Automating tasks for swiftness and presentation purposes using Blocks and Tables

[LesCarpenter]

I was wondering if anyone can help with problem I have. I am using Autocad 2011 although I only use it to tidy my drawings prior to sending to my client, my proficiency is quite basic. I have been tasked with surveying a number of feeder pillars or cabinets with 5 points of data, pt 1 is the centre of the doors, the other 4 points are the corners of the cabinet always in the same order. These can be imported into Autocad as a series of points and then I have to join the dots, and draw the cabinet. I know a little about blocks and that I can create a block of my drawing and place it over the five points, and then I'm stuck as if I change the block once it changes it in all the other positions.

 

After i have placed the block, I need to list the coordinates of the 5 points, this i do individually using the id command and copy and paste into a table. Is there anyway to speed this up?

 

I have attached a sketch of what I'm after doing, there could be as many 20+ cabinets in a drawing. So any help is appreciated.

 

Many thanks in advance.

fp1 trial.dwg

feeder pillar template.pdf

[BIGAL]

A couple of ways to do it you can create a dynamic block, create a box with constraints that you edit or I would just draw them using a lisp maybe with the data exported out of a excel spreadsheet as plain text as a script so does all in one go

 

A box example in theory read in five points x,y pt1 pt2 pt3 pt4 pt5 you take all the values above and work out a new lower left upper right pts then just use "rectang" this is actually pt4 & pt3 but with a offset for multiple cabinets the doors are drawn to some sort of rule 1/2 pt2-pt5 - 20x2

 

Using contsraints is probably the easiest just change two vaules and its drawn.

 

; a lisp example a bit rough
(command "line" pt1 pt5 pt4 pt3 pt2 pt5 "")
(setq newpt5 (list (+ 20.0 (car pt5))(cadr pt5)))
(setq newpt2 (list (-  (car pt2) 20.0 )(cadr pt2)))
(command "line" newpt2 (polar newpt2 4.712388 (- (cadr pt3)(cadr pt2))) "") ;repeat for another side angle is radians

[steven-g]

I'd go with the dynamic block idea, Pt1 as the insertion point and 5 attributes that report the X and Y coordinates of the points, I believe full autocad has a command to extract attribute data directly to a table (you can certainly export the details to excel).

[steven-g]

Attached is a simple block to show the idea.

fp1 trial.dwg