Looking for a Lisp to Re-number Multileaders

[DDS-NCorette]

Hello, 

 

I am looking for a lisp to help speed up the process of renumbering a selection of multileaders. We use multileaders to call out materials on our drawings, and often make changes to our Bill of Materials (BOM). Whenever a change to the BOM is made, we need to adjust a lot of the multileaders to match. For example, we may have a list of 30 materials, all numbered and bubbled out. Then our client comes back with a change, and we have to add a material between number 15 and number 16 (We can't just add the material to the end, because the BOM is organized by category, size, etc.). This means that every number from 15 to 30 increases by 1, and then all of the multileaders need to be adjusted.

 

Currently we use one of two methods for adjusting the numbering. If it is a small list, or there is not a lot of bubbles, we just manually adjust each multileader. If its a long list, or there's a lot of bubbles, we use find and replace (In the example, check find whole words only, find 16, replace with 17a; Find 17, replace with 18a; and so on. Then once all numbers are adjusted, uncheck find whole words only, and find a and replace with nothing). While these methods work, they are rather tedious, and prone to error, especially when we have a long list of hundreds of materials.

 

I would like to find a faster and more robust way of doing this, and I think a lisp is probably the best solution. Ideally, the lisp would allow for the user to take a selection set of multileaders, input a range of values to adjust by a user-specified delta, and then make all the changes in one go. In the example above, the user would get the selection set of multileaders, input a range of 16-30, and a delta of 1. Sometimes the delta would need to be more than 1, hence the requirement of a user inputted variable. Often, a material is removed from the list as well, which requires a range to decrease by one. So if the lisp could take that into consideration and allow for a negative delta that would be helpful as well. 

 

I have attached a dwg example with the multileader we use for reference. The multileaders are of the type Block, using Circle as the source block, and they are always in paperspace, not sure if that will affect anything. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

Noah

 

 

BOM MULTILEADER EXAMPLE.dwg

[rlx]

think this one will do what you want : http://www.lee-mac.com/autolabelattributes.html

 

[DDS-NCorette]

Hello rlx,

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Lee's AutoLabelAttributes is pretty close to what we need. It certainly seems to have some cool features and abilities, however as far as I can tell, it doesn't correctly serve the function that we need. Quite often a part in our BOM comes up multiple times throughout the drawing and thus requires multiple bubbles with the same number. If each material and bubble was completely unique and only showed up once throughout the drawing, AutoLabelAttributes would be perfect. Definitely a cool lisp though, and I'm sure I can find a use for it elsewhere. Let me know if it seems like I'm missing something, I could be misunderstanding some part of AutoLabelAttributes' functionality.

 

Thanks,

 

Noah