Automatic selection and action lisp
@carl.coghill wrote:
.... I'll take a drawing (like the one attached) and copy it into another file and edit the contents of what I have just copied ....
I can't just change layer properties in the destination file as there are other objects in that file that need to remain as is.....
How do you "copy it into another file"? If it's by COPYCLIP or COPYBASE in the source drawing and then PASTECLIP in the target drawing, I think the challenge would be to differentiate the things of a given entity type and/or on a given Layer that are part of what you just copied in, from those of that type and/or Layer that were already in the drawing. It's possible, but I think it would mean marking the last entity in the target drawing before you copy in, and then after copying in, stepping through with (entnext) to find everything newer than that, and putting those all in a selection set, from which you could then narrow things down by entity type and/or Layer for whatever processing you're doing.
BUT if you were to INSERT the source drawing [if you're talking about the whole thing], or put COPYCLIPped/COPYBASEd things in with PASTEBLOCK, then you could simply EXPLODE what was just put in, and a simple (ssget "_P") would get the pieces from it into a selection set all at once, without the need to either mark the last entity beforehand or step through anything. Does that sound viable?
@carl.coghill wrote:
....
I could certainly PASTBLOCK instead and EXPLODE it. I'm afraid I don't follow you after that...
The results from EXPLODE automatically become the "Previous" selection. So you can much more easily put them into an AutoLisp selection set than you can things brought in with PASETCLIP, with something like:
(setq ss (ssget "_P"))
Then you can do any number of processing operations you want, without risking any interference with other things that were already in the drawing. For example, a routine can step through it and put everything in it that's on a particular Layer into another selection set, and do what you want with those, or it can put everything of a particular entity type into a separate selection set, and do whatever else you want with those, etc. Or it can step through each object and do whatever is appropriate to it by itself, depending on its entity type and/or Layer and/or whatever, without setting up other selection sets.
@carl.coghill wrote:
....
How do you step through each layer? Which commands can I use within the Action Recorder to make changes to the layers? I had tried QUICKSELECT and found it just asked for user input each time.
I don't know whether it's possible within the Action Recorder, but it certainly is in AutoLisp. It would be more like stepping through the selection looking for things on a given Layer, rather than stepping through the Layers. Something like, after Exploding that Block:
(setq
ss (ssget "_P")
OnTestLayer (ssadd); initially empty selection set
)
(repeat (setq n (sslength ss))
(if (= (cdr (assoc 8 (entget (setq ent (ssname ss (setq n (1- n))))))) "TEST")
(ssadd ent OnTestLayer); put it in the selection
)
)
That could be preceded by stepping through and putting into a list all the Layers of objects in the full set, and then it could go through with (foreach) to put each Layer name in place of "TEST" above, and create selection sets of each Layer's objects.
If you want to isolate in other ways [e.g. all of an object type, such as Lines], you can replace the 8 and the "TEST" with other values -- e.g. 0 and "LINE" will put all Lines into a selection-set variable [named differently, of course].
And multiple properties can be checked for at once -- all Lines on a particular Layer, all Text with a particular color override, all Circles with a particular linetype override, etc.
