Adding lengths for dynamic blocks in a selection

[chiimayred]

Hey all,

 

I am slowly getting the hang of writing AutoLISP and I've really appreciated everyone's input so far. I've been able to create a few lisps already that have helped out my workflow a lot!

 

For my next lisp I am a little over my head. I'm looking to create a lisp to add the length property of my blocks together for each block name. We have a block library where we can change the length of the block and we need these lengths for a Material Take Off.

 

Here's a breakdown of what I want the routine to be able to do:

 

-Look for dynamic blocks in a selection

-Find the lengths property for the blocks

-Add the lengths together for respective blocks

-Generate a report with lengths of each present block

 

Normally I would have an attempted code for this, but I really have no idea where/how to start.

 

Any help is most appreciated!

[irneb]

Look into my code for blocks: http://sourceforge.net/p/caddons/code/67/tree/Blocks/BlockData.LSP

 

The last 2 defuns work on a block reference and extracts/sets a particular parameter. They use the other defuns as helpers, so you'll need to look at how those work too.

 

From this you can step through a selection set of the blocks one at a time. Then if you know the param's name (or it's index) you can simply run my code on that in turn.

[Lee Mac]

This set of functions may also be of help.

[chiimayred]

Hey guys,

 

Been busy for the last little bit so no progress has been made yet. Been thinking about this one more and I think I have a slightly different approach but I still need some guidance...

 

So when I list the properties of the block in question it shows up like this:

 

 BLOCK REFERENCE  Layer: "0"
                           Space: Model space
                  Handle = 56c
      Block Name: "16 NPS PIPE"
  Anonymous Name: "*U7"
               at point, X=2294.5575  Y=1474.8554  Z=   0.0000
  X scale factor:    1.0000
  Y scale factor:    1.0000
  rotation angle:      0
  Z scale factor:    1.0000
        InsUnits: Meters
 Unit conversion: 1000.0000
 Scale uniformly: No
 Allow exploding: Yes
     [b]Pipe Length: 1000.0000[/b]
     Visibility1: Straight Pipe

 

How do I extract the pipe length information from the block?

[chiimayred]

After much searching I found out the DATAEXTRACTION command does exactly what I am looking for... thanks for your help guys!

[Lee Mac]

No worries - glad you found a solution!

Thank you for reporting back