Dynamic Text Using Diesel or lisp or Attributes

[mfynaard]

Hello,

Our company is a bit behind the times in the print standardization process. Until now we have been manually populating things like Index pages, drawing filenames, project names, etc. I would like to automate this process using fields and diesel expressions if possible. I am looking for 2 things specifically:

1. I want to manually populate a text field on the index page (page I01, Text is "Project Description") and use that text to populate a field in the title block of all the other drawings in the directory.

2. Generate a table of contents on the index page using the page descriptions (attribute that can be found on each page) and the sheet number. In other words list the sheet number and page description for each drawing in the directory.

We only use model view for our drawings so using the Sheet Set Manager is not an option. I tried that and noone would buy into converting to Layout view.

Thanks in advance!

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

Hi @mfynaard,

I moved this thread to the customization forum for you. You might consider using Sheet sets though as it should do all that you are asking. (Perhaps a time to updated work processes).

You might also consider using PROPULATE to get attributes to be uniform across your drawings or go look for some add-ins at the Autodesk App Store.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[mfynaard]

@john.vellek

Thanks for your response and relocating my post.

I think I will do some experimenting with the PROPULATE tool. I was not aware of that before now. I would love to use the SSM but I currently do not have enough clout to initiate the change in work process. Maybe in a few years...

In the meantime I will also check out the app store. I'd still be curious to see if anyone else has a solution for the table of contents item I mentioned in my original post.

[roland.r71]

Keep in mind, ACAD is a bit (too much) single drawing orientated.

By using single drawing files, instead of 1 file with xx layouts, you are making things 100x more complex.  and you can not access other dwg's just like that, to read fields etc.

In this case (layouts), I have a function to read title blocks, from all layouts present and create a index page/table of content. (for that set of layouts)

but for separate dwg's, you would need to list all the files (by reading a directory)

open each file, read the title block, store the info somewhere (like a csv file)

open or create the index dwg, read the csv file & create the ToC.