent1Cooper]

Part of a solution could be PLWtoOutline.lsp with its PLWO command, >here<.  That will make all those edges recognizable to BOUNDARY.  It would remain to ERASE those outlines and the Circles.

[Kent1Cooper]

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@tongkezhou21 wrote:

In my opining, could we convert every line to closed rectangle and then convert it to a region, and then use union command.

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The conversion part, see Message 11.  [But please use correct terminology -- the word "line" has a specific meaning in AutoCAD, and these are not Lines.]  I hadn't thought of the Region approach, but it looks like it would work [also converting the Circles to Regions].

[tongkezhou21]

Thanks for you correction. I am going to try immediately. Thanks a lot.

[tongkezhou21]

Hi Kent, Sorry to bother you. I have another question. I have converted polylines to rectangles successfully using PLWO command. As you can see, there are many circles in my file. When I want to convert them by calling PLWO command, it didn't work. Autocad showed:

select object:

can't call (command) from *error* before call (*push-error-using-command*).

suggest convert (command) to (command-s).

And a very big circle appeared.

Do you know what it means? Thanks a lot.

[tongkezhou21]

When I convert circles by calling PLWO command, I can only convert circle one by one. And There will be a small circle and a big circle. Could you please help me?

[dmfrazier]

I think this is (perhaps) because the "circles" were made with the "DONUT" command, with an inside diameter and an outside diameter specified. This actually creates a 2D polyline (similar to your "lines") "circle" (two arcs joined) with thickness based on the difference between the two diameters. The LSP routine converts this into two circles in the same way it converts a thick polyline into two lines.

[tongkezhou21]

I think maybe you are right. So could I replace them by circles, or magnify every circles at the same time based on their own centers? Thanks a lot.

[dmfrazier]

If they all should have the same diameter, then you can select them (use Selectsimilar or Filter) and use Properties to change them all at once.

Otherwise, you will have to pick and choose based on diameter.

Unless someone else can come up with a nifty tool that does some (more) magic.

[tongkezhou21]

Unfortunately, their diameters are different. It would be better if we could magnify them in proportion, such as 1:2.

[tongkezhou21]

Sorry, what do you mean? This is a link about golf